Broken welcome sign into Cedar Rapids points out need to work on first impressions, say Karr and Swore

CEDAR RAPIDS - Bad second impressions can go a long way to ruining good first ones.

That's the thought of City Council members Don Karr and Chuck Swore, who say they had a good chuckle recently as they left a meeting at the city's Eastern Iowa Airport and headed back toward downtown along Interstate 380.

"You realize how beautiful it is when you go in and out of the airport," Karr said on Monday. "The art, the flowers, the flower beds. You feel like you want to be there."

Down the road from the airport, though, the weeds start to overtake the highway median, Karr said.

Swore on Monday pointed to the Cedar Rapids welcome sign on Interstate 380 as you head into town from the airport. The top of the sign has fallen off and the broken piece now sits, leaning along the highway fence.

"It's embarrassing; the one sign we do have has fallen apart," said Swore. "Once you leave the airport, your good first impression is going to go downhill quickly."

Swore and Karr broached the idea of beautifying the gateways to the city at last week's City Council meeting, and on Monday, Karr said it would make sense to do so at the gateways along Interstate 380 and, perhaps, Mount Vernon Road SE and Highway 30.

The council last week backed setting aside 1 percent of the cost of larger city building projects for public art, with the ability to use part of the money from particular projects on public art elsewhere in the city.

Swore said the idea of public art in building projects is all well and good. But he added that the city ought to try to see if can't improve the highly visible gateways into the city before it worries about what art will go in the city's new public buildings.

Karr, the council's liaison to the city's Visual Arts Commission, said some of the city's funds for public art ought to be spent to beautify the gateways to the city, and he said the commission ought to help the city figure out how to do so.

"I know we're an industrial city," Karr said. "But it seems so industrial. There's nothing to see (on Interstate 380) that makes you feel you want to come here. It makes you feel like you want to drive through."

Karr, who once considered an art career and once owned an art gallery in the city, said he thinks new signage along Interstate 380 would be particular effective as motorists get their first clear views of the downtown skyline as they approach from the south and north. The crest of Interstate 380 by Wilson Avenue SW, he said, would make a perfect spot for an attractive welcome sign that provides a few select details about the museums in the city or other highlights of what the city has to offer.

"And I don't mean a flashy billboard either," he said. "I want to get people to look at Cedar Rapids and say, ‘That's kind of a cool place, maybe it's worth stopping.'"

A decade ago, then-Mayor Lee Clancey and her City Council colleagues established special design standards for those who intended to build along the gateways to the city. The special standards unique to gateways were subsequently set aside after developers said the additional requirements hurt investment at the entry points to the city.