Looking Cherry again: New Bohemia landmark celebrates recovery

In the weeks immediately after the June 12, 2008, flood in Cedar Rapids, the iconic Cherry Building in the New Bohemia Arts and Entertainment District hung in doubt.

Worries about flood mapping and elevations left the owners of the city's most popular loft work space wondering whether they'd be allowed to restore the old factory building, even if they could marshal the resources.

But as this weekend's grand reopening of the building attests, the building's once again living up to its name. After thousands of hours of volunteer labor and more than $2 million in reinvestment, the building is looking, well... cherry.

“It's really nice to get some businesses back in here,” said David Chadima of the Thorland Co., the Chadima family business that owns the building. “Before, when we brought business owners down here to show them around, it was all empty and boarded up. It was hard to visualize how it would look.”

The building owners were able to satisfy flood requirements by converting a basement level that had been used as business premises into storage space.

That left the worst problems on the first floor, where days of sitting in flood water had caused the rugged and well-worn hardwood floors to buckle.

The Chadimas weren't about to sacrifice the historic character of the 90-year-old building, part of the Bohemian Commercial Historic District, to restore it. They replaced the hardwood floors. They also replaced the flood-damaged windows with floor-to-ceiling windows that more closely resemble the windows at the time the factory was built.

Much of the credit, the Chadimas say, goes to literally hundreds of flood recovery volunteers from throughout the country who pitched in to handle cleanup, demolition, and some of the restoration work. Many arrived planning to help residents of the flood-affected areas restore their homes. Many of the owners were still undecided about whether they would or could

The Chadimas never turned down proffered help, realizing it might be the only way the recovery would be completed.

“We're a small business with a small budget,” Chadima said. “The kind of businesses we like to have down here are small creative companies, so we have to keep the costs low.”

The biggest post-restoration addition to the building is the Iowa Ceramics Center.

The center offers classes and workshops in both clay and warm glass arts for adults and children. It also offers private studio rentals and an outreach program in the Cedar Rapids schools as part of the non-profit Iowa Art Works.

The center also has six artists in residence, who will show off their work at this weekend's open house.

“This is a unique facility for the entire state of Iowa,” center Director Ben Jensen said.

The building has reshuffled many of its old tenants in reconfigured space, and has also gained some new tenants. Among them are a metal sculptor, and a company that performs air quality monitoring in post-flood structures for the City of Cedar Rapids.

Some spaces remain unfinished, awaiting tenants. The Chadimas have had to postpone restoration of several neighboring buildings they own and manage on nearby Third Street SE until the Cherry Building is done. They include the relatively modern Kouba Building and the former White Elephant retail shop. Part of the latter building is believed to be one of the city's oldest surviving structures, Chadima said.