New rec center in NW Cedar Rapids is on the way

CEDAR RAPIDS - No flood-recovery project in the city has had more twists and turns than replacing the flood-ruined and now-demolished Time Check Recreation Center.

Tuesday night the City Council unanimously agreed to steer another $1.5 million to the $4.4-million replacement rec center project to ensure it will be built next to Harrison Elementary School, 1310 11th St. NW. The $1.5 million is remaining revenue from the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for flood recovery.

Four people who never gave up fighting to get a new replacement rec center built near the previous one rejoiced last night at the council's funding decision.

City Council member Ann Poe was a member of the council's Flood Recovery Committee and is now chairwoman of the Flood Protection Committee. Poe said last night that the site next to Harrison Elementary School is not the one she, neighborhood leaders Linda Seger and Aggie Doyle, and former City Council member Don Karr, who headed up the council's Flood Recovery Committee, originally wanted.

But they all made peace with it, and they left last night's council meeting 'thrilled” that the rec center is not about to be built, Poe said.

'We all walked away thinking, ‘Guess what, we got it done,'” Poe said. ''We did it, and that's the most important thing - serving the community, especially in a portion of our community so heavily damaged by the flood.'”

Poe said people of all ages who live in the near northwest Cedar Rapids neighborhoods finally will have a place to exercise and congregate.

'I couldn't be happier,” Poe said.

Karr, who like Poe grew up around the Time Check Neighborhood, told the City Council last night it was a hard fight to get the rec center project to the finish line.

'This is for the neighborhood. We worked hard to keep it in that neighborhood,” Karr said. He said the city's additional investment in new homes in and around Harrison Elementary School will ensure the school's success and the rec center's success as well.

Seger, recent president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association, thanked the City Council and said she didn't want to dwell on the 'ordeals” that got the city to this point.

'We're at this point,” Seger said. 'Young people will benefit. It's a marvelous moment for the entire community.”

Doyle, the current president of the neighborhood association, told the council that 'it's been a long, trying road. But we're getting to the end of it. … and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The cost of the replacement recreation center had been in the $3-million ballpark a few years ago, but the cost has increased as the project has moved from an assortment of potential construction sites.

The project cost is now estimated at $4.4 million, which includes an estimated $500,000 in added cost because the City Council has decided to build the center next to Harrison Elementary School.

The school building was built in 1929 and 1930, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has determined that the school has historic features and standing. As a result, the exterior of the proposed recreation center must be built so it is compatible with the historic school building next to it, FEMA has said.

FEMA now plans to contribute $2.2 million in disaster funds to the recreation-center project, the city has said. The city will use a total of $2.2 million in city LOST revenue, the $1.5 million approved last night and $700,000 approved by the council in 2012 for the rec center project.

The project landed on the Harrison School site after a 5-4 City Council vote in March 2013 not to put it on the site of the city's Ellis Park maintenance shop next to the park.

Other proposed sites along the way included a couple in Ellis Park, one off Ellis Boulevard near the former rec center and in Cleveland Park.

Construction is slated to begin next summer with the opening in the summer of 2016, Sven Leff, the city's parks and recreation director, said this week.