Linn County’s resiliency hub network will unify disaster responses, community support

CEDAR RAPIDS — After the unprecedented 2020 derecho tore through Iowa, Linn County organizations tried to offer help and care services. But the post-disaster disarray created communication barriers that made their resources less efficient.

Less than a year later, in June 2021, the county’s first resiliency hub was created in Cedar Rapids.

It will serve as the local nexus for emergency resources and services during times of disaster. Otherwise, it’s a year-round space that provides three critical resources to the surrounding community: access to food, access to energy and access to information.

Going forward, it will serve as a model for new resiliency hubs as the network expands across Linn County. The web of resources will help organizations better communicate with each other, join forces and avoid replicating their efforts to serve communities in need.

“It's important to be really mindful of what you already have available and how to use it,” Linn County sustainability director Tamara Marcus said. “It's identifying what we already have in our community, both in terms of physical infrastructure and also our social networks, and figuring out how to responsibly open those up to more people.”

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Cedar Rapids resiliency hub grows

The existing resiliency hub sits beside the Fillmore Building at 520 11th St. NW in Cedar Rapids.

The area was once just an empty field of grass, unused and lacking purpose. Now, it’s going into its third year of management by Linn County’s sustainability department. The less-than-an-acre lot is full of garden beds and compost. The space also has hosted rain barrel distributions.

Its garden is continuing to expand as new collaborators join the project. Currently, Feed Iowa First and its Equitable Land Access program partner with Linn County’s sustainability department for maintaining the gardens. The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success offers culturally relevant gardening classes on-site for people of color. The harvested produce is donated to Feed Iowa First, its Equitable Land Access program network and local food banks.

A pergola and an agrivoltaic pilot project may be added to the area. Agrivoltaics are the emerging practice of putting solar panels on top of active crops or gardens. In this case, the created solar energy would offset the energy used by the air quality monitoring station, which will hopefully provide public Wi-Fi soon.

Many of those additions will depend on decisions from the Linn County Board of Supervisors.

“In the future, we really hope to sort of make this a hub for events and use this the green space as well as the gardens,” said Ayla Boylen, the volunteer site ambassador for the Cedar Rapids hub.

A model for change

The Cedar Rapids resiliency hub will serve as a model for other sites in the works across the county.

The hubs will be personalized to the communities they’re housed in. Low-income communities and those with larger populations of people of color have been prioritized.

The network of hubs will work with a variety of organizations and combine their resources instead of potentially replicating efforts — especially during times of disaster. Having those resources organized and spread across the county will improve access for more residents.

“Replicating this as many times as you can so that you don’t have to travel very far in a time of crisis is really the end goal,” Boylen said.

The new hubs won’t look the same, though.

For example, the next one to open will be the Wellington Heights Community Church — an internal hub within a structure, unlike the open green space of the existing Cedar Rapids hub. It also will have a community fridge that’s open 24/7.

“The idea is that you create a site that allows neighborhoods to have a place to go where they can get resources when you have shared disasters,” Marcus said. “But sometimes, disasters aren't shared, right? You could be experiencing a personal disaster. Having opportunities for people to be the determinant of what they need is important.”

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Shaping the growth

The county’s recently approved resiliency coordinator position will be instrumental in coordinating the resiliency hubs and organizing disaster preparedness plans once hired. That person also will apply for grants and other funding sources for the projects to make them more sustainable in the long term.

As more sites are added, they will eventually all be featured on a digital dashboard that maps resiliency hubs across the county.

Brittney J. Miller is the Energy & Environment Reporter for The Gazette and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; brittney.miller@thegazette.com