Proposed City Market will get any FEMA funds tied to flood-damaged Roundhouse

CEDAR RAPIDS - The future is a higher priority for most on the City Council than the past, at least when it comes to farmers markets.

That became apparent this week as a council consensus agreed with Mayor Ron Corbett's suggestion that any federal disaster funds coming to the city for the city-owned, flood-damaged Riverside Roundhouse be used as seed money for a proposed new City Market, not for the Roundhouse.

Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, told the council that the city has the ability to use Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds for “alternative projects” if the city can't or chooses not to repair what has been damaged in a disaster.

Eyerly said FEMA typically pays 81 percent of the damage claim for an alternative project, a percentage which would pay the city at most $160,000 for use on an alternative project related to the Roundhouse property, he estimated on Thursday.

Don't take that money to the bank quite yet, though, Eyerly cautioned.

One possible complication – though he did not consider it likely – is related to the fact that the council agreed Wednesday evening to convey the city-owned property on which the Roundhouse sits to the National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library for little or no cost, Eyerly said.

Even so, Sarah Ordover, board president of Cedar Rapids City Market Inc. , was caught by surprise on Thursday at the prospect of some FEMA funds for the proposed market, which the market's board has talked about putting in New Bohemia across the river from Czech Village.

“Oh, that will be useful," Ordover said. “We appreciate it, and it would make sense."

Corbett said as much when he said using any FEMA money from the Roundhouse property on a new City Market would steer the funds to what the Roundhouse is best known for, as a farmers market.

“We could team up those who want to save the Roundhouse with the year-round market and have something better than we had,” the mayor said.

Saving the Roundhouse, which sits in Czech Village, has become the goal of a Czech Village Association committee, which has proposed dismantling the building, storing it on a nearby lot and then re-erecting it at 17th Avenue and B Street SW as an events venue on a site now occupied by flood-wrecked homes slated for demolition.

Council member Chuck Swore said he believed that volunteers and members of the local building trades were lining up and would get the Roundhouse, built in 1962, moved.

Council members did not oppose the idea, but they said they expected the building to be moved by May 11 so the museum and library can take over the site and get on with the plan to elevate the site so it can move its flood-damaged building there and enlarge it.

Swore suggested that the museum take responsibility to manage the volunteer effort to save the Roundhouse, though Gayle Naughton, the museum's president, told the council that the museum did not want to take over that job.

Corbett saluted the enthusiasm of citizens who wanted to save the Roundhouse, but at the same time, he wondered if the complications of the task might make it impossible given the deadline.

He and council member Pat Shey both noted that the council in recent weeks agreed to let the city's Historic Preservation Committee have a couple-month window of time to figure out if the smokestack at the flood-and-fire-damaged Sinclair site, the demolition of which is pending, could be saved and if they could raise funds to do so.

The Roundhouse is no different from the smokestack, Shey said. Those who want to do the saving need to “put their money where their mouth is,” Shey said.

Alex Andersen on Thursday was doing just that.

Andersen, owner of Ernie's Avenue Tavern in Czech Village and the leader of the village association's Save the Roundhouse Committee, and an associate were at the Roundhouse on Thursday beginning the job of taking the building apart. He thought his committee could meet a May deadline and, he added, it didn't matter that any FEMA money attached to the building would go to a new City Market.

“Our main goal is to save the Roundhouse so, hopefully, our children will be able to enjoy it for another 100 years,” Andersen said.

The council seemed to signal that it would be the museum's task to demolish the Roundhouse should the citizen committee not get it dismantled and moved. The city is giving $775,000 worth of city property to the museum, the museum can pay for any demolition, council member Tom Podzimek said.