Cedar Rapids moves to clear remaining structures on site intended for casino

CEDAR RAPIDS - By summer's end, the entire 8-plus-acre, city-owned site where a casino has been intended to go will be cleared of buildings and ready for a future.

The City Council this week approved plans to conduct an environmental remediation and demolition of existing structures at the site, most of which already is empty land, across the Cedar River from downtown.

John Riggs, the city's building services manager, estimated that the city will spend a little less than $100,000 for the work at the casino site. He said five commercial buildings, a house and a few parking lots are involved.

The casino site was flooded in the 2008 flood, and most of property there was purchased in the city's federally funded, flood-recovery buyout program.

Cedar Rapids Development Group LLC, the casino investor group led by local businessman Steve Gray, purchased the few remaining properties at the site which did not go into the buyout program as the investors put together a casino proposal for the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, The commission denied the group a state gaming license in April 2014, saying a Cedar Rapids casino would take too much business away from the Riverside Casino and Golf Resort south of Iowa City.

The investors had agreed to buy the city-owned property for its assessed value, $2.2 million, if the casino project had moved ahead.

In July 2014, the City Council agreed to buy the investor group's property at the site so the city would control the entire site into the future for a casino or some other development. The city paid $415,000 to the investor group for property the group had paid $2.05 million to buy.

Mayor Ron Corbett has said that the city isn't in any rush to redevelop the casino site in the event that a casino or some other significant development is able to be built there.

The site sits between Interstate 380 and Second Avenue SW and First and Third streets SW.