Cedar Rapids council approves annexation line with Marion on cities' north side

The City Council last night approved a new annexation line with Marion that generally parallels C Avenue NE to the east between East Robins Road and County Home Road and will help the cities plan for future development.

The line was put in place in 1998. It expired in 2008, and it took Cedar Rapids and Marion until now to agree to the new line. The Marion City Council approved the line, which will be in place for 10 years, on Nov. 7.

The line, which runs north and south east of C Avenue NE, is similar to the 1998 one.

The new line moves about 70 acres of land south of Echo Hill Road onto Marion's side after Marion successfully argued that the property is better developed by Marion because of the topography and drainage patterns there.

At the same time, the proposed line continues to meet a key Cedar Rapids priority of providing a growth corridor up C Avenue north to County Home Road, where the city's Tuma soccer complex is located.

The annexation line does not mean that either city has plans to annex land in unincorporated Linn County along the line, Jeff Pomeranz and Lon Pluckhahn, city managers in Cedar Rapids and Marion, have said.