Three First Avenue East Sites Still in Play for New Fire Station

Three First Avenue East blocks are still in the running to be the block on which the city's new $10-million Central Fire Station will be built.

City Hall's Fire Station Relocation Advisory Committee refers to the blocks as the Taco Bell block, The History Center block and the Emerald Knights block, although those buildings take up just a part of the block each is in.

The advisory committee on Friday decided to forward all three sites to the City Council without prioritizing one over the other.

Barry Boyer, chairman of the advisory committee, said the costs to purchase each of the three sites and ready each for construction aren't yet known, and he thought it appropriate to have the council, which will make the site selection, pick what it wants after it knows the costs to transform each of them into a new home for the Central Fire Station.

All three sites meet the committee's requirements and the Fire Department's for availability and accessibility to two key traffic arteries, First Avenue and Interstate 380, said Boyer, president/CEO of Van Meter Industrial.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay the city about $9 million to construct the new Central Fire Station to replace the flood-ruined one as well as the cost of the land and the expenses to relocate businesses on the property, Greg Buelow, the Fire Department spokesman, said after the Friday meeting.

Buelow said recommending a top site among the three choices might work to drive up the asking price for that site. He said FEMA will determine the appropriate cost for each site and then will pay the city only the amount of the lowest-cost site. As a result, getting accurate, competitive prices is important, Buelow noted.

The city, he said, did single out the Taco Bell site, which is the 600 block of First Avenue NE, in its request for $5 million in state I-JOBS funds for the new Central Fire Station. In recent weeks, Mayor Ron Corbett also referred to the Taco Bell site as the advisory committee's top pick.

Buelow noted on Friday, though, that the cost to relocate existing businesses on the three recommended sites could change the cost picture of any one site considerably.

The advisory committee and the Fire Department had Ryan Cos. US Inc. in Cedar Rapids analyze the prospects of other sites in the city for the Central Fire Station out of a concern that one of the three First Avenue East sites was taking potentially high-value commercial property off the property-tax rolls. None of eight possible other sites worked.

One of the eight was the downtown property that is now home to a Pepsi warehousing operation. The city is negotiating to purchase the property for a new transit facility, but will have more than another block of property available for redevelopment at the site after the purchase. The Pepsi site, though, isn't close enough to the key First Avenue and Interstate 380 traffic arteries, the Ryan report found.

The 600 block of Third Avenue SE, referred to as the People's Church block, and the 800 block of Second Avenue SE, referred to as the Denny's Muffler Center block, also were inferior sites because of accessibility, the Ryan report found.

City Council member Don Karr said accessibility of those two sites for a fire station likely would become worse with the proposed changes of some one-way streets near the downtown to two-way streets.

Planning for the new Central Fire Station site also calls for the closing of the Fire Department's Station 3 near Coe College because the Station 3 location will be near the new site for the Central Fire Station. Coe College plans to bid to buy Station 3, Buelow noted.

He said the city then proposed to build a new station on the city's west side to serve the growth in population there.

The city's I-JOBS application includes an additional request for $1.6 million to help pay for the new west-side station. The sale of Station 3 would make up the cost difference, Buelow said.