Iowa City rethinks City Park

The floodwater is receding, leaving muddy brown earth where City Park's baseball diamonds and grassy fields normally welcome visitors at the main entrance to Iowa City.

A road-closed sign has blocked access for about a month to Iowa City's premier park where generations have played baseball, watched plays, tossed horseshoes or grilled out with the family.

It's expected to remain closed until next Friday as city crews clear the debris and sand deposits, reseed the grass, return the amusement rides and generally put the park back together.

'Unfortunately, we are becoming good at it,” Iowa City Parks Director Mike Moran said. 'It gets easier each time.”

Founded in 1906 along the Iowa River, the 107-acre park has been a recreational centerpiece in the community for decades. But the park has been closed for a total of six months during peak times since 2008, and flood-related costs have mounted to about $1.6 million.

The city and park users are re-evaluating what City Park can offer, and if core functions such as the outdoor festival stage and baseball leagues need new homes. A $50,000 review of the park is planned for this fall.

Reconsidering the options

When the Iowa River breaches its banks and spills into Lower City Park, that washes out the baseball diamonds, forces the city to move rides and blocks the festival stage, tennis courts, picnic shelters and more.

The park sustained damage in 2008, 2013 and again this year.

Riverside Theatre and Iowa City Boys Baseball have had to relocate dozens of performances and games in the heart of their seasons. Users of shelters, reserved for activities such as birthday parties or family reunions, have had to make new plans.

The prospect of what lies ahead with flooding in Iowa City has city leaders and park users wondering how much more they can take.

'When you take a $40,000 hit two years in a row, and have to flee the setting you've promised to your audience, you have to reconsider your options,” said Ron Clark, co-founder of Riverside Theatre.

The picturesque backdrop sets the scene for some of its shows, Clark said.

Clark said he was heartbroken when he got word the outdoor festival stage would be closed and the theater company would lose part of its summer consecutive season. Riverside has had to cancel or relocate 45 performances over the last two summers, he said.

It has turned to local high schools or Riverside's location on Gilbert Street, which is an indoor theater with a quarter of the seats, he said.

'Audiences come to see the work, and they come to see it in this specific place with a natural setting,” Clark said. 'When you uproot from City Park to West High. with all due respect, people don't come. You lose that festival feel.”

Baseball leagues are in a similar situation.

Hundreds of children participate in the competitive baseball on afternoons and evenings at the park every summer. The leagues are left scrambling to find different diamonds when the river floods.

'I think right now everyone assumes flooding will continue,” said Luke Villhauer, president of Iowa City Boys Baseball, the city-affiliated league that uses City Park's eight baseball diamonds. 'Playing baseball and doing other things at City Park will not be a good long-term solution for an organization like ours, or others like us.”

Villhauer's league had to relocate for half of its 2013 summer season, but escaped unscathed this year. He hopes the fields will be ready for the fall season, which begins in two weeks.

There's little confidence to invest in City Park for the future, such as adding more lighting for nighttime games, he said.

'I have a hunch 10 years from now we might be playing somewhere else,” Villhauer said.

The public dime

The city doesn't have a total cost for 2014, but it had to complete many of the same tasks as in 2013, so the costs should be similar, said Dennis Bockenstedt, the city's finance director.

In 2013, Iowa City spent $66,000 to remove sand deposited from the river and $30,000 to remove debris. It cost $15,000 to reseed the fields. Moving the carnival rides and playground equipment cost $50,000.

The costs are on the public dime, whether from local or federal sources.

The silver lining is that no structures, such as the shelters or festival stage, were damaged.

Moran said the city is trying to gauge whether the community has reached a tipping point where the disruptions and costs necessitate a change.

The city plans to spend $50,000 for an engineering company this fall to recommend redesign options for Lower City Park, and the city could spend hundreds of thousands more to act on the report, he said.

One scenario might include a new layout for the park to keep key amenities serviceable when it floods, he said. The festival stage didn't flood in 2014, but patrons had no access to it because the roads were under water.

Alternatives could include finding new homes for the stage and baseball leagues in other parts of the city, Moran said. The city would need three to five acres to relocate the baseball diamonds, he said.

Villhauer said he has been discussing whether a baseball park is feasible, but he anticipated it would require significant private fundraising.

One measure that is not likely is building permanent flood barriers to protect City Park because of the damage it could cause upstream and downstream, Moran said.

Other impacts

Before any major changes will occur, Moran would like to see the effects from the elevation of Park Road Bridge and Dubuque Street, which are adjacent to the park.

He said he's been told the design of the project, which may start in 2016, could make water flow more swiftly and limit the backup of water into the park.

'We have to learn to work with the flood,” Moran said. 'Right now, it shuts everything down, but maybe we don't have to do that.”