Big Ideas, Small Ideas Downtown

So it looks like the big guns aren't going to ride in and save downtown Cedar Rapids.

Not even for free parking?

Mayor Ron Corbett floated a big trial balloon at our forum on downtown redevelopment this week, inviting the city's two biggest private employers, Rockwell Collins and AEGON, to come on downtown. A day later, the trial balloon was politely popped.

Behind the smiling corporate speak about timing and conditions and factors was the unsaid. “Mayor, are you nuts?”

Corbett is not afraid to fire off an idea. Some may think he's impulsive. I happen to like fearless idea-shooters. For one thing, they make lots of news. I also prefer that approach to politicians who can't tell us what they think until they've had consultants make their idea into a very pricey placard.

So the AEGON/Rockwell invite was returned to sender. It didn't hurt to ask. Corbett's idea for free downtown parking for a decade seems gimmicky. But you have to admit that you can't swing a live project in this town without hitting a parking issue.

Big ideas are great. But thinking small has its merits as well.

That's where Brewed Awakenings co-owner Heather Younker comes in. Rather than become the next neat little joint we miss, she put her coffee house's struggles in the public domain. The response has been heartening. Heck, I'm sipping coffee from her shop as I type this.

She's also pushing what's known as the 3/50 project, encouraging people to spend $50 a month at three independent businesses they'd hate to lose. If it gets people thinking, great. If it gets people spending, terrific.

Downtown, and I mean a broad swath of the city's core on both sides of the river, may be lifted out of its doldrums by big guns and big ideas. Certainly big projects are critical. The Paramount Theatre, a new events center, the reopening of Theatre Cedar Rapids and federal courthouse come to mind.

But everywhere I've lived and worked, Des Moines' East Village, Sioux City, Iowa Falls, etc., business districts live and die based on the presence or absence of risk-takers. Sure, government can give a nudge, but it's private investment from people with an idea and some guts who do the heavy lifting.

You may say downtown is dead, but look closer and you'll see risk takers. I saw them pack into our forum. And we should give them our business, not out of pity, but out of respect for what they do and what they mean to this town.

If we do, more will follow. The dead will live, the boring might get a little more lively. It could be really big.

n Comments: (319) 398-8452 or todd.dorman@gazcomm.com