No stopping us now

CEDAR RAPIDS - The city and its flooded neighborhoods, now on the mend, can't stand still - with or without local funds for flood protection.

That's the take of Linda Seger, president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association. Since the March 6 defeat of a referendum to raise that local money, she's been busy convening a group of those interested in rebuilding neighborhoods. They will steam ahead on plans to bring commercial development to Ellis Boulevard NW, parts of which sit in the 100-year flood plain.

Seger, a key community force in the city's post-flood recovery, said so much home construction and renovation are going on in the Ellis Boulevard neighborhoods around Harrison Elementary School that it would be unfair for the city to turn its back now.

“People are buying homes here, they are rehabbing homes, they are moving back,” said Seger, of 1629 Eighth St. NW, a flood survivor herself. “There is an energy you feel here. There's just a real desire to move ahead.”

Mayor Ron Corbett said the defeat of the ballot measure - to extend the city's 1 percent local-option sales tax for 10 years for flood protection - hasn't changed his outlook.

“I'm not giving up on flood protection,” he said. “We have a challenge in our community for long-term flood protection, and it's incumbent on me as mayor to come up with alternative solutions.”

Corbett said he is committed to building flood protection for both sides of the river, but the tax defeat means that east-side flood protection, which the Army Corps of Engineers supports and for which it is now designing, will get built sooner than any west-side protection.

The Corps' east-side plan, which has a price tag of $104 million, includes $12.5 million in preconstruction design and engineering work, now under way. Of that cost, 25 percent falls on the city, which the city has funds to pay for. The remainder of the east-side project requires a 35 percent non-federal match, some of which can be state dollars. In the end, the biggest impediment to east-side protection might be congressional funding, though the east-side project has been cleared for Congress' consideration.

As for west-side protection, it has “taken a step backward,” Corbett said, “but that doesn't mean we're abandoning west-side protection.”

City Council member Monica Vernon said she is still trying to understand why the referendum was defeated a second time.

“I still think people want to protect our community, and I still think people want to protect both sides of the river,” Vernon said. “Perhaps the message is they don't want to pay for it, or they didn't want to pay for it in this manner.”

She's s not ready to say that flood protection is dead, either.

“Cities are forever, and we just have to keep moving forward,” Vernon said. “I think you never give up. You never give up on Cedar Rapids. You never give up on each other.”

Residential rebirth for some

Much of the new-home construction in the flood-damaged neighborhoods is spurred by a city initiative for home replacement. The program provides a lot and a $25,000 down payment to an income-qualified homebuyer willing to move into a new home on flood-hit streets outside the 100-year flood plain and outside the construction zone for a flood-protection system.

The lots once held flooded homes, which were bought out and demolished in the city's disaster buyout program. Nearly all the funding for the buyouts, demolitions and incentives for replacement homes has come from the federal government.

Critics remain vocal. In an opinion piece in The Gazette following the tax vote, Michael Richards, former head of the Oak Hill Jackson Neighborhood Association, said the city has shown favor for a “small, elite group of economic interests” and needs a “new, citizen-based leadership.” By way of example, he said, the city had given away lots for the profit of developers like Skogman Homes of Cedar Rapids.

Corbett said Richards is misinformed. The incentives in the home-replacement program go to the homebuyer, he said.

Eighteen builders, of which Skogman is one, are participating in the project - the current phase of which the city calls ROOTs, for Rebuilding Ownership Opportunities Together. It will mean more than 200 new homes in the city's flooded neighborhoods.

Northwest Neighbors' leader Seger said the homebuilding incentives are giving people a start in life with a home they would not be able to afford otherwise. At the same time, she said, the new homes are bringing new life to the neighborhood.

“This is the American dream that came out of a disaster,” Seger said.

West-side commercial hopes

Much of the west-side property close to the river that was bought out by the city likely will go undeveloped for the foreseeable future while flood protection remains up in the air.

Vernon and City Council member Chuck Swore said they are committed to encouraging the private sector to invest in commercial establishments on Ellis Boulevard NW to support the neighborhood-building beyond there.

A city committee is backing a plan to build the new Northwest Recreation Center on the river side of Ellis Boulevard NW, even though it's inside the 100-year flood plain. Actually, much of the boulevard is.

Swore envisions neighborhood storefronts with sandwich shops, a bakery and a coffee shop.

“The neighborhood needs those sort of amenities,” he said.

City Hall-critic Craig Augustine's home backs up to the river near Ellis Park. His house and others sit inside the construction zone for a flood-protection system. That has not stopped the owners from renovating their riverside homes. Augustine said after the tax vote that it's time for the city to throw away its plan for the construction zone.

“I don't foresee us doing that,” Vernon said. “I think that would be premature to do something like that. We've held that area aside for a long time, and this vote means that this form of payment didn't work for people. So I'm not just ready to throw in the towel and say, ‘Forget it.' ”

Corbett agreed. The city isn't ready to promote building and renovation inside the 100-year flood plain, except on a case-by-case basis, he said. The new recreation center, which would connect to the existing Time Check Park, might be one exception, he said.

Vernon still has an interest in the “West Village” concept, that calls for redevelopment of the area inside the 100-year flood plain and directly across the river from downtown. The historical Louis Sullivan-designed bank sits there, and the city has promised to protect it. Developers have expressed interest in saving other commercial buildings near it.

Residential ghost town for others

Michael Lane's renovated house at 43 20th Ave. SW is one of just a few left among the 10 blocks of homes nearest the Czech Village commercial strip and along the Cedar River.

Lane said he would live in the country if he could, but his piece of urban Cedar Rapids has become something like the country since the June 2008 flood. Nearly all the flooded homes around him - this was one of the city's hardest hit neighborhoods, from 17th to 21st avenues between A and C streets SW - have been bought out and demolished.

So little is left that the veteran construction worker said he thinks a little about public safety at night.

“You couldn't hear someone screaming here now,” he said.

Lane voted no in the March 6 tax vote. His reasons, he said, were that the city has not been clear enough on how it spent revenue from the existing local-option sales tax, and the city will have money left from the tax when it runs its course on June 30, 2014, that it can use for flood protection.

“We need to get some protection here, but I think they're trying to be a little opulent,” Lane said. “They've got enough money now to get something going without the bells and whistles.”

Chris Dostal, affectionately called “the Mayor of 19th Avenue SW” by his neighbors, lives on one of the hardest hit blocks next to Czech Village. He believes that trying to build a flood-protection system to defeat Mother Nature is ludicrous. He can't see another catastrophic flood hitting the city for many years to come, if ever.

Dostal's flood-ruined house, built in 1890 at 87 19th Ave. SW, is still standing. He is intentionally taking his time selling it to the city.

“It's been almost four years; what's my hurry now? It's been four years of misery,” said Dostal, who received some down-payment assistance to purchase a replacement home.

He hopes to retain one of his two lots. Then, he said, he could take some chairs down there and sit near the river with friends and family in the summer. At the least, he might put a big rock on the lot, commemorating daughter Vicki's coronation as Czech princess in 2006.