Former Cedar Rapids official will keep trees

CEDAR RAPIDS - Dave Kramer, the city's one-time parks commissioner and City Council member as well as the city's former parks director, gets to keep his trees.

The city of Cedar Rapids said this week that it has decided not to pursue the condemnation of 2.17 acres of Kramer's mostly wooded property at 3592 Rogers Rd. NW to build a new west-side fire station.

Late last month, Kramer and his wife, Sue, publicly objected after they said the city took an initial step to condemn a piece of their 15 or so acres of property just west of busy Edgewood Road NW for the new fire station.

"I'm thankful for all the people who called and wrote to express their thoughts concerning this potential taking of my acreage," Dave Kramer said on Friday. "It's going to be nice to have this up off our shoulders. The stress this has caused in my house ..."

The Kramers, who moved to their Rogers Road acreage some 35 years ago, noted last month that they already had lost four acres to the city back in 2004 when the city purchased the wooded property and cut through a hill to extend O Avenue NW west across Edgewood Road NW to flow into Rogers Road NW.

"Let's not call it a sale. Let's say, ‘They took,'" Dave Kramer said last month about the earlier loss of property.

The city is in the process of building a new Central Fire Station in the 700 block between First and Second avenues SE to replace the flood-ruined one that been at 222 Third St. NW, and in moving the Central Fire Station from the west side to the east side of the city, the Fire Department is closing an old, east-side district fire station at 1424 B Ave. NE and replacing it with a new, west-side district fire station.

Earlier this year, a citizen advisory committee and the City Council picked a site without trees at Edgewood Drive NW and Crestwood Drive NW to build the west-side district station, but a purchase negotiation with the property owner, Westgate Communities of Dubuque, fell apart. As a result, the Fire Department moved to its second of three top options, the Kramer property a few blocks to the north off Edgewood Road NW.

Last month, Fire Chief Mark English said he had come to like the Kramer site better than the Westgate site, in part, because the street out front was brand new and could handle fire trucks and because a traffic signal is in place at Rogers and Edgewood roads NW.

This week, though, English said he had met this month in small groups with council members to work through the options for the new west-side station, and he said the decision was made to give up on the idea of locating the station on the Kramer property. He said the city will now try again to negotiate a property purchase with Westgate Communities.

City Council member Don Karr, who was a member of the citizen site-selection committee, said Friday that the city may move to condemn the Westgate property, which was the committee's top pick for the district fire station, if it can't negotiate a purchase.

Dave Kramer, 61, was the city's parks commissioner/City Council member for a decade from 1986 to 1995 and the city's parks director for a decade before his election as parks commissioner and from 1998 until mid-2007. He chose not to seek re-election as parks commissioner and City Council member in 1995.