Plans call for larger northwest rec center, closing Ambroz

Cedar Rapids officials would like to replace the city's flood-ruined Time Check Recreation Center with a bigger facility that also will house the city's Parks and Recreation Department and allow the city to close the aged Ambroz Recreation Center it has been trying to close for years.

That was the concept that emerged on Wednesday from a meeting of the city's Recreation Center Site Selection Advisory Committee, which includes three City Council members and two city parks and recreation staff members.

The advisory committee adopted a list of criteria that it expects a site for a new recreation center to meet, and foremost among those is that the new center be built in northwest Cedar Rapids where the Time Check Recreation Center, which was inundated in the June 2008 flood, is now located.

Jeff Kraayenbrink, the city's recreation superintendent and a committee member, pointed out to committee members that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay the city to build a recreation center similar to the Time Check center, and he added the FEMA also is expected to provide additional funds to the city for a couple of recreational properties that were not brought back on line after the flood.

Kraayenbrink said the FEMA funding could serve as a “kick start” for a more substantial recreation center with a department office that would allow the city to accomplish three goals: return a recreation center to northwest Cedar Rapids; close the Ambroz center on Mount Vernon Road SE; and move the city's recreation office from Ambroz and its parks office from its current home at 3601 42nd St. NE.

Nearly all the users of the Ambroz center drive to it and so they could do the same for a larger recreation center in northwest Cedar Rapids, he said. He added that the city's plan has been to move the city's parks offices out of the 42nd Street NE building and move the city's Information Technology Department in.

After the Wednesday meeting broke up, Kraayenbrink called the prospect of a larger recreation center and department office in northwest Cedar Rapids “definitely an opportunity that's ahead of us.”

“It would give us chance to be better than before,” he said.

After the meeting, City Council members Kris Gulick, Don Karr and Chuck Wieneke, all members of the site selection committee, expressed interest in the concept that Kraayenbrink talked about.

The three council members emphasized that such a new facility in northwest Cedar Rapids would be far less ambitious than the concept of a $60-million-plus Multigenerational Life Center, which is in the city's Parks Master Plan.

They noted that one of the site committee's criteria for a new rec-center site is that it be expandable, they said the new building now under consideration, perhaps, could be a first step in one day building a larger complex.

As for extra funding for the building now under consideration, Karr noted that Mayor Ron Corbett proposed this week that the City Council consider using some of the city's $80-million in local-option sales tax revenue to help buy land for a new recreation center and other city building projects that are replacing flood-hit buildings with new ones.

Linda Seger, a neighborhood leader and chairwoman of the site selection committee, reported that several neighborhood residents continue to push to build a new Time Check Recreation Center at the spot where the old one now stands.

One of the criteria that the committee has endorsed, though, calls for the site of a new recreation center to be outside the 100-year flood plain, where the former center sits.

Kraayenbrink said FEMA will analyze the costs of rebuilding on the existing site along with three site options that the committee is working to come up with.

However, Nick Rudin, project manager for contractor Ryan Companies US Inc., said the costs would be high to flood-proof a new building in the 100-year flood plain compared to building at a site outside the 100-year flood plain.

The committee also said it would like a rec-center site to have adequate parking, have access to a main thoroughfare, be close to bus lines and the city's trail system and be on land owned by the city or by a willing seller.

Committee member Richard “Whitey” Campbell, president of Northwest Neighbors, asked that the 1000 block of Eighth Street NW be considered as a possible site for the new facility. He said only four houses remain on the block.

Ryan Companies and a city property-search team now will take the committee's criteria and see what sites might meet the committee's wishes. The committee then will sort through possibilities in the weeks ahead.

An architect for the project is expected to be hired by Dec. 15, Ryan's Rudin said.