Community group considers options for former Sinclair site

About 60 percent of the demolition of the former Sinclair packing plant is complete, and when it's done, then what?

A group of community and neighborhood leaders took on the question on Tuesday with the easy consensus acknowledging that City Hall and the community have been trying to figure out what to do with the 30-acre Sinclair site for nearly 20 years.

“I feel a little like a guy in a wheel constantly running after the same thing,” said Jim Halverson, project manager at Howard R. Green Co. and a former director of the city's Community Development Department.

Tuesday's meeting was convened by the Southside Investment Board, a non-profit group comprised of property owners in and backers of the New Bohemia district in southeast Cedar Rapids.

Sarah Ordover, president of the board for the proposed NewBo City Market, said it was important to have something on the Sinclair site to help attract people to “stroll” around in the New Bohemia District. An office park, for instance, would not accomplish that, she said.

Jim Novak, an architect with the Novak Design Group, presented past ideas for the Sinclair site that were part of the city's unsuccessful Vision Iowa project and then part of an unsuccessful effort to put a gaming boat on the Sinclair site.

Novak's site plans show a city market with a community recreation center next door, and Ordover quickly picked up on the idea and said she'd be eager to see a new recreation center go up next to the proposed NewBo City Market on what had been the former Iowa Iron Works site. The NewBo City Market is slated to be built on the former Quality Chef site in the 1100 block of Third Street SE.

Novak argued that the city and the neighborhood should not “force” development on the Sinclair site, but should let it evolve.

“Let it be what it wants to be,” Novak said. He said backers of New Bohemia should redevelop building by building as they work toward its goals in the neighborhood.

Ordover conceded that a solution for the Sinclair site likely would come in the longer term, and she said she could imagine the NewBo City Market moving to the site once it has some years of success down the block at the Quality Chef site. Another entity then could move into the Quality Chef site, she said.

Bob Kazimour and Jim Piersall talked about their efforts back in 2003 to locate a gaming boat on the Sinclair site, saying it would have worked as a catalyst for redevelopment around it. Novak also recalled an unsuccessful, late-inning push back in 2001 to convince the city to build its new, minor-league baseball park on the Sinclair site.

Kazimour called it unlikely that Cedar Rapids would ever get another shot at a casino what with new ones now opened nearby in Waterloo and Riverside, Iowa. City Council member Pat Shey seemed to suggest that matters related to casinos still could change one day.

Richard Luther, owner of Creative Development Solutions and past development manager for the city of Cedar Rapids, noted that the city's proposed levee system will cut into the Sinclair site and leave only about 12 to 14 acres of the 30-plus-acre site suitable for redevelopment.