Veterans Memorial Building renovation waiting for FEMA approval

The renovation of the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island remains on hold as the Veterans Memorial Commission and city wait for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to sign off on plans to renovate the building, Mike Jager, who manages the building for the commission, reported Monday night.

Jager thought it would now be late summer or early fall before the first phase of the building's renovation, which will take place on the building's Second Avenue side, is complete.

The first phase is designed to get the City Council back in the fourth-floor council chambers and the city manager, mayor, council members and city clerk back into offices on the building's third floor. The city attorney also is returning to the building.

A greater share of the building will be used for veterans' functions than before the June 2008 flood while some city offices that had been in the building will find a new home in the city-owned, former federal courthouse down the block.

Jager noted that the plan is to turn first-floor office spaces on the Second Avenue side of the Veterans Memorial Building into a museum space for veterans.

For now, though, the commission has decided to continue to spend $913 per month to store more than 685 items of veterans memorabilia at a Chicago site, where the flood-damaged items had been taken for restoration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has stopped paying for the storage, and the commission has decided Monday evening that the Veterans Memorial Building isn't suitable for the items until it is renovated.

The commission also is looking into the purchase of a museum inventory database system so it can accurately track what it has in its possession.

With the delay in the renovation of the Veterans Memorial Building, City Council members said last week that there was a chance that the City Council might come back downtown and hold regular meetings in the large, historic, third-floor courtroom in the former courthouse at some point in 2011. The council currently meets at Hiawatha City Hall.

Current plans call for the city's Department of Community Development and part of the city's Finance Department to occupy the courthouse's first floor along with the city's Human Resources Department and Civil Rights Office. The Finance Department also will occupy the building's second floor with the third-floor courtroom used for public meetings.