Development of west-side downtown murky at best

CEDAR RAPIDS - A testament to uncertainty in the post-flood era is the flood-damaged area directly across the Cedar River from downtown.

The architectural jewel, the Louis Sullivan-designed bank at the corner of First Street and Third Avenue SW, still sits empty. A few buildings have been renovated and reoccupied. Others will be demolished. Some commercial buildings, deemed historically significant by the Historic Preservation Commission, remain in limbo.

The March 6 vote - on whether to extend the city's 1 percent local-option sales tax for 10 years to help fund a flood-protection system - should provide some clarity.

Doug Neumann, vice president of the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, said the west side has great potential but not knowing about flood protection has put it on hold.

Approval of the sales-tax extension means the downtown's “near west side” is more likely to attract investment. Rejection of the extension is apt to send potential investors and builders to higher ground, he said.

“I keep coming back again to the uncertainty about everything in that immediate area,” he said.

Preservationists on move

Some tentative steps already taken foreshadow what this area might become with a flood-protection system in place.

A trio of historical preservationists have submitted a plan to redevelop two historically significant buildings at 102 and 120 Third Ave. SW, across the street from the Sullivan-designed bank, and a third one at 426 First St. SW. Their hope is to get the buildings off the city's demolition list and, in the process, help revitalize a swathe of blocks nearby.

“I would hope, if we are successful, that would encourage people to build on some of those vacant lots and blank spaces that are there now,” said Tim Blumer, a retired Rockwell Collins engineer and a partner in the Kingston Historical Building Redevelopment Group. “I would hope to see a resurgence of that area rather than having it go the direction it is going now - which is sitting there with still lots of buildings that haven't been attended to.”

Another Kingston partner, Robert Hach Jr., has family ties to Cedar Rapids reaching back to the mid-19th century and said his interest in the west-side buildings is an opportunity to follow in his father's footsteps.

Robert Sr. rejected an offer to sell and demolish the Hach Building, 401 First St. SE, when urban renewal was in full swing in the 1970s. The Hach Building still stands today on the east side of the river.

“Not everything can be saved,” said Robert Hach Jr., “but a lot of property does have life left in it. It's our responsibility to save what we can save.”

He's assuming that a majority of voters on March 6 will support the sales-tax extension, so a flood-protection system will be built to protect both sides of the Cedar River. On the west side of the river, such a protection system will spark investment in new residential and commercial development to mix with the redevelopment of historical buildings, he said.

“I feel if the vote is no, not only are we leaving ourselves open to future catastrophic flooding, but long-term investment … I just hate to envision what that will turn out to be. It's just not going to look good,” he said.

Des Moines as guidepost

Ann Poe, a member of the City Council, remembers a vibrant west-side commercial district when she was growing up 50 years ago on the west side of Cedar Rapids. She believes such a thing can return if the city builds a flood-protection system for both sides of the river.

“I think the possibilities, if we have flood protection, are endless in terms of how we can re-imagine and redevelop that area,” Poe said. “I think the possibilities are unlimited once we can protect it.”

Poe, who served as the Rebuild Iowa Office's liaison to Cedar Rapids for three years after the 2008 flood, said she believes the west bank of the Cedar could be redeveloped into something akin to the East Village across the Des Moines River from downtown Des Moines.

The East Village, she said, features shops and housing - contemporary mixed-used, mixed-income developments with stores on the first floor and housing above in some spots. The east bank of the Des Moines River also is home to an outdoor amphitheater, similar to the amphitheater now under construction in Cedar Rapids.

“Putting something like that on the west side of the river to kind of tie our commerce on both sides of the river would just be fabulous. It just makes all kinds of sense,” said Poe, who's taken to calling the Cedar Rapids location “West Village.”

Pragmatists consider the risk

Mark Miltner, though, said there is a difference between what might be and what is.

Miltner isn't opposed to a flood-protection system that would prevent a repeat of 2008, when floodwaters reached 10 feet in his business, the Sled Shed, at 225 Third Ave. SW. He just has trouble seeing that it will happen.

