New MedQuarter master plan looks to revitalize Cedar Rapids’ medical district

CEDAR RAPIDS — A new master plan for the MedQuarter Regional Medical District, adopted Tuesday by the Cedar Rapids City Council, envisions transforming empty properties, improving place-making and strengthening the district’s identity to lure patients, healthcare providers and businesses.

To make the district more of a regional draw and community hub, the updated plan recommends changes that would infuse new life into underused properties and green space, create a stronger district brand and promote active, healthy living. But it also underscores the need for more intensive redevelopment in the area to add new sorely needed uses to Cedar Rapids’ urban core such as a hotel.

The MedQ is one of the city’s three Self-Supported Municipal Improvement Districts, where taxpayers within the district have authorized the city to levy an additional tax on property owners to raise revenue for specific purposes within the district’s boundaries. That often includes beautification projects, streetscaping, events and programming.

The key initiatives under the previous plan had been accomplished and the COVID-19 pandemic upended the urban core and health care industry. That prompted the update to the plan. The SSMID enlisted Scott Freres, president of Chicago-based Lakota Group, who helped develop a previous plan after the SSMID’s formation in 2012. The previous plan was adopted in 2014.

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Phil Wasta, executive director of the MedQ, said this plan helps set “a meaningful vision and strategy for the MedQ in the future.”

Freres said taking the SSMID’s economic activity and “packaging it with the bigger economy of what’s happening in the city” maximizes public benefit.

In the last 10 years, there has been more than $100 million of investment across projects including the construction of three landmark buildings: the Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa Medical Pavilion 2, the Jewel & Jim Plumb Heart Center, and the new Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust building. Along with streetscape enhancements along 10th Street and First Avenue SE, the district has undergone a significant transformation.

Plan proposes greenway, public-private partnerships

The plan is built around five pillars: Policy; management and marketing; appearance and identity; access and infrastructure; and community building. An implementation matrix identifies the partners responsible for each initiative; sets short-, mid- and long-term timelines to accomplish them; and potential funding sources.

Stakeholders including the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, City of Cedar Rapids, Craft’d Coffee, the Cedar Rapids Police Department and others provided input to understand safety perceptions and challenges, business engagement and other perspectives on the MedQ.

Craft’d operates a coffee shop inside the Physicians’ Clinic in addition to its First Street SE location and wants to activate the street out there with a few tables, Freres said, so the plan calls for more such outdoor activation.

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Other examples include increasing public art and using a greenway created by 30-foot setbacks on each side of Fourth Avenue SE to create space for pocket parks, like the Mayo Park open space at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Similar to Cedar Rapids’ newly adopted Downtown Vision Plan, the new MedQ plan calls for a strengthened relationship between public and private sectors to increase fundraising to fund improvements in the district. That would include creation of a new 501(c) (3) nonprofit to pursue grants and other funding streams.

Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell said the prospect of more public-private partnerships was compelling to her. To take the district to the next level, she said entities with a stake in the district need to be “walking in the same direction, singing the same song.”

According to the plan, city leaders have interest in seeing a hotel built in the district, potentially by redeveloping empty properties. The plan indicated the owner of the 411 10th St. SE medical building, for instance, was open to potentially adding a hotel or a community open space on the property and putting excess parking on the site into better use.

The plan recommends hospitality partnerships or “initiatives for cross-marketing with hotels and restaurants” such as rewards programs to “enhance the district’s allure not just for regional patients but also for visitors and healthcare professionals.”

As the SSMID looks toward reconstitution in 2032, that could offer an opportunity to potentially modify boundaries and add entities such as Coe College within the SSMID. The plan recommends engaging with Coe and “adjacent landowners to explore potential district expansion opportunities and partnerships,” and studying fiscal impacts to the SSMID in doing so.

‘Now’s the tough stuff’

Council member Ashley Vanorny, who works in healthcare administration within the district, said it matters to patients who may frequently seek care or visitors seeing loved ones what the environment is like surrounding the hospital. The hospitals also are an attracting point for citizens seeking regular care.

“For people who need to access care on a regular basis, that is their lifeblood,” Vanorny said. “If they can’t access health care, they can’t live here.”

Council member Dale Todd said the hospitals helped Cedar Rapids weather the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, he said it’s time for the MedQ to get to the next level with “some tough decisions to make” facing high levels of homelessness, a perception of crime and safety issues and “landbanking” by entities in the district.

Todd pointed to the 2001 Development Corp. — a local property ownership group that has bought and sold downtown buildings over the last 30 years — as an example of how other “cooperative” partners could work with the hospitals to “tackle some of those languishing parcels” that have persisted for years.

“The city has put a lot of investment in terms of infrastructure — along with you guys — in that district,” Todd said. “ … Now’s the tough stuff.”

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