Cedar Rapids, soccer club reach compromise on new facility design

CEDAR RAPIDS - It has been a surprising, if instructive, dust up for a spot so nearly in the middle of nowhere on the farthest northwest edge of the city.

City officials were excited about the FC United youth soccer club's plans to build a 22,000-square-foot indoor practice facility surrounded by 16 acres of lush green lawn for practice and play.

After all, FC United - a club that has grown from a handful of youth soccer players to almost 500 in just over a decade - stands as something of a local testament to the proof that soccer matters in Iowa and the nation.

However, city officials were not so giddy about FC United's building plans that they were willing to let the non-profit erect a facility that did not follow the city's 2012 design standards for commercial buildings.

That was true even way out here where few would see - amid farm fields and a few homes at Milburn Road about a mile west of Interstate 380 and the planned Tower Terrace Road interchange.

Earlier this summer, Bart Woods, who is heading up the project for Primus Construction, made the case to city officials that the new design standards didn't apply on a 16-acre site still zoned as agricultural property. FC United's building should be allowed to look like agricultural buildings in the vicinity, he said.

But the City Planning Commission recommended the project follow design standards for commercial buildings - a decision that Woods and FC United appealed to the City Council, only to quickly reach a compromise. The agreement added about 2 percent to the cost, Woods said.

Joe Mailander, the city's development services manager, said land-use plans permit a non-profit organization - like FC United - to build a commercial building on property zoned as agricultural without changing the site to commercial zoning.

The city wanted the soccer club to follow commercial design standards because the building would serve a commercial use, he said.

The specific design standard in question calls for commercial buildings in commercial zones with sides longer than 75 feet to use a different material or a change in the plane of the building every 75 feet to break up the expanse.

In this instance, Primus and FC United shifted gears and proposed using a different material across the lower half of the building, which Mailander said the city accepted as meeting the 'intent” of the standard.

Mick Slinger, chief financial officer for Van Meter Industrial and a FC United board member, said he worked for more than two years to 'share the vision” of the soccer club as he worked to find the right place for the club's new home.

'It wasn't frustrating,” Slinger said. 'We just learned together through the process.

'From what I know and see, we're going to do nothing but increase the value of the neighborhood. I think when people see the finished product and what opportunity the kids have - it's all green space. The building is 2 percent of the entire site.”

Mailander said the city is trying for a higher level of design than pole buildings in commercial zones inside the city.

At the same time, Jennifer Pratt, the city's director of development and planning, said the design standards for commercial buildings don't require that owners construct only buildings, for instance, of brick or masonry.

'What we're saying is it's more the focus on the visual,” she said. 'So as I'm walking by this building, it's not 220 feet of the same thing.”

Fifteen years ago, the City Council imposed design standards for buildings at the highway gateways to the city in an effort to make a good first impression. But within three years, the council set the standards aside after developers said the extra cost made investing elsewhere more inviting.

Pratt said the design standards implemented in 2012 avoid the problem by making them the same citywide.

Since then, she said, property owners in certain places in the city - New Bohemia and Czech Village, for instance - have put in place more rigorous standards for their properties.

Pratt said cities and the planning profession unveiled elaborate and costly standards 10 to 15 years ago but since had done a good job of 'negotiating” with owners.

'We've found there are lots of ways to make a development attractive that don't cost a lot of additional money,” she said.

As for the FC United project, Pratt said, 'It's one of the first things out there. So you don't want to detract from other people wanting to build out there.”

FC United broke ground on its new facility a week ago.

Board member Tom Belin, whose son is a goalkeeper on the Brian Cliff University soccer team in Sioux City, said the club's short history has required plenty of 'begging and borrowing” to find places to practice and play. He recalled evening practices illuminated by car headlights.

Belin and Connor Ramlo, a member of FC United's first team who now is headed to Creighton University to play soccer, credited Coach Bill Ajram, a native of Colombia, with much of FC United's success.

'It's pretty amazing to see how fast the club has grown, and it's great that I was able to be a part of it,” Ramlo said.