Patience a needed commodity for downtown Cedar Rapids

This ran in my Sunday, Jan. 23, column in The Gazette newspaper. Here's a link to our e-edition, where you can read the daily paper. A subscription applies, but it's a good deal.

If patience were a commodity in Cedar Rapids you'd want to buy now. The value of patience when attached to the city's downtown area only will go up in the next two years.

These will be the two years in which the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel is remodeled and a new convention center is constructed. Cedar Rapids needs to close both its largest hotel and its largest entertainment draw, the U.S. Cellular Center, for a significant period of time in order to re-open later with something better. Dave DeWitte explains the situation in a story that starts on the front page of today's Gazette.

The big question is: can businesses that have moved back into downtown Cedar Rapids after the 2008 flood hang on while people are not going to the hotel or U.S. Cellular Center during construction? The question is about more than just individual downtown business owners. Any Cedar Rapids resident would not want such a high profile site as downtown to become an eyesore for all to see and by which the city could be judged.

To be certain, Coopers Mill, on the west side of the river and also closed for a while by the flood, can use the shot at picking up some additional lodgers. But a city the size of Cedar Rapids suffers without the kind of downtown hotel and convention space that has helped other cities' economies and which Cedar Rapids city leaders desperately want to build.

Think of this timeline since 2008: Hang on during a financial downtown only to be slammed by a record flood. Pump money into rebuilding in an area where major attractions also were slammed by the flood. Two-and-a-half years after the flood a major attraction closes for 18 months. Three years after the flood another major attraction closes for 15 months. This has been nothing close to being fun.

There's a promise at the end of this worth attaining. But being on the trip is hard. If you haven't done so already, give DeWitte's story a read. The value of patience, it seems, cannot be overstated when it comes to the future of downtown Cedar Rapids. But carrying perhaps even more value will be measurable community support that gives businesses the opportunity to share that patience.