Articles Tagged: Cedar Rapids City Council

Google data center would be among Cedar Rapids’ largest water and energy users, Cedar Rapids City Council advances Higley Mansion rezoning, Local farmers’ markets getting underway

The Cedar Rapids City Council awarded incentives this week to a developer to build a $21 million Airport Commercial Park in southwest Cedar Rapids that would bring new warehouses online in a part of town where industrial development is booming. Corridor Construction Network also received incentives fora $5.4 million expansion.

Developer Steve Emerson got the green light from the Cedar Rapids City Council to take ownership of the old Ambroz Recreation Center, demolish it and repurpose it into multifamily housing potentially leveraging federal disaster recovery funds.

Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell said she was pausing final consideration of the ordinance “in light of new information.”

Utility task vehicles — or UTVs — would be banned from operating on city of Cedar Rapids streets under an ordinance advanced by the Cedar Rapids City Council this week.

In awarding city financial incentives to an unnamed company to build a $576 million data center in the Big Cedar Industrial Center, members of the Cedar Rapids City Council lauded the project -- the city’s largest ever -- as a “historic” milestone for Cedar Rapids.

Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell said the Cedar Rapids City Council won’t weigh in on a foreign policy matter where it has no authority after members of the Advocates for Social Justice asked the council to pass a resolution urging a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said Cedar Rapids is “hoping to see development activity of some kind in 2024” at the Big Cedar Industrial Park. The City Council has advanced recent rezoning requests by Alliant Energy, which controls the park, but no specific projects have yet emerged.

After three failed attempts to sell and repurpose the old brick building on Mount Vernon Road SE, the city of Cedar Rapids will take redevelopment proposals once more after receiving an inquiry from a developer.

David Maier, the newly seated Cedar Rapids City Council member, is seen as a “connector” between community and city government. His campaign outreach across the city framed his approach to public service as being “a representative of the people.”

Cedar Rapids officials are exploring options to potentially build a multimillion-dollar dual-use intergenerational center and sports complex. But the effort remains years away from coming to fruition and would require private funding to bring to life. Here’s how the city’s approaching the possible project.

Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz received a 4 percent pay increase this week to $379,475. “I think the citizens of Cedar Rapids have a tremendous value in having probably one of the best city managers in the country in our city,” said council member Scott Overland, chair of the council’s Finance and Administrative Services Committee.

A district court judge this week dismissed a lawsuit alleging the Cedar Rapids City Council violated Iowa open meetings law in hiring Alissa Van Sloten as city clerk in 2021, siding with the city in finding that no violation of the law occurred.

To execute on the five-year revitalization of downtown Cedar Rapids, as pitched in a new vision plan adopted Tuesday by the City Council, the elected officials said partnerships between the public and private sectors will be key.

The City of Cedar Rapids is teaming up with Iowa State University researchers to study how “forever chemicals” hold up during wastewater treatment at the Cedar Rapids Water Pollution Control Facility.