City working to open May's Island lawn for Fourth fireworks

CEDAR RAPIDS - Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, reports that the city is moving ahead with a new assessment of the May's Island underground parking ramp as a possible prelude to allowing attendees of the Freedom Festival to occupy the lawn above the ramp to view Fourth of July fireworks.

The city has had the May's Island lawn - which stretches a block between the still-closed Veterans Memorial Building, long home to City Hall, and the reopened Linn County Courthouse - closed off since the July 2008 flood because of a concern about the structural integrity of the underground ramp.

Eyerly forwarded a short report this week from a Howard R. Green Co. engineer, who in May 2009 advised that “events resulting in large crowds” not be held on the May's Island lawn until additional assessments and repairs are completed to the parking ramp under it.

Two new council members, Don Karr and Mayor Ron Corbett, are pretty skeptical about the concern that has been expressed from city officials about allowing people to stand on the May's Island lawn.

Karr and Corbett this week both noted that the underground parking ramp, which has serviced both the Veterans Memorial Building at one end of the ramp and the Linn County Courthouse on the other end of it, extends under Third Avenue and partially under Second Avenue.

Why, Karr asked, has the city allowed thousands of cars, trucks, city buses and what not to drive over the bridges atop the parking ramp every day, endangering them?

Karr notes that some at City Hall and on the previous City Council have wanted to build a new city hall, the price tag of which has been put at anywhere from $38 million to $50 million. Raising questions about the underground ramp, which serves the Veterans Memorial Building, has been a way to help make the case for a new city hall, Karr suspects.

This week, Corbett told The Gazette editorial board that he believes the majority of the council wants to move city government back to the Veterans Memorial Building and to the old federal courthouse, which the city will own, nearby.

The council is slated to vote up or down on a new city hall on March 16.