15 years after 2008 flood: ‘Future is bright’ for Cedar Rapids’ Northwest Neighborhood

CEDAR RAPIDS — For decades, Linda Seger enjoyed the tight-knit fabric of the Northwest Neighborhood. Regularly, she’d hear the sounds of children laughing and playing. On her walks, she could take in the savory aroma of a neighbor cooking dinner.

She knew all the people who lived nearby for generations — the hard workers who filled jobs at Quaker Oats and Penford, before it became Ingredion.

“It was like the American dream,” 79-year-old Seger said.

After the 2008 flood, those scenes are now just memories. Some, like Seger, stayed and rebuilt their houses, but the destructive floodwaters permanently forced out hundreds who once called this area west of the Cedar River home.

Fifteen years after rising river waters ravaged Cedar Rapids, it’s evident the flood forever changed the face of the neighborhood. Where local businesses and hundreds of homes once stood, empty lots are all that remain in a large swath of the neighborhood.

But all these years later, although the flood wiped out much of the working-class neighborhood, it’s on the cusp of recovery with permanent flood protection on the horizon in the coming years. Developers are investing in new homes and businesses again in this part of town, slowly but surely bringing it back to life.

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As some residents work with city of Cedar Rapids officials and developers to forge a new vision for the neighborhood, though, other longtime residents feel that vision doesn’t include them. Facing the city’s acquisition of their properties using eminent domain to make way for flood control, these residents fear losing a lifetime of memories and are fighting to hold onto their homes.

Helping neighborhood ‘move forward’

Having formed in 2006, not long before the flood, nonprofit Matthew 25 spearheaded much of the initial efforts to help restore the Time Check neighborhood to its original vibrancy.

Executive Director Clint Twedt-Ball said essentially starting out in a natural disaster clarified the needs quickly, providing an unavoidable glimpse at the tragedy of people's lives when their anger, depression and frustration was fresh.

But that also allowed Matthew 25 to point people toward the neighborhood’s possibilities and potential, not solely its pitfalls.

“The cool thing about the Northwest Neighborhood and these gritty, blue-collar neighborhoods that we work in is that they're people that are accustomed to moving through hard things and moving to a better future,” Twedt-Ball said.

“The flood was devastating, but it was also true that people in these neighborhoods have been through layoffs. They've been through personal tragedies. They knew how to pull themselves up and move forward. I think that attitude has pervaded the whole neighborhood all along.”

Since then, Matthew 25 has rehabilitated over 100 homes, established Iowa’s first urban farm in 2012, provided a tool library to enable skilled residents to rebuild and grew Block by Block, a program that encouraged interaction among neighbors and empowered residents to invest anew in their block.

Most recently, Matthew 25 last year opened the Cultivate Hope Corner Store, a nonprofit grocery store improving healthy food access — its very name capturing the possibilities that have propelled the neighborhood forward.

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The corner store, located at a historic building at 604 Ellis Blvd. NW, was part of the Healthy Neighborhoods campaign that also will help build new housing and revitalize existing homes in Time Check.

In the next part of the campaign, Matthew 25 will start this summer to build some new housing and rehabilitate some existing properties with energy efficiencies on those “missing teeth” lots — those that remain empty after the flood but are surrounded by other properties.

Initially, the goal was to keep those homes owner-occupied, but they will start as long-term rentals because construction prices have spiked so much.

“You start to see in this area that those things start to snowball,” Twedt-Ball said of Matthew 25’s collective efforts.

Flood protection on its way

An infusion of federal funds is accelerating Cedar Rapids’ timeline for permanent flood protection in the neighborhood, which officials anticipate will be the ultimate catalyst for reinvestment.

With $10 million in COVID-19 relief funds allocated through the American Rescue Plan Act, the city is designing a project to elevate a segment of O Avenue NW over the top of a levee. An disability-accessible ramp will run from the raised O Avenue NW to the nearby Northwest Gateway and Memorial Plaza.

Instead of previous plans calling for a flood wall across O Avenue NW coming onto Ellis Lane and a 16-foot-tall gate, a reconstructed Ellis Boulevard NW near Ellis Park will swing to the west and gently rise above a levee with no walls and gates. This was intended to better fortify the north end of the system. The flood control segment will blend into the greenery and provide an entrance to Ellis Park, with trail improvements there and sidewalks on Ellis Boulevard NW.

On a rainy night, Al Pierson, president of the Northwest Neighborhood Association and owner of Pierson’s Flower Shop, still finds himself restless, remembering the devastation that occurred 15 years ago. To him, flood control represents peace of mind — a future when worries about an overflowing river won’t plague residents.

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Before pursuing those plans, the city first has to acquire 27 remaining homes near the river to clear a path for construction on the infrastructure project to start in the coming years.

Using federal Community Development Block Grants after the flood, the city until 2017 voluntarily acquired over 1,300 homes. But these final properties remain, their owners opposed to relocating, especially without offers they deem fair and sufficient to buy a comparable home nearby.

The Cedar Rapids City Council has referred some of these cases to the Linn County Compensation Commission, which will decide the amount of money people are offered to relocate from their homes. There’s at least one legal challenge already, with more residents likely to follow suit to challenge the city’s eminent domain authority.

Public Works Director Bob Hammond said these acquisitions could take another 18 months to three years to wend through the legal system.

