City council seems to want a new City Hall; council asks county, schools to join forces and it now thinks Uncle Sam might be convinced to pony up

One is left with the impression that the City Council and city staff remain pretty interested in building a new $50-million-plus City Hall.

There's no way to really know, because no one on the council ever says.

At its meeting Wednesday evening, council member Kris Gulick said, as it stands now, the numbers don't work for the City Council to build all new buildings to replace the city's key flood-damaged buildings. And yet, he noted, there appears to be sentiment from the public and city employees to build a new library, new central fire station, new animal shelter, new fleet maintenance building and maybe even a new public works building.

The sentiment apparently is a little closer regarding a new $50-million-plus City Hall, but consultant OPN Architects Inc. and city staff did not reveal Wednesday evening what the public sentiment about that issue really is.

Instead, OPN and the city staff mixed the 600 responses the city received at two public open houses two weeks ago and the 30 others that came in online with more than 150 responses obtained from city employees, who had a separate presentation about the building options.

After Wednesday's meeting, Dan Thies, president/CEO of OPN, said it was incorrect to assume that 100 percent of the city employees favored building a new City Hall.

Council member Brian Fagan said the same.

No council member asked if there was a difference between what the public said about the future of City Hall and what city employees said about it.

In any event, the comments gathered at open houses, online and in special sessions with city employees are anything but scientific.

The City Council on Wednesday evening decided to ask the Linn County Board of Supervisors and the Cedar Rapids Community Schools if they would be willing to join forces with the city in “co-locating” in new or existing facilities.

The implication long has been that “co-location” would help sell the construction of new buildings to the public.

The council and its consultants had pushed co-location for many months late last year and earlier this year, but both the county and school district dropped the idea in favor of taking care of their own flood-damaged administrative buildings.

A new wrinkle, too, appeared Wednesday evening when Sandi Fowler, assistant to City Manager Jim Prosser, told the council that the city can ask the state of Iowa to seek a special waiver so that city can try to secure future federal Community Development Block Grant funds to pay for public buildings.

The upfront cost to return City Hall to the Veterans Memorial Building is about $39 million, but all but about $5 million of the cost would be paid for by Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds.

A new City Hall, which is expected to cost more than $50 million, would be paid for by local taxpayers unless some federal money can be found for the project.

In its presentation to the public two weeks ago, consultant OPN put the cost of the two options on an equal cost footing over 50 years when factoring in estimated insurance costs against the Veterans Memorial Building and adding cost savings that OPN said would accrue for a new City Hall by putting more services in it.

Council member Gulick has called for an independent, third-party analysis of OPN's cost models and assumptions, and last night Thies said OPN will take its analysis to the University of Iowa this week and have experts there review it.