The plan to raise revenue for a flood-protection system on both sides of the river - with an estimated cost of $375 million - is premised on the city's ability to secure federal and state funds, plus the revenue raised by the tax extension. Mayor Ron Corbett has said the city needs to show it has some revenue before the state and federal governments will help.

Miltner, though, said he's hard-pressed to imagine where the federal part of the dollars will come from at a time when the federal government is overextended and is looking at cutting back.

“I don't want to sound negative. I'm a realist,” Miltner said.

Still, his business stays put, protected by flood insurance and a strategy to empty the place if another flood should look like it is coming.

Just down the street, Emmett Scherrman and his son, Jeff, also mucked out and put their business back together in the same block as the Sled Shed. Their 85-year-old building, home to Acme Graphics, 201 Third Ave. SW, took on 12 feet of water in 2008, knocking out a wall and ruining much inside.

“The top of my roll-top desk was sitting across the street on top of the Wells Fargo ATM,” said Emmett Scherrman, the company's chairman.

He and his son reinvested in the architecturally unique building because they wanted to stay and because they assumed the city would succeed in building a flood-protection system to protect it. They lost faith in May when local voters turned down the previous version of the tax extension.

“We would have been happy to stay here,” said Emmett Scherrman, “but without any flood protection and with the vote turned down. … You know how government works and how slow it might be. I'm going to be 80 years old next month. I didn't think I would ever live to see any kind of flood protection.”

The city has now purchased the building through the disaster buyout program, and the Scherrmans are moving in the fall to a new building away from downtown, at 320 49th Ave. SW.

West-side downtown not a new idea

Actually, imagining this part of the west side as part of downtown began 18 months before the June 2008 flood. At that time, downtown property owners and leaders and the City Council moved several blocks of the west side into the downtown's self-taxing Self-Supported Municipal Improvement District.

So the city can't simply build flood protection on the east side of the river and redevelop there, flood-protection proponents say. (The Army Corps of Engineers recommends protection only for the east side because of the higher value of property there.) The city has to protect and then redevelop the west side, too, proponents say.

Even so, the Metro Economic Alliance's Neumann notes that months of post-flood community planning did not come up with a clear notion of what the west side might look like with protection in place.

“Everybody sort of recognized that it was an area that could be dramatically transformed, whether it became a residential neighborhood with a lot of new urban, multistory housing or a recreational area,” he said.

Planning studies show people like to look out apartment windows across rivers and toward downtowns, he said.

Blumer, of the Kingston Historical Building Redevelopment Group, imagines residential and commercial development following his group's small step in saving three buildings.

“We don't live on the ocean here in the middle of Iowa,” Blumer said. “We have a river, and it's nice to look at, and for people who want to live in a downtown environment and be spread along the river, I think it would be a very attractive place.”

Protection plans could still change

The city's flood-protection plan envisions a levee running between the river and First and Second streets SW through much of the west side of downtown. The plan is now more than 3 years old, however, and many on the City Council, including Poe, say it is more concept than plan. They say the proposed flood-protection alignment easily can change and likely will.

Poe said getting flood protection in place will open up the prospect of redeveloping many properties and empty lots, because they will no longer be in the 100-year flood plain.

Acme Graphics' Emmett Scherrman said it is unclear what City Hall's buyout program will do with his building at 201 Third Ave. SW, just down the street from the Sullivan-designed bank, which council members say they support saving. One option calls for the block where Acme is located to be cleared or the buildings moved to make way for a park, he said.

“I would be pleased if somebody would work out a deal to keep it,” if flood protection arrived one day, Scherrman said.

“If you ever had seen our building - I have pictures of it after the flood - if you had ever been in here and involved in the cleanup, you would never want to go through that again,” Scherrman said, “and people who are against the levee, they should come down and I'll show them the pictures if they want to go through it themselves. It's a horrendous experience, I'll tell you that.”

Related articles

East-side downtown recovery outpaces that of west side (thegazette.com)

Commission asks for demolition delay on Cedar Rapids buildings (thegazette.com)

Time Check barbershop is a microcosm of persistent doubt around the flood (thegazette.com)

CREST intensifying efforts to promote March 6 local-option tax vote (thegazette.com)