116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Could Rockford Road SW become Cedar Rapids’ own Wrigleyville?
City envisions public improvements, but private sector needs ‘to step in and help’
Trryson Roskrans, 9, and Creed Waldron, 4, play a game of catch before the April 13, 2024, Kernels’ home game against the Dayton Dragons at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids. The city is looking into a plan to spur development along Rockford Road SW near the Kernels and Kingston stadiums and the ImOn Ice Arena. (Geoff Stellfox/The Gazette)
Veterans Memorial Stadium overlooks Rockford Road SW, where the Cedar Rapids City Council is eyeing improvements in an effort to create an entertainment and business district around the stadium, similar to Wrigleyville around the Cubs home field in Chicago. (Geoff Stellfox/The Gazette) Photo taken Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
CEDAR RAPIDS — In the Cedar Rapids Kernels’ season-opening week, Mike Weinard, 74, donned a team sweater and puffy hat to keep his ears warm, undeterred by the cold from enjoying a night at the ballpark.
Mostly die-hard fans and parents of players showed up for the Dayton Dragons game at Veterans Memorial Stadium that Thursday night, braving the unseasonably chilly and damp weather to cheer on the city’s minor league baseball team.
The Cedar Rapids skyline served as the backdrop, as vendors served draft beer and hot dogs wrapped in aluminum foil.
As Weinard and his wife waited in the red plastic seats for the game to start, he said they have made the trek from Iowa City to Veterans Memorial Stadium for years. They went to about 15 games last year, but now that his wife is retired, the baseball and hockey fans are hoping to attend 25 to 30 games this year.
“We just enjoy it — enjoy the atmosphere,” Weinard said. “It’s up close and personal, and parking is convenient.”
While Weinard and his wife love game days, he said the area around Rockford Road SW needs “something that's a really people-friendly environment that's comfortable and warm, attractive to people.”
Besides attending games at the three sports facilities off Rockford Road SW — Veterans Memorial Stadium for the Kernels, ImOn Ice Arena for RoughRiders hockey, and Kingston Stadium for high school football — there’s not much to do in the area, several fans said.
A new city of Cedar Rapids plan hopes to change that.
Rockford ‘microplan’
In January, the Cedar Rapids City Council adopted the Rockford Road SW microplan calling for increased connectivity, stronger branding that plays on the area’s sports identity and redevelopment to attract new dining, entertainment and other uses to this part of the city.
“You had a blighted area that was really devastated from the flood of 2008,” said council member Ashley Vanorny, who drove the plan’s creation. Vanorny represents District 5, which used to include this area until council districts were redrawn after the 2020 census.
“It was really hard getting people to want to rebuild in that area, let alone have it be a really intentional part of town and the economic development community,” Vanorny said.
But with the three sports complexes, it’s important to “increase the resource and treasure” the area is, she said.
“You don’t really have a community there,” Vanorny said. “It’s a mish-mosh of pieces that don’t really fit together.”
The Rockford Road SW area could take inspiration from Wrigleyville in Chicago, home to the Chicago Cubs, Vanorny said, to come alive on game days.
“On a game day (in Chicago), the stands fit so many people, but that entire neighborhood of Wrigleyville is electric, and it’s full,” Vanorny said. “The bars and restaurants are spilling out of people.”
Rockford Road SW needs to become a mixed-use district with housing, hotel beds, rooftop availability to watch the game and sit-down restaurants where residents and visitors can “make a day of it,” Vanorny said.
If you’re a Cedar Rapids RoughRiders hockey fan living on Wilson Avenue SW, for example, you could grab brunch, go to a game then walk home. A Minnesota Twins fan here to cheer on the opposing team could drive into Cedar Rapids, see a game at the Kernels stadium, then spend a night at a hotel and dining at local restaurants.
“That’s what the vision is,” Vanorny said.
Attracting people beyond game day
Jordan Slaman of Cedar Rapids, a bartender since January 2023 at Stadium Bar & Grill, 957 Rockford Rd. SW, said the three sports facilities drive much of the restaurant’s business.
During Kernels’ games, happy hour can be packed “body to body,” she said. Most days, though, “it feels run down” and forgotten.
To change that perception, the new plan calls for:
- Developing a sports-facilities inspired naming strategy for the area.
- Exploring enhancements to the space around the T-33A Aircraft public art piece to encourage pedestrian interactions and sense of place.
- Identifying locations and responsible entities to install pedestrian amenities such as lighting, benches, shade trees and trash cans along Rockford Road.
