C.R. reboots search for rec center site

CEDAR RAPIDS - The City Council decided Tuesday night to start over in its 18-month-long effort to find a replacement site for the flood-damaged Time Check Recreation Center.

In so doing, a majority of members seemed to side with colleague Monica Vernon on three points:

Don't put a new recreation center in Ellis Park, which has been opposed by the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association and some park users.

Don't rush to build the center on available property at Harrison Elementary School, 1310 11th St. NW, in hopes of trying to keep the facility open and to get it off the Cedar Rapids school district's list of buildings facing possible closure. Harrison may and should stay open without a recreation center, Vernon said.

And look first to some spot along the arterial Ellis Boulevard NW - perhaps on the site of the flood-ruined Boys and Girls Club, which is slated for demolition - to build the $3.5 million facility.

For now, the council agreed unanimously to reject a proposal to build the recreation center in or near Ellis Park. Members decided instead to form a new site selection committee to come up with some other options.

New west-side District 4 council member School Olson had suggested a sharing arrangement that would keep Harrison

Elementary open with the new investment for a recreation center on the property. Olson's idea will be one explored by the new site selection committee, the council said.

However, Vernon and others said they wanted to see if the school district intended to keep Harrison open in any event, which Mayor Ron Corbett and other council members have asked district officials to do. Corbett has emphasized that the city's flood-recovery effort and disaster dollars are resulting in the construction of hundreds of new housing units in the Harrison area - and, as a result, the school will fill back up.

Vernon said there was only one place to put a new recreation center to replace the Time Check one, and that was directly on Ellis Boulevard NW, the main arterial cutting through the neighborhoods. She said no one could find it four blocks off the boulevard behind the existing Harrison school.

“We need to show it off. ... I think it would be crazy to put it in Harrison's backyard,” she said.

Don Karr and new at-large member Ann Poe both liked the idea of the new recreation center on the site of the former Boys and Girls Club. The city will own that property after the existing building is demolished.

Council members Chuck Swore and Pat Shey also liked the idea of looking at Ellis Boulevard.

Shey lamented that the city had built a new minor league ballpark and a new ice area off the beaten path in recent years rather than on, for instance, the former Sinclair site in New Bohemia that would have sparked additional economic development around it. He said the recreation center would be a similar lost opportunity at the elementary school.

Olson, a commercial Realtor, said he wasn't sure that a site for a recreation center could be found on Ellis Boulevard. He also said it could be costly to elevate such a facility on property in the 100-year flood plain along the boulevard.