New site for Cedar Rapids rec center adds $500,000 to bill

CEDAR RAPIDS - Building a new city recreation facility to replace the flood-ruined Time-Check Recreation Center will cost a half-million dollars more than expected because of where the City Council decided to put it.

The reason: The latest of at least five proposed rec-center sites in northwest Cedar Rapids sits on school property next to Harrison Elementary School. The school was built in 1929 and 1930 and is considered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to have 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's environmental and historic preservation adviser in FEMA's regional office in Kansas City, Mo., has concluded.

Sven Leff, the city's parks and recreation director, estimated that FEMA's construction mandate will add $500,000 to the cost of the building.

Leff put the total rec-center project cost at $4.4 million, half of which now is expected to come from local dollars. FEMA plans to contribute $2.2 million in disaster funds to the project, he said.

Along the long road to settle on an acceptable spot for a replacement recreation center that would please neighbors, city officials, City Council members and FEMA. the cost has increased from the $3-million ballpark to a $4.4-million project today.

Leff said he and his staff are working to find city and other local funds to cover the city's portion of the project cost.

'We are committed to finding a way to get this done,” he said.

City Council member Ann Poe chaired the most recent city site-selection committee. On Tuesday she said state disaster officials have told the city that it risks losing all of its FEMA support for the rec center project if the city shifts gears again to take a new look at a different site or one of the previously considered sites.

'We just don't want to take that risk,” Poe said. 'We feel having a rec center in the northwest quadrant, given how much we've lost over there, would be another draw to that neighborhood. And we certainly want to provide that service to the neighborhood and to the children and adults and seniors that would use it.”

Poe said she would prefer a different location for the rec center, as she did when the City Council approved the Harrison school site in a 5-4 vote in March 2013.

In the end, Poe said she had favored a site on the edge of Ellis Park where the city now has a park maintenance shop that is old and needs repair. She said the site met several key site-committee criteria: It was visible from a thoroughfare so people could find it; it was not in Ellis Park but right next to the park and all of its amenities; and it was on a bus route.

The downside to the park-shop location was that it would cost an estimated $1 million to move and replace the shop, a cost which convinced some council members to vote for the Harrison site, Poe said.

'We didn't want to spend the extra money to put it there, but we are anyway (at the Harrison site),” Poe said.

City Council member Scott Olson cast a decisive vote with the majority in the 5-4 council decision in March 2013 to place the recreation center on the Harrison site.

Olson, a commercial Realtor who had a contract with the Cedar Rapids school district at the time, did not cast an earlier vote on the Harrison site as a member of the site-selection committee because of his business relationship with the school district. But he did vote on the project in the crucial council vote, saying that he did not stand to benefit from the project financially and that the project was too important not to vote on. His council district includes the Harrison school site.

Late last week, Olson said the recreation center project is now set to be built. The project architect has been hired, the arrangement with the school district is finalized and the funds will be found, he said.

Aggie Doyle, president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association, expressed frustration on Tuesday that the rec center project in northwest Cedar Rapids was still not built and the city was still hunting for funds to build it.

'Something isn't right here,” Doyle said. 'We have been at this project for five years now. We have had meetings, we have looked at sites, we have had more meetings, and nothing has transpired except lip service.

'If there's not going to be a NW Recreation Center … then tell me that.”

In the 5-4 vote on the Harrison site, Mayor Ron Corbett and council members Poe, Monica Vernon and Don Karr voted no, and council members Justin Shields, Kris Gulick, Pat Shey and Chuck Swore voted with Olson in the majority. Swore and Karr are no longer on the council.