- Doing a parking study for the sport facility properties and adjacent streets.
- Completing an engineering study to determine if pedestrian crossing improvements are needed at the Eighth Avenue-Rockford Road crossing.
- Exploring use of 380 Express, Cedar Rapids Transit and other transit services to shuttle fans to sporting events.
Kernels Chief Executive Officer Doug Nelson said the team’s games typically attract 200,000 people every year, with 30,000 to 40,000 of them from out of town.
He hopes improved landscaping and walking trails, retail shops, dining or other entertainment options on Rockford Road would encourage fans to stay overnight or spend more time in Cedar Rapids.
“My concern is since there's really nothing here to keep them in Cedar Rapids” after a game, Nelson said. “I'm hoping they're going downtown or another part of the community, but also because they're from out of town, they could be going home as well. Having these attractions is a great way to show off our community.”
The Kernels stadium has hosted the Division III World Series and this year will host the 3A and 4A Iowa High School Baseball state championship. Revitalizing the district with more amenities and businesses would create another selling point to attract new tournaments, Nelson said.
Development of an entertainment district, he said, “would be one more feather in the community’s cap.”
City streets in the surrounding area seem to be riddled with cracks and bumps, said Weinard, the Kernels’ fan from Iowa City, and should be fixed, along with street lighting. Also, the area remains scarred by the hurricane-force winds of the 2020 derecho, he said.
When the sports facilities are packed, cars line Rockford Road SW and the surrounding streets. Slaman, the Stadium Bar & Grill bartender, said she often hears customers say they’d like more parking in the area.
There also should be more things for children to do, Slaman said. Perfect Game, a baseball and softball scouting company, used to be on Rockford Road and brought more youth and families to the neighborhood until it closed its Cedar Rapids headquarters a couple of years ago.
“It would be nice if there could be some things for younger kids and teenagers — anything to have something for them to do besides doing nothing and getting in trouble,” Lani Luckman said while at a Kernels game.
Luckman has lived in Cedar Rapids for about 24 years. Her youngest child is 17, and she has grandkids who are looking for fun things to do, too. With multiple sports facilities, Luckman said, it would be nice for the city to develop the area into a community attraction.
“There used to be a lot more in this area, but now there’s not much. Just houses,” Luckman said.
More restaurants and retail businesses in the area could spur traffic, Slaman said, and she appreciated the prospect of more public art celebrating the area’s sports identity.
“We just need more things to attract people when baseball’s not in season, or not everybody’s into baseball, not everybody’s into hockey,” Slaman said. “Our business would get better and, in the end, benefit everybody.”
Private sector help needed
The concept of developing the area as a destination tourism district goes back decades.
Voters in 2001 passed a bond issue to rebuild Veterans Memorial Stadium, at the same time efforts were underway to develop the ImOn Ice Arena. At the time, some people wanted to build the new stadium closer to the core of the city, according to council member Dale Todd, who was parks commissioner under the city’s former commission government.
He was involved with the ice arena’s development and helped prepare the stadium bond vote and application for a $5 million Vision Iowa grant to rebuild the stadium.
It was hoped development and infrastructure improvements would entice private developers to the area.
But Todd said there was “no entity with deep pockets to drive the plan and develop a land assembly strategy.”
Todd said recent local-option sales tax-funded street projects have begun to clean up the area, including fixing Third Avenue SW from First Avenue West to Rockford Road SW, as well as Eighth Avenue SW from 15th Street SW to Rockford Road.
Nelson sees it as “a chicken and egg” situation and hoped the public improvements will draw more private development to Rockford Road.
Vanorny said the city sometimes has to buy a property to fuel transformation in parts of the city where redevelopment has stagnated, noting brownfield/grayfield redevelopment tax credits and other funding sources can make a property shovel-ready for development
It may require a significant financial investment to improve those properties, given the remaining cleanup work to be done after the 2008 flood and the proximity to the CRANDIC Railroad, Vanorny said,
Getting to the next phase of revitalizing Rockford Road SW “will require a significant lift,” Todd agreed, noting Cedar Rapids lacks the “powerhouses” like the Ricketts family who own the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field.
“Part of the challenge is creating and sustaining the magic and ambience of the minor league sports experience here,” Todd said. “By keeping things affordable, you create a Catch-22 that limits your opportunities for financing the revitalization.
“We all want to see things move to the next level, but the reality is we need someone to step in and help.”
Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com
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