Cedar Rapids reports on One Park Place, golf losses delayed

CEDAR RAPIDS - Two highly anticipated reports in Cedar Rapids - one connected to municipal financial incentives for a massive high-rise development and the other probing the city's public golf enterprise - have been delayed.

City officials have been conducting an internal review of the golf department, which oversees the 18-hole Gardner, Jones, Twin Pines and Ellis golf courses, to identify ways to save and make more money. The goal is to close a perpetual budget shortfall - topping $300,000 some years - that has left the department with a nearly $2.5 million deficit.

'The project is delayed because staff time was diverted in late September due to the 2016 flood,” said Gail Loskill, a spokeswoman for the parks and recreation department, which oversees the golf department. 'The team is in the process of finalizing draft recommendations and anticipates they will be presented to internal leadership and refined in the next two weeks.”

The final recommendations are to be ready by the end of the month, she said. The results had been expected in October.

Officials had said it was unlikely the review would lead to closing, selling or shrinking the public golf courses.

Meanwhile, a consultant's financial vetting of One Park Place, a proposed 28-story, $103 million high rise, continues to run behind schedule.

The high-rise, with a grocery store, apartments, condos, hotel, parking and rooftop restaurant, is proposed for city land at the east corner of First Street SE and Third Avenue SE, near the Paramount Theatre. Cedar Rapids leaders required the proposal pass a financial vetting before formally giving the green light.

Cedar Rapids officials had signed a three-month contract in June for $22,500 with New York-based National Development Council to study the financial viability of the project. The deadline was pushed back from Aug. 31 to sometime in October due to the complexity of the review.

Now, the deadline has been pushed back again, to Nov 18, said Jennifer Pratt, the city's community development director. She noted the cost remains the same.

'We have extended that out for three extra weeks,” Pratt said. 'It wasn't our main focus the last few weeks with the flood.”

While the study is being handled by a third party, the nature of the work requires input and interaction with city officials, who were focused almost entirely on flooding issues for several weeks in September and October, she said.

A status report in early July called the One Park place project 'viable,” based on the preliminary information. However, the more complicated and detailed review was to examine the demand for the services and amenities of the project, financial assumptions, and how much public assistance was needed to make the project happen.

City officials initially had balked at the developers' request of $23 million up front in public support. The city has said it is willing to participate in the project, but at a lower amount.

'This (study) is giving a framework of what is the most the city would be providing,” Pratt said. 'There will still be negotiations throughout as hard costs come in and we look at performance and how much they will generate in property tax revenue.”