Five of six members of Cedar Rapids' Facilities Commission hand in resignation

CEDAR RAPIDS – Five of six members of the City Council-appointed commission that oversees the city's three big entertainment venues have offered to quit.

The move comes after months of friction and hard feelings as Mayor Ron Corbett and the City Council have looked passed the commission and, instead, have come to depend on John Frew, the city's consultant and project manager, as the city undertakes its $100-million-plus Convention Complex and hotel renovation project.

Last week, five of six citizen members of the Five Seasons Facilities Commission called off their monthly meeting, and instead, submitted a second letter in seven weeks to Corbett and the council saying they are ready to face reality and move aside.

A first letter on Feb. 7 was all but ignored at City Hall, long-time Commission Chairman Patrick DePalma, a vice president at AEGON USA, said on Tuesday.

“We believe suspension of Commission activities and the ceding of our authority seems to make the most sense and reflects the direction that Council already has taken,” the five commissioners, including DePalma, said in a letter dated March 29.

Signing the letter with DePalma were commission members Scott Byers, Nancy Kasparek, William Unger and Al Varney III.

Corbett on Tuesday said he had not accepted any commission member's resignation. But at the same time, he said the role of the commission is in transition.

Created in 1976 as the Five Seasons Center Commission, the citizen commission's job was to oversee the construction and operation of what now is the city's U.S. Cellular Center arena. Some years later, the commission's name changed to the Five Seasons Facilities Commission as it came to oversee the operation of the Paramount Theatre and the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena.

Corbett said his preference would be for commission members to sit tight. He pointed out that the City Council is in the process of making decisions about a management firm or team to run the upgraded U.S. Cellular Center arena, the Five Seasons Hotel attached to it and the new convention center, which will be build next door.

“This isn't an emergency situation,” the mayor said. “Let's get the hotel and Convention Complex management sorted out and then we can talk about the role of the commission.”

Nonetheless, the commission's role has changed noticeably since Corbett took office in January 2010 and especially since the Council hired Frew and his firm, Frew Nations Group, in April 2010 to head up the Convention Complex project.

Under Corbett's predecessor, Mayor Kay Halloran, Commission Chairman DePalma and the commission played a key role for the city in helping craft a grant proposal that secured a $35-million federal Economic Development Administration grant for the Convention Complex project. DePalma and the commission also were involved in past negotiations related to the Five Seasons Hotel as it made its trip from marginal ownership into bankruptcy and now into city ownership.

DePalma on Tuesday noted that he and Corbett took different sides in January 2010 just after Corbett took office when the non-profit Freedom Festival proposed to hold its own outdoor barbecue event to supplant the city's long-standing BBQ Roundup overseen by the Facilities Commission. Corbett sided with the festival, though the City Council did not and city held on to the barbecue event.

In October, behind-the-scenes rumbling surfaced in public when City Council member Chuck Swore, a former long-time chairman of the Facilities Commission, attended a commission meeting to make it clear to the commission that the City Council was looking to John Frew to take charge of the Convention Complex project, not the commission.

For some years, the city and commission have employed VenuWorks, an entertainment management firm with headquarters in Ames, Iowa, to handle the day-to-day management of the city's U.S. Cellular Center arena, ice arena and Paramount Theatre. In fact, the Facilities Commission within the last year modified and extended the VenuWorks contract, taking into account that the flood-damaged Paramount Theatre was still closed and the arena would be closing for renovation.

In recent weeks, though, the commission learned through news accounts that the city's contract with VenuWorks will end when the arena closes this summer for renovation.

“We weren't even brought into the conversation,” DePalma said on Tuesday.

“From this and other actions that have recently been taken, it is clear that Council is now dealing directly on many issues that in the past would be the Commission's responsibility,” the five commissioners say in their most-recent letter to Corbett and the council. “The function and effectiveness of the Commission have been diminished significantly. As such, we believe the most effective action the Commission can take is to suspend operations … “

Corbett last night said the commission members can resign if they want to.

“If they don't want to be part of the evolution of the commission, I understand that,” the mayor said. “But I really don't want to accept their resignations.”

Even so, he said he will appoint new members if necessary to join new commission member Sarah Henderson, a past City Council member who did not join the other commissioners in their letters to City Hall.

“We serve at the pleasure of the council, and I plan on continuing to serve,” Henderson said last night. “I don't have any conflict with the council. I still feel there is a role of citizen oversight and citizen input that the commission can provide.”

Corbett said one idea is for Orchestra Iowa to manage the Paramount Theatre and for the ice arena's principal tenant, the RoughRiders hockey team, to have a similar role at that venue.