Event-center grant the largest U.S. Economic Development Administration has ever made

The $35 million grant for the city's $67 million Event Center project is the “largest single discretionary grant” one federal agency has ever made.

John Fernandez, head of the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration, shared that fact with the Downtown Rotary Club on Monday.

Fernandez, who assumed his post as assistant secretary of commerce in September, said the grant is intended to do more than help the city recover and rebuild from its June 2008 flood. The grant, he said, was made with the thought that it would let Cedar Rapids reposition itself to compete more effectively in the global economy.

He said the grant would help turn the Event Center project - a new $52 million convention center and a $15 million upgrade of the U.S. Cellular Center arena - into an anchor and a “generator of commerce” in the downtown.

The convention center will go up next to the arena and Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel complex. Fernandez spoke in the hotel ballroom, which is slated to come down to make way for the new convention center.

The EDA also has provided a $3 million grant to the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce to help it build a regional commerce center and business incubator program on its First Avenue E site.

Fernandez credited Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, with dogging the EDA to help Cedar Rapids and other Iowa cities recover from the June 2008 flood. Loebsack was in the audience Monday.

The assistant secretary encouraged Rotary Club members to think in terms of regional economic development, and he said the Obama administration is attempting to tailor funding to promote engines of regional economic development.

He pointed to Duluth, Minn., as one spot that's having success positioning itself for advanced aviation. He also singled out Austin, Texas, and California and Florida.

Fernandez fielded questions from the Rotary audience. Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, asked if the EDA and its push for regional economic development might help the city make its argument that Cedar Rapids is a regional economic engine and so needs a flood-protection system to protect those economic interests.

He pointed out that the Army Corps of Engineers' benefit-cost formula doesn't take the economic development issue into account.

Fernandez said the Obama administration is pushing federal agencies to work in concert with one another.