Shields seeks re-election to Cedar Rapids council

City Council member Justin Shields is seeking a new four-year term in Cedar Rapids' west-side council District 5.

Shields - a retired Quaker Co. employee and longtime local voice of union labor - is the only person to have represented District 5 since Cedar Rapids changed to a government in 2006 led by a part-time council with council districts and a full-time city manager.

Shields, 71, said Friday that District 5, which includes much of southwest Cedar Rapids, is the fastest growing area of Cedar Rapids, growth that he said has included a spurt in commercial development and now includes the coming $90 million transformation of the long-struggling Westdale Mall.

"I think we just offer so much more for citizens on the west side that there used to be," Shields said. As for the Westdale redevelopment, he said, "Westdale is going to be a showcase of redevelopment for a tired, old mall that people will soon forget once they see all the new things offered in the new facility."

The Westdale redevelopment project, slated to start in June, is being fueled with the help of City Hall incentives.

"We never gave up, we kept charging forward and we finally found a developer who had a good strong program for Westdale," Shields said. "We could have gotten more strip malls there. But we didn't want that."

Shields said he is seeking re-election to help make sure his district and the city continue to grow and that everyone in it who wants a job is able to find one.

"I've always been one constantly pushing the envelope. Standing still to me is moving backward," Shields said.

Shields is widely credited by proponents of the Cedar Rapids casino project with keeping the idea of a Cedar Rapids casino alive after Linn County voters turned down the idea in 2003. Linn County voters in March approved casino gaming by a wide margin, and Shields predicted that the Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission will give the Cedar Rapids project a state gaming license. He said he never stopped thinking that it didn't make sense to have Cedar Rapids and Linn County residents spending their gambling dollars elsewhere.

Shields, too, was the driving force on the City Council to set aside capital-improvement funds designed to make sure that the city's minor league baseball park doesn't fall into disrepair. Among the park's improvement projects is this season's new, $500,000 scoreboard.

Shields is chairman of the City Council's Public Safety Committee and sits on the council's Flood Recovery Committee.

He said the city's flood-recovery housing initiatives are helping to bring flood-hit neighborhoods back to life.

"Obviously, we still have a ways to go, but we will never quit working on that," he said.

Shields said Cedar Rapids is different from when he joined the city's new part-time council in 2006 and the council hired the city's first city manager.

"(Back then), Cedar Rapids was no longer that clean, beautiful, well-kept city," Shields said. "There were signs of deterioration all over. We didn't keep things fixed up, painted up, nothing. … It's really a good feeling as you drive around town to see so much progress being made. That's why I'm running for re-election. I want to see that continue."