Cedar Rapids City Council advances rezoning at Big Cedar Industrial Center

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids City Council this week advanced rezoning of a large portion of the Big Cedar Industrial Center to accommodate intensive industrial users.

Under a rezoning request by Alliant Energy, which controls the park, a 245-acre parcel on the western side of the overall 1,391-acre site — north of 76th Avenue SW and west of Tissel Hollow Road SW — will be rezoned from Agricultural District to General Industrial District. This would allow a developer to transform the currently vacant farm land into a site for large industrial customers with heavy utility usage.

It was recently annexed, and so under state code the land automatically comes zoned as agricultural.

“As we see increased interest in that area down there,” Development Services Manager Bill Micheel said it makes sense to rezone it so it’s primed for development.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz told The Gazette the city is “hoping to see development activity of some kind in 2024” at the Big Cedar site, but declined to offer more details.

An 890-acre certified portion of the overall site is Iowa's first mega site, which offers hundreds of acres of development-ready land to potential developers. All 1,391 acres are controlled by Alliant Energy.

The Cedar Rapids City Planning Commission voted unanimously Jan. 4 to recommend rezoning of the western portion. The City Council unanimously advanced the rezoning Tuesday with no discussion. Council member Ann Poe was absent.

All other areas of Big Cedar within the city of Cedar Rapids already are zoned General Industrial. The easterly portion was rezoned in August.

At that time, the applicant did not have a site plan for future development but was looking to make the site marketable to a variety of industrial or employment-based users. Specific site plans are not required for rezoning.

Any project leveraging city financial incentives, likely involving any significant user or development, would come before the council for review. At that time, the council could condition incentives on review of the site plan or other development features.

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