Rick Ellis, 72, whose property on Fourth Street NW is slated to be acquired, said he doesn’t intend to go anywhere. It’s “a nice home with nice folks,” where nobody bothers him.

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For what the city has offered residents to acquire their properties, with current home prices skyrocketing, Ellis said he couldn’t replace his house. He’d love to design and build his own, but he doesn’t anticipate that will be an option.

His wife, Donna Sanders, 74, was diagnosed and underwent surgery last year for brain cancer. She was given another two years to live at most and is bedridden, reliant on Ellis’ care.

The property is Sanders’ childhood home, and they chose to rebuild after the flood. He hasn’t told her yet that they might have to leave.

“Moving — I hate to even think about it, especially in her condition,” Ellis said.

There’s a lifetime of memories wrapped up in this two-story home. He’s already seen people with their lives strewn across the curb after the flood, Ellis said, and it’s unfair for the residents to be forced out when they want to stay.

“I can’t go through that again,” Ellis said.

Though many original residents of the neighborhood have scattered, these final holdouts remain close, banding together to guard what’s left of their neighborhood.

In the basement of his property nearby, Don Steichen, who still lives in the neighborhood and leases a property on Fourth Street NW that is marked for acquisition, said the city has caused hardships for residents who chose to stay to nudge them to move elsewhere.

Street connections have languished in this area and weeds run rampant as the city has lessened its investment anticipating flood control work, Steichen said, while allowing luxury condos and rowhomes to be built elsewhere in the neighborhood. To residents lamenting the impending loss of their homes, he said this feels “like a slap in the face.”

For many residents, their homes were all they had, Steichen said. With a high elderly, fixed-income population, rebuilding wasn’t an option for every flood-affected resident.

“That's what hurt most people because they didn't have a place to go,” Steichen said. “They didn't have no way of fighting for themselves, but it was a beautiful neighborhood. We didn't have any problems. I used to play kick the can until 2 o'clock in the morning when I was a kid. We used to have a blast.”

‘Future is bright’

The promise of flood protection and the investment of organizations such as Matthew 25 have spurred further investment in the neighborhood, bringing a host of amenities that has drawn residents back to the “hidden gem” of a neighborhood.

People can meet at the Corner Store as a gathering hub or go there to pick up groceries. Mirrorbox Theater offers arts and entertainment. Ellis Park is nearby, with its pool and golf course. The Mother Mosque still stands as the oldest surviving mosque in the nation. And the river flows, inviting residents to recreate in the warm weather months.

“This neighborhood has all of the right stuff,” Twedt-Ball said. “I think we're at a place where we don't necessarily need the amenities as much as we need housing.”

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Hiawatha-based developer Joe Ahmann has brought many housing units online in the neighborhood over the years, including Ellis Commons townhomes and Ellis Flats rental duplexes on Ellis Boulevard NW. Developer Steve Emerson and Jim Happel in 2019 finished Ellis Landings Condominiums and its adjoining 16-foot flood wall at 1871 Ellis Blvd. NW. Eric Gutschmidt has completed rental houses and accessory dwelling units in the neighborhood.

Among the projects in the works, Emerson received $4.75 million in federal disaster recovery funds related to the 2020 derecho to pursue construction of the 50-unit Johnson Gas project. Charlie Nichols’ JPAC Investments received $380,000 to build four units as a Northwest Neighborhood infill project.

Cedar Rapids’ Paving for Progress street project to connect Ellis Boulevard and Sixth Street NW and improve First Avenue W, adding a connection between the neighborhood and downtown, is slated to wrap up this fall. Pierson and Twedt-Ball said this street work will further fuel the neighborhood’s development prospects.

Public grounds are slated to get new life, too, in the coming years.

Cedar Rapids is undergoing a process to refresh a master plan guiding development of the greenway along the Cedar River, which could bring about additional opportunities for outdoor recreation — perhaps kayaking, fishing, a destination skatepark — and programmed green space in the coming years. The overall greenway encompasses Time Check in the north, Kingston Village in the center and Czech Village to the south.

Past riverfront development plans faltered shortly before the flood, and now the city will face some constraints tied to federal funding used to acquire properties in the Northwest Neighborhood. But the city is forging ahead with selecting a consultant to update its 2014 greenway plan by the end of this year.

“Over and over again, we heard the public say, yes, we want flood protection, but we do not want to be walled off from the river,” Community Development Director Jennifer Pratt said. “ … It really showed us that planning process was important.”

Plus, the neighborhood association’s long-awaited plans to revamp Shakespeare Garden in Ellis Park will come to fruition in the coming months.

These are all signs of promising progress, Pierson said, but he hopes to see more housing to shelter a growing workforce, some additional commercial businesses and more restaurants to give the neighborhood the final spark it needs.

“The future is bright,” Pierson said.

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Activities for youth and a senior center for older residents to socialize are among the things Seger would like to see in the Northwest Neighborhood. She hopes that neighbors can connect again, like they did before the flood, instead of the area being treated as an afterthought.

“I don’t think you can manufacture friendship,” Seger said. “It just has to grow. Blank, empty areas don’t grow friendships … We didn’t really appreciate what we had when it was gone. We just have to do a better version of making this a good place to live.”

Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com