Grant Wood art to spiff up Interstate gateway to Cedar Rapids medical district

CEDAR RAPIDS - Welcoming people from Interstate 380 to the city's newly created MedQuarter regional medical district needs more than a forgettable-looking building that housed a truck service center in its day.

So thinks UnityPoint Health-St. Luke's Hospital, which owns the building at 625 A Ave. NE and uses it for storage, and now plans to place a mural of two of Grant Wood's art works on the A Avenue face of the building.

The mural of Iowa native Wood's 'Spring in the Country” and 'Young Corn” paintings will stand 19 and half feet tall and stretch 58 feet wide. The width includes the title, 'Grant Wood Artwork” and an explanation of the two pieces of art. A 22-wide sign, saying 'Welcome to the MedQuarter regional medical district” will be displayed next to the mural.

The sign and mural will be the first thing that motorists coming off Interstate 380 at the Seventh Street NE ramp will see as they continue into the medical district.

Sarah Corizzo, senior marketing communications specialist at UnityPoint-St. Luke's Hospital, said Monday the concept for the mural and sign started with the MedQuarter executive team. The hospital volunteered to use its storage building because it is a major gateway to the district, she said.

Corizzo said the hospital worked with the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art to identify Grant Wood art that would reproduce and fit the site. The medical district is home to the Grant Wood Studio, and so it made sense to feature his art on the mural, Corizzo said.

'MedQuarter property owners have been encouraged to make the MedQuarter more prominent, and this is one way St. Luke's is contributing,” she said.

She said the city's Visual Arts Commission has approved the plans.

The city now has posted pink notification signs on the former truck center building to alert the public that St. Luke's Hospital needs and is seeking a variance so it can place a sign as large as the proposed sign next to the proposed mural. The mural and its size is permitted, but the MedQuarter welcome sign as proposed does not comply with the city's zoning ordinance without a variance.

The city's Board of Adjustment will consider the variance at its meeting at 3 p.m. Jan. 12 at City Hall.

Corizzo said the mural and sign will go up 30 days after a Board of Adjustment approval. The hospital does not need to pay anyone for the right to depict the Grant Wood art work, she said.

Cedar Rapids historian Mark Stoffer Hunter on Monday said St. Luke's building at 625 A Ave. NE was built after World War II as a truck service building. Rapids Chevrolet, which had operated at 601 First Ave. SE, used the A Avenue NE building to service trucks at one point before the business was sold to Pat McGrath and moved, Stoffer Hunter said.

He said the building was built long before Interstate 380 and at a time when no one ever imagined it would be the front door to a new MedQuarter medical district.