Will plan to close Second Avenue East fit with recent plan to convert First Avenue East at St. Luke's and Coe into a boulevard with grassy median?

CEDAR RAPIDS -- In September 2007, a local traffic engineering consultant was taking public input about the prospect of widening First Avenue East between Seventh and 13th streets in the area of Coe College and St. Luke's Hospital to deal with the expected crunch of traffic congestion in the years ahead.

At the time, representatives from the college, the Mound View Neighborhood Association and even the Downtown District were pushing against widening and wanted to see a plan that would turn that stretch of busy First Avenue East into a boulevard with a landscaped median without more lanes.

For the Downtown District, such a plan was seen as a way to create an attractive gateway to the downtown.

At the time, Jeff Morrow, an engineer at Anderson-Bogert Engineers and Surveyors of Cedar Rapids, told the regional planning agency, now known as the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, that the boulevard approach would require the “sacrifice” of accepting 30 to 40 percent more traffic congestion.

“But maybe that's OK,” Morrow said.

Then-City Council member Brian Fagan, who was a planning commission member, said city street projects needed to be designed with the idea of improving the “quality of life” in the city.

Morrow also noted that the city was interested in developing a commuter bicycle plan, and in that regard, he said the avenues parallel to First Avenue East and not First Avenue East itself would be the best places to create commuter bicycle lanes.

In the weeks and months ahead, it will be interesting to see how much dust this First Avenue East study has collected and to see if it has anything useful to offer as part of a new proposal – to close Second Avenue East between 10th and 12th Streets. Physicians' Clinic of Iowa is asking the city to close the street to make way for PCI's proposed $36-million medical “mall” and $8-million parking ramp.

The PCI plan would divert traffic, in part, to First Avenue East. One idea, too, would be to convert Third Avenue to a two-way street so it could also accept some Second Avenue traffic.