City says renovation of flooded Cedar Rapids facilities is near

Fourteen months into flood recovery, and it's not easy to find workers in action on city properties. It will be in the months ahead.

As a prelude to what City Hall says is a coming spurt of construction, city officials released this month an updated timeline of rebuilding plans for what they say are 26 critical city government facilities that were flooded in June 2008.

Some of the smaller projects are on the cusp of construction - the clubhouse at Jones Golf Course and the elevators at the Third Avenue parkade, for instance. Others are being bid on or are in a design phase.

One giant exception is the hard-to-see, but costliest of city flood-damaged projects - at the city's Water Pollution Control facility. The plant has been back up and running since soon after the flood, but repairs and renovations have and will continue there and could reach $100 million before all is said and done. Work also continues on the wells in the city's well fields.

On Tuesday, City Manager Jim Prosser said he has never lost his sense of “urgency” in fixing the city government's flood-damaged buildings and facilities.

In total, he said, city government is looking at $500 million in damages to city facilities, and so it has been important to ensure that the city makes its case with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Earlier this month, he and the city's new flood-recovery director, Greg Eyerly, said a gap of $100 million exists between what the city believes its total damages are and what FEMA believes they are.

Prosser said the city wants to maximize what it believes it has coming from FEMA and then make sure it manages the repair, renovation and rebuilding for the results that residents want.

In assuming the flood-recovery director post two weeks ago, Eyerly promised to focus on getting work moving on the city's flood-damaged properties.

He also cited the damage-assessment negotiations between the city and FEMA as the factor that has slowed City Hall's efforts. Eyerly then set a date - Oct. 31 - as the target for the city and FEMA to reach agreement.

Even so, many of the biggest, toughest decisions are a ways away. City Hall is in the middle of city facilities planning, which includes a series of public forums into October.

Information gathered at these events will help the City Council determine, for instance, where a new downtown library will go, whether city government will return to the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island and what the city will do with the existing federal courthouse, which it will assume ownership of.

City Council member Justin Shields said this week that he's not happy with the pace of decision-making and renovations. He said he backed the creation of the flood-recovery director's position and hopes that will help get matters moving.

“What I've been told is that we've been waiting on FEMA,” Shields said. “That's what we've been told all the way through - we're waiting to hear from FEMA - but it seems like, here we are, getting toward the end of the construction season, and we don't have a whole lot of stuff to show for it.”