Council decides to go back to Veterans Memorial Building council chambers on 7-1 vote

CEDAR RAPIDS – The City Council last night voted to head home.

On a 7-1 vote, the council said it will return its regular council meetings to the fourth-floor council chambers in the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building, which has housed City Hall on May's Island since the building opening in the 1920s.

Mayor Ron Corbett said last night that the contractor now mobilizing to renovate the Veterans Memorial Building, which has been vacant since the June 2008 flood, needed to know if the council was going back to the fourth-floor council chambers or if plans should be made to convert the space into offices. With last night's vote, the council should be able to begin meeting again on May's Island by Feb. 1, the mayor said.

Some on the council had expressed an interest in moving the council chambers to the large, third-floor courtroom in the former federal courthouse, which will become a city building for city government uses.

However, some on the council noted last night that the city does not take ownership of the courthouse for another 30 to 60 days. They also noted that the council did not know enough at this time about the limitations put on altering some of the building's space because of its historic standing.

Council member Chuck Swore said “there was no question” that the courtroom in the former courthouse could make a “great location” for a council chambers. For now, the council can move back into the Veterans Memorial Building council chambers with a possible eye to moving the chambers to the courthouse later, he said.

Council member Monica Vernon also said she remained interested in the courtroom as a council chambers in the longer-term, saying the room “could be real cool.”

Vernon said the council chambers in the Veterans Memorial Building was too small, but she said in the short term it would work.

Council member Kris Gulick wondered if the other spaces in either the Veterans Memorial Building or the courthouse building might be best for a council chambers.

In the end, though, only council member Tom Podzimek voted against moving to the Veterans Memorial Building council chambers.

Podzimek noted that a former space-needs study showed that the city needed to take care in how it used space in the Veterans building and the courthouse to make sure it could fit all it wanted to fit into them. He wanted to seem an analysis of what might best go where with citizen access, cost and security factored in. He did not want to go back to the Veterans building council chambers just because “that's where we were before, my God.”

Mayor Ron Corbett pushed hardest for going back to the Veterans building.

The council also agreed to return the offices of mayor, council members and city manager to the third floor of the Veterans building.

The renovation work on the building is being paid for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds and a $4-million state I-JOBS grant.

The city also received a $4-million state I-JOBS grant for renovation work in the former courthouse. The federal government's General Services Administration has already fixed the flood damage.