Handouts get new City Hall scrutiny: Council poised to decide on incentive for new office building

The current City Council is going to some lengths to justify each and all incentives it awards to companies that want to build something new here.

In fact, the council is in the process of creating a new economic development policy that seeks to measure just what a proposed project brings in terms of adding to the tax base, creating jobs and contributing to smart growth in the community.

It so happens that Design Engineers, a growing local engineering company now located at 2801 Sixth St. SW, finds itself in something of what Jim Russell, one of the company owners, says is the role of guinea pig.

On Wednesday evening, the council is going to discuss anew and decide if it will provide Design Engineers a $530,000 incentive that the company says it needs to build a $5-million, two-story office in the Prairie View Technology Park along Interstate 380 at Wright Brothers Boulevard SW.

The incentive would come in a portion of the new property taxes the company would not have to pay for several  years on the new building.

Council member Monica Vernon has spoken in favor of the incentive. She has noted that the Prairie View Technology Park, which serves as a visible gateway to the city from the south, has been stalled for several years and has not added a structure since the Howard R. Green Co. built the park's first building earlier in the decade.

Vernon said the park is "a strategic spot in our community" that has the potential to remind those who live here and who are visiting here that Cedar Rapids is on the move.

"I know we like to look at dollars and cents," Vernon has said. "But what inspires people?"

Council member Brian Fagan has agreed that momentum at the tech park needs some refueling.

The question, he has said, is how much refueling.