Flood of 2008 speeds up civic projects & revitalized housing

Even now, the dirty swill of destructive floodwater - which crested two years ago today at 11 feet above the previous historic level - makes it difficult to suggest there can be silver linings in all that was damaged and lost.

Silver linings, though, show through.

Or, as library board President Susan Corrigan puts it, there are lights at the end of the tunnel. One is the new downtown library, a $45 million project to be built across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park.

Before the flood, the library board, city officials and other community leaders all had ambitious plans for the future - plans that had challenges other than flooding, such as funding and inertia. The flood is resolving some of those issues.

The library board had a pre-flood plan to revitalize the now-flooded library on First Street SE, but Corrigan says the flood likely will bring about a new library faster.

“Really, what the flood has done is it's forced our hand in saying there is a real impetus for change here,” Corrigan says. “So we're using that as a springboard. We know we've got a situation. We got to deal with it. So why not make lemonade out of lemons.”

Equally important, she says, is that the city now knows about the risk of flooding at the old library site, a risk that future generations of library patrons will not have to face at the new library site.

“I tend to focus on kids, and we're talking about a generation of kids who are feeling this impact now (of not having a main library). We're taking the hit now, but it gives us confidence in the future that we're not going to have to take it for future generations,” Corrigan says.

The flood-damaged National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, perched along the Cedar River, is on the verge of a $16 million construction project that will move the existing building a short distance to higher ground and then expand it to nearly twice its size.

Like the new library, the museum is using federal disaster dollars, state I-JOBS funds and private donations to pay for the project, with the city donating land.

Like the library, the flood is moving the Czech museum project along at a faster pace, says Gail Naughton, president/CEO. That's a silver lining that came with much “heartbreak and hard work” for staff, board members and volunteers, she says.

“I think in the end, we'll come out with a much stronger institution, and we will come out with a larger and safer building and location and a more successful museum,” Naughton says. “It would have been very sad if we had done the project - it wouldn't have been at the height we're going to build at now - and then had this flood.”

She says the flood also has provided a unique and “odd opportunity”

to raise the library's

national and international profile, which has meant an outpouring of donations from here

and from the Czech

Republic.

“So I think, when we're said and done, I think we're going to have a broader constituency and even more support nationwide,” Naughton says.

The Cedar Rapids flood also has led to the construction of the new Human Services Building in the 400 block of Seventh Avenue SE, which will house the United Way of East Central Iowa and other human-services agencies.

Lois Buntz, president/CEO of the local United Way, says the new building, which is being paid for by state I-JOBS funds and community donations, will move some human-services offices closer to the hospitals, the YMCA and other human-services agencies. At the same time, it will allow several entities to share some administrative costs.

“Ultimately, if we find more money for the mission (of each agency), that's the best piece of it all,” Buntz says.

In creating a stronger network of helping services, she says, the community will be better able to take on continuing flood-recovery challenges - a 25 percent increase in mental-health requests and a 15 percent increase in use of local food pantries, to name two.

“The need in our community is greater than ever …” Buntz says.

Doug Neumann, president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Downtown District, puts it this way: The June 2008 flood has been “a painful and inglorious way of going about revitalization” in the flood-damaged downtown and the city's flood-damaged core neighborhoods.

“We should call this ‘urban renewal by natural disaster,' and I wouldn't wish such a horrible experience upon anyone,” Neumann says. “If there is a silver lining, it's that flood-recovery money and reinvestment from non-local sources (federal and state government) is going to allow us to do 25 years' worth of development in the next five years.”

One of the notable triumphs that would not have happened but for the flood are the 25 new bungalow-style homes - many of which have gone to flood victims with the help of city subsidies - that have gone up in the Oak Hill neighborhood.

It is a neighborhood that had long been in decline. More investment is occurring there, including along Third Street SE in the flood-hit New Bohemia district.

In addition, nearly

200 residential units, also subsidized, have gone up on the fringe of the city - part of a program to replace houses lost in the flood. A few hundred affordable rental units also are being built with the help of federal tax credits.

There is, perhaps, no more visible sign of the flood's silver lining than the $160 million federal courthouse that is well under way and now

towering over downtown.

Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michael Melloy and Senior Judge David Hansen will be among the judges with space in the new courthouse when it opens in fall 2012.

Three months before the June 2008 flood, Melloy and Hansen uncharacteristically met the local news media to express their frustration about a lack of funding for a new federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids. The project had languished on a priority list for a decade.

Three months after the flood, which swamped the existing federal courthouse in the 100 block of First Street SE, Congress appropriated money to build the new one.

“Yes, I think we would still be waiting for funding but for the flood,” Melloy says. “I have no doubt about that. Because I've seen what's happened to other projects that were similarly situated to ours on the construction list. They basically remain unfunded.”

Melloy watches the construction of the new eight-story courthouse from his downtown office window.

“We certainly plan that this will be a building that the city will be proud of

50 to 75 years from now, just as they will be, hopefully, when it opens,” he says.