Building cycles of ’20s, ’70s, today change face of downtown C.R.

Just as the new federal courthouse, Convention Complex and other construction projects will change the face of downtown Cedar Rapids, so did previous building booms in the 1920s and 1970s.

Downtown construction projects in the 1920s produced the Linn County Courthouse; U.S. Bank, formerly Merchants National Bank; City Hall/Veterans Memorial Building; The Roosevelt; Scottish Rite Masonic Center; Theatre Cedar Rapids, formerly the Iowa Theater; the Paramount Theatre, formerly Capitol Theater; and the former U.S. Courthouse.

“The concentration of major projects constructed and completed in the 1920s involved a much shorter span of years than in the 1970s,” said Cedar Rapids historian Mark Stoffer Hunter. “They got a lot more done in a very short period of time.”

He notes that May's Island became the seat of government in the '20s with all the construction.

“All the major bridges in the downtown area had been replaced by the 1920s,” he added. “There also were a lot of road improvements, because the 1920s was the first decade where the automobile ruled as the main mode of transportation.

“It was a very exciting time, a good time to be living and working in Cedar Rapids.”

Downtown construction projects in the 1970s included the Iowa Electric Tower, now Alliant Energy; Cedar River Tower; the Wells Fargo Bank building, formerly Brenton Bank; the five-in-one dam; the Five Seasons Center arena and Stouffer's Hotel; and Interstate 380.

Nearly 70 buildings along the riverfront were removed in the late 1960s and early 1970s to provide park space for potential flood mitigation and to open the downtown visually from the west.

Hunter said the economic situation in the 1920s and '70s was conducive to growth.

“The massive urban-renewal demolitions of the late 1960s and early 1970s provided the impetus for construction of many projects in the 1970s and early 1980s. In order to get the federal urban-renewal money, you had to have projects in place, such as the (then) Five Seasons Center,” he said.

“As it was in the 1920s, there also was a real desire on the part of cities to do what they could to visually stand apart from other communities.”

Realtor Scott Olson, an architect in the 1970s, credits the administration of former Mayor Don Canney with spearheading construction of many of the urban renewal and civic enhancement projects that transformed Cedar Rapids.

“I went to a lot of the meetings in Mayor Canney's office and other places,” Olson said. “He was really strong. He would say, ‘Let's do this. Let's get it done. It will make a difference.' ”

Canney, a former city engineer, is widely credited with getting I-380 routed through downtown Cedar Rapids, with the innovative five-in-one dam that combined two lanes of local bridge traffic, two lanes of interstate bridge traffic and a dam in a single structure.

Olson said many people don't realize that the property taxes and air rights paid by the Stouffer's Hotel and revenue from the tax increment financing district that increased in size paid off the bonds that financed the Five Seasons Center. No other residential or commercial property tax revenue was required.

While the changes were somewhat visible to anyone driving along First Avenue in the late 1970s, Hunter said real visual impact was not apparent until early in the next decade.

“When Interstate 380 was completed through Cedar Rapids in the 1980s, people saw a totally different downtown area,” he said. “It sent a very strong message of a strong, progressive community that was moving forward into the future. Cedar Rapids had totally changed its image from the beginning of the 1970s until the end of that decade.”

Hunter said federal funding was a major factor in the development of downtown civic improvements of the 1960s and 1970s and the construction of I-380.

This time, federal, state and local funding for flood recovery, civic improvement and private construction projects are expected to change the face of downtown Cedar Rapids over the next five years.

“With the federal courthouse going up and the Human Services Campus on Eighth Avenue, the south end of downtown has changed drastically in recent years,” Hunter said. “It's like a whole new gateway and a bridge to the development going on in the New Bohemia neighborhood.”

Hunter said the new convention center makes cyclical sense, too.

“Just as the Five Seasons Center complex replaced the Veterans Memorial Building as the convention center of Cedar Rapids, it kind of makes sense for a progressive city to keep up the pace of development and growth,” he said. “You have to keep up to date if you want to stay in the game.”