Iowa women’s basketball player Hannah Stuelke honored with key to city

CEDAR RAPIDS — Hannah Stuelke, a star forward for the Hawkeye women’s basketball team and former Cedar Rapids Washington High School Warrior player, was honored Thursday with a Key to the City.

“It’s a lot easier to play in front of a lot of people than to talk,” Stuelke said as she wiped away tears, touched as a crowd of more than 800 gave the rising UI junior a standing ovation.

She was invited as part of Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell’s State of the City address, delivered at the city-owned downtown DoubleTree by Hilton hotel. Before Stuelke spoke, O’Donnell called her “the happiest player on the court.”

Stuelke and the Iowa Hawkeye women defeated Connecticut in this year’s NCAA Final Four game and proceeded for a second-consecutive year to the championship game, which Iowa lost to undefeated University of South Carolina.

“I just want to say thank you to everyone for supporting me for such a long time,” Stuelke said. “Just thank you.”

In reading the proclamation honoring Stuelke, O’Donnell said, “This key represents our gratitude for all you have accomplished and the incredible impact you continue to have on young people and adults alike. We hope this gesture ensures you and your family know that you will always have not only a special place in the history of Cedar Rapids, but also the key to our hearts.”

Earlier this month, Stuelke was grand marshal in the Houby Days parade in Cedar Rapids’ Czech Village.

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Attracting, keeping workers a priority

Stuelke was one of five Cedar Rapidians who the mayor invited to speak at Thursday’s annual address, driving home the message that “more than our economic strength and future plans, the true state of our city is reflected in the dedication and pride of our people who call Cedar Rapids home.”

In O’Donnell’s address, she touted the city’s growth and progress over the last year to add permanent flood protection, craft a new vision to revitalize downtown post-pandemic, boost rental and owner-occupied housing stock, expand recreational offerings and recruit and retain businesses.

To private sector partners in the room, O’Donnell teased that if people receive an invitation to lunch with her, it won’t be cheap as the city looks to raise money to bring several initiatives to life.

Among those is attracting and nurturing talent to grow the workforce. She highlighted the mayor-driven Collaborative Growth Initiative, a partnership between the cities of Cedar Rapids, Marion and Hiawatha and the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance.

The endeavor seeks to create a road map to address current and future workforce needs, given that area employers and prospective businesses report the top issue they face is the shortage of available workers to fill open jobs.

An outside firm, Development Counsellors International, conducted market research to identify five areas “packed with potential talent who have the exact skills that Cedar Rapids is looking for” — Wisconsin, Chicagoland, the Twin Cities in Minnesota, Denver-Aurora-Lakewood in Colorado and Southern California, including Los Angeles.

“Many of these people already have a favorable impression of Cedar Rapids — and many want to return home,” O’Donnell said.

According to the report the firm submitted in March, talent already in the Cedar Rapids metro area lacks confidence “that alternative opportunities to grow professionally are available in Greater Cedar Rapids, which could cause them to consider relocation.”

Moreover, “while Greater Cedar Rapids is viewed as accepting and inclusive, there is also concern of a ‘trickle-down’ impact from state policies that could impact the ability to attract and retain a diverse workforce,” the report states. There’s also a perception that there’s a lack of nightlife and attractions for young professionals.

To draw talent, messaging could focus on “livability and career-related factors,” including housing availability and cost, cost of living, jobs and salaries.

In the next phase, the partners will look to cultivate talent and “upskill our workforce,” O’Donnell said, including recent graduates and existing professionals. She said the Economic Alliance is leading efforts to hire a talent development director.

Budgets for the initiative are set for the next three years, ranging from an “adequate” level around $500,000 a year to the “optimal” level of $1.3 million per year. There are plans covering branding needs, communication strategies, work groups and fundraising efforts to complement public funds that O’Donnell said each city will be asked to contribute.

“For any of those efforts to be successful, we have to be a city and a metro that actually is awesome,” O’Donnell said. “… We must have a vibe. We must have that power of place.”

Water key to business support

Cedar Rapids officials often have pointed to the southwest quadrant as representative of the city’s growth trajectory while it sees more warehousing, manufacturing and logistics businesses locating here for ease of access to transportation and other amenities.

Having ample water capacity to lure business to town is key to attracting companies like Google, which is pursuing a $576 million data center in Alliant Energy’s Big Cedar Industrial Park. Google could build up to six data centers there.

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For now, O’Donnell said the proposed data center is expected to create thousands of construction jobs and eventually hundreds of other jobs for workers to service and operate the data centers.

City officials are nearing completion of an approximately $20 million project to expand the treatment capacity of the city’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant on Ellis Road NW. Improvements include adding a 15 million-gallon-per-day softener basin and related equipment to improve the existing system’s reliability.

Utilities Engineering Manager Dave Wallace said in a statement that the city’s treatment capacity of both water plants — the Northwest plant and the J Avenue Water Treatment Plant — is 60 million gallons per day. That capacity is expected to increase another 5 million gallons per day when the softening clarifier is finished at the Ellis Road plant.

“We are proactively planning for future water capacity needs as our city and economic development portfolio grow,” Wallace said. “This includes identifying optimal locations for new wells and phasing in plant expansions to stay ahead of demand.”

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