Cedar Rapids Library sites narrowed down to 2 by Thursday

A list of four spots for a new library will be whittled to two by Thursday, and then the library board will recommend one to the City Council.

The board took a hard look Thursday at its options after Mayor-elect Ron Corbett told members a couple of weeks ago to quickly come up with a top choice and an alternate. Each option will cost about $45 million, and each constitutes an entire city block:

TrueNorth site, just south of Greene Square Park.

Banjo Equipment, diagonally to the east of the park.

The Gazette block, diagonally north of the park.

The Emerald Knights site, which is between First and Second avenues East between Seventh and Eighth streets.

The surprises of the day were The Gazette Family of Companies' willingness to consider selling The Gazette/KCRG-TV9 block for a library, and the revelation that the TrueNorth and Banjo blocks will be difficult locations because of lack of parking.

TrueNorth had been an appealing site because it faces Greene Square Park. A library there would look across the park toward the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, the old library. Architects' ideas for building a parking lot on a nearby block, however, would be a hard sell with the City Council, city officials said, and the TrueNorth and Banjo sites would provide no parking unless architects redraw the plans.

“The TrueNorth site creates the best postcard, but to me that's it's only advantage at this point,” said Doug Elliott, vice president of the library board, who said all the site owners are willing to talk with them.

Unless the library board finds a solution to the parking problem, the two front-runners are The Gazette buildings and the Emerald Knights site. “Any site where (parking) is eliminated is in jeopardy,” Elliott said.

The Gazette site has the advantage of its own parking ramp, being in the downtown core and sitting across the street from the art museum, said Bradd Brown, a principal at OPN Architects. Emerald Knights would be in a high-traffic area (a pro and a con) and would create a gateway to Cedar Rapids from Interstate 380.

Finding a new location for The Gazette and KCRG-TV9 will be more difficult than finding homes for the businesses still sitting on the Emerald Knights site, though.

“We don't need to move,” said Chuck Peters, president of Gazette Communications. “The city called and said, ‘We're thinking about your block. Will you talk to us?'”

Peters said a key part of the negotiation will be settling on a good relocation site for his company.

That will be a challenge for all the potential sellers, but most pointedly for Gazette Communications and TrueNorth. In each case, their selling price would have to at least cover the cost of their relocation.

“Nobody's going to sell at a loss,” Elliott said.

The board estimates it will have to raise $7 million in donations, after Federal Emergency Management Agency, I-JOBS and other state funding, to build a library.