Who needs cost and space analyses and architects when it comes to future home of City Council?

CEDAR RAPIDS - The City Council last night nearly committed both feet to return council meetings to where they had been before the June 2008 flood - the fourth floor of the Veterans Memorial Building, long known as City Hall.

However, council members Monica Vernon, Tom Podzimek and Justin Shields prevailed in convincing the council not to make such a decision so hastily, but rather to take time to consider a proposal to make the large federal courtroom in the now city-owned former federal courthouse just down the block into the future home for council meetings.

Council members Chuck Swore, Don Karr and Chuck Wieneke were all for making a commitment to returning council meetings to the Veterans Memorial Building, and council member Kris Gulick nearly was.

Four votes would have been enough, because Mayor Ron Corbett and council member Pat Shey were not present. Corbett, though, earlier this week said he wants to the council meetings back where they had been before the flood.

Council members Podzimek and Shields were beside themselves when it looked like the vote was going in favor of the Veterans Memorial Building without any study to look at the cost of renovation of each venue, the amount of space in each and the plans of which city offices would go in which of the two buildings.

The Veterans Memorial Commission apparently is in the driver's seat on the renovation of the Veterans Memorial Building, and Mike Jager, the city's memorial director, told the council last night that the commission needed to tell its architect if the council intended to return council meetings to the council chambers in the building's fourth floor.

The council is in the process of hiring another architect for the old federal courthouse.

Vernon advocated most strongly for moving council meetings to the large federal courtroom.

She noted that the renovation of the Vets building council chambers in the 1990s was done when the council had five members. It now has nine. She noted that there had been calls to redo the council chambers even before the flood.

The council decided to take the matter up more thoroughly at a lunchtime meeting in the days ahead. It did decide to house the council offices, city manager and city clerk in the same building near one another.

Podzimek said he liked the old courthouse site, in small part, because the city could actually put out a sign declaring it City Hall. Such isn't the case apparently at the Veterans Memorial Building, which had been home, prior to the June 2008 flood, to City Hall since it first opened back in the late 1920s.