Escalators are going down in post-flood Cedar Rapids

The golden age of escalators in downtown Cedar Rapids ended with the June 2008 flood, which damaged every one of the nostalgic people lifters.

Almost all of the escalators were removed during post-flood recovery and replaced with staircases at the U.S. Cellular Center, Town Centre Building and Armstrong Centre. Only one set of escalators - in the U.S. Bank downtown office at 222 Second Ave. SE - was restored.

Cedar Rapids historian Mark Hunter said it's a loss to our collective retail memories.

“It's the removal of one of the last physical remnants of the department stores in downtown Cedar Rapids,” he said.

Thousands of Cedar Rapidians experienced the giddy rush of their first childhood escalator trips for the first time in the 1960s and 1970s on the downtown escalators.

Hunter said escalators greatly improved shopper flow through the multilevel department stores such as the old Armstrong's, Killian's, J.C. Penney and F.W. Woolworth & Co. stores.

“There was a real escalator boom downtown in the 1960s,” he said. “The biggest installation was in Armstrong's, which had eight sets of elevators.” Four went up, four went down.

Hunter spoke of memories like the night of Washington High School's first homecoming game in 1957. J.C. Penney, which was how the store was referred to then before later becoming JCPenney, had just installed the first set of escalators, and Washington High School students headed downtown after the school's homecoming bonfire to ride on them.

“There must've been 100 of us,” said Washington alum Jay Petersen, who had the unpleasant task of explaining the side-trip in the school's principal's office the next morning. “The police were not happy that 100 kids went in that store and went up and down that escalator.”

Petersen went on to lead downtown revitalization efforts at The Renaissance Group, now the Cedar Rapids Downtown District. Even he's not too broken up over losing the escalators.

Architect Roger Hadley, who began working downtown in 1973, was the only one of about a dozen interviewed recently downtown who could remember where almost all of the elevators were located. But even Hadley could not remember when the escalators went away.

“After the downtown buildings started losing all of their shopping businesses, I haven't been back in these buildings in the longest time,” he said.

Nostalgia only goes so far when it comes to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on repairs and replacements.

“There's no reason to have it,” said Steve Emerson of Aspect Architecture, owner of the Towne Centre building,

Emerson said his decision to remove the escalators wasn't based on repair costs, which he never calculated. Rather, he said, the escalators are costly to maintain, take up too much space, and just aren't needed by the building's current office tenants.

Emerson said he also recommended, in his capacity as an architect, removing the escalators from the U.S. Cellular Center.

“I've been stripping the city of them,” he joked.

Hadley added that escalators fail to meet safe exit requirements for fire safety codes. “In today's world, with all the economic problems we have, I can understand why they might be going away,” he said.

The Armstrong Centre was the first to remove its escalators post-flood. Jon Dusek heads Armstrong Development Corp., which owns the Armstrong Centre and a portfolio of other properties. He said their removal only generated a couple of early comments.

“Getting replacement parts was getting to be a real nightmare,” Dusek said about the escalators.

Escalators are still valued, however, by many.

U.S. Bank market President Nancy Kasparek said the company looked at removing escalators that take customers from the ground floor lobby to the first floor wealth management department.

“We felt the staircase was too steep of an incline for our customers to use comfortably,” Kasparek said, noting that investment customers tend to be older than the general population.

Kaparek said the bank received an overwhelmingly positive response to its historically accurate flood restoration of its escalators.

The industry trade group National Escalator Industry Inc. says demand for escalators has been flat over the past year. The association doesn't track long-term trends in escalator installations but reports 35,000 escalators are in use in the United States, handling an average of 3,000 people per hour.

The golden age of escalators in downtown Cedar Rapids ended with the June 2008 flood, which damaged every one of the nostalgic people lifters.

Almost all of the escalators were removed during post-flood recovery and replaced with staircases at the U.S. Cellular Center, Town Centre Building and Armstrong Centre. Only one set of escalators - in the U.S. Bank downtown office at 222 Second Ave. SE - was restored.

Cedar Rapids historian Mark Hunter said it's a loss to our collective retail memories.

“It's the removal of one of the last physical remnants of the department stores in downtown Cedar Rapids,” he said.

Thousands of Cedar Rapidians experienced the giddy rush of their first childhood escalator trips for the first time in the 1960s and 1970s on the downtown escalators.

Hunter said escalators greatly improved shopper flow through the multilevel department stores such as the old Armstrong's, Killian's, J.C. Penney and F.W. Woolworth & Co. stores.

“There was a real escalator boom downtown in the 1960s,” he said. “The biggest installation was in Armstrong's, which had eight sets of elevators.” Four went up, four went down.

Hunter spoke of memories like the night of Washington High School's first homecoming game in 1957. J.C. Penney, which was how the store was referred to then before later becoming JCPenney, had just installed the first set of escalators, and Washington High School students headed downtown after the school's homecoming bonfire to ride on them.

“There must've been 100 of us,” said Washington alum Jay Petersen, who had the unpleasant task of explaining the side-trip in the school's principal's office the next morning. “The police were not happy that 100 kids went in that store and went up and down that escalator.”

Petersen went on to lead downtown revitalization efforts at The Renaissance Group, now the Cedar Rapids Downtown District. Even he's not too broken up over losing the escalators.

Architect Roger Hadley, who began working downtown in 1973, was the only one of about a dozen interviewed recently downtown who could remember where almost all of the elevators were located. But even Hadley could not remember when the escalators went away.

“After the downtown buildings started losing all of their shopping businesses, I haven't been back in these buildings in the longest time,” he said.

Nostalgia only goes so far when it comes to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on repairs and replacements.

“There's no reason to have it,” said Steve Emerson of Aspect Architecture, owner of the Towne Centre building,

Emerson said his decision to remove the escalators wasn't based on repair costs, which he never calculated. Rather, he said, the escalators are costly to maintain, take up too much space, and just aren't needed by the building's current office tenants.

Emerson said he also recommended, in his capacity as an architect, removing the escalators from the U.S. Cellular Center.

“I've been stripping the city of them,” he joked.

Hadley added that escalators fail to meet safe exit requirements for fire safety codes. “In today's world, with all the economic problems we have, I can understand why they might be going away,” he said.

The Armstrong Centre was the first to remove its escalators post-flood. Jon Dusek heads Armstrong Development Corp., which owns the Armstrong Centre and a portfolio of other properties. He said their removal only generated a couple of early comments.

“Getting replacement parts was getting to be a real nightmare,” Dusek said about the escalators.

Escalators are still valued, however, by many.

U.S. Bank market President Nancy Kasparek said the company looked at removing escalators that take customers from the ground floor lobby to the first floor wealth management department.

“We felt the staircase was too steep of an incline for our customers to use comfortably,” Kasparek said, noting that investment customers tend to be older than the general population.

Kaparek said the bank received an overwhelmingly positive response to its historically accurate flood restoration of its escalators.

The industry trade group National Escalator Industry Inc. says demand for escalators has been flat over the past year. The association doesn't track long-term trends in escalator installations but reports 35,000 escalators are in use in the United States, handling an average of 3,000 people per hour.