Cedar Rapids council supports closing off section of Second Avenue SE

Hustling down Second Avenue SE from 19th Street SE into the downtown will be a thing of the past, the City Council said last night.

To a person, the nine-member council lined up behind the idea of closing Second Avenue SE between 10th and 12th streets SE, a move that will allow the Physicians' Clinic of Iowa to turn its proposed new 180,000-square-foot medical building into a medical mall.

The City Council sees PCI's new building, which straddled both sides of Second Avenue SE at 10th Street SE when unveiled last fall, as an anchor to a newly forming Medical District.

The Medical District is expected to have a footprint from St. Luke's Hospital to Mercy Medical Center and from 12th Street SE to some points on Sixth Street SE.

“I think everyone understands how important this is,” Mayor Ron Corbett said last night of the PCI project and the establishment of the Medical District. “We can be a Rochester (Minn.) South.”

Mike Sundall, PCI's chief executive, said closing Second Avenue SE will allow easy, safe access to the medical campus.

“We're very pleased,” he said about the council consensus to support the closing of Second Avenue SE.

He said PCI's building will cost about $36 million, with another $8 to $9 million in cost for a parking ramp.

“We really think it's going to jump-start the redevelopment of downtown,” Sundall said.

Council member Chuck Swore said closing Second Avenue SE between 10th and 12th streets SE will allow perimeter parking to the building and multiple accesses to it.

In addition to closing a two-block stretch of Second Avenue SE, most on the council also favored turning Second and Third avenues into two-way streets, which council member Monica Vernon noted several consultants have recommended.

However, council member Kris Gulick noted that it can be costly to turn one-way streets to two-way ones because of the need to alter traffic signals.

Council member Tom Podzimek said backups for trains can stretch much farther in each direction with two-way avenues downtown.

Corbett said he wanted to hear what the city's traffic engineers had to say about just how many changes should be made and the cost.

Podzimek said it might make sense to make Second and Third avenues two-way above 12th Street SE in the residential areas, but not downtown. Vernon said the two-way streets would help make the downtown more pedestrian-friendly.