Iowa City Episcopal Church files formal objection to The Chauncey tower

IOWA CITY - The Trinity Episcopal Church congregation has filed a formal objection to the proposed 15-story Chauncey tower.

According to a Thursday news release from the congregation, if the owners of 20 percent of the land located within the boundary area surrounding the land proposed for rezoning, it will force the Iowa City Council to pass the proposed rezoning with a supermajority vote.

'The Church reluctantly took this step, only after a great deal of thought and deliberation,” said Ann Holton, a member of Trinity's vestry, in the release. 'This is not merely a question of height. We have concerns about the impact of density on the neighborhood, and its potential for causing parking and traffic problems. We are opposed also to the use of more than $15 million in public funding for a private development, particularly the use of $1 million in affordable housing funds to buy luxury apartments.”

Trinity Church is being represented in its rezoning protest by attorneys Rockne Cole and Christopher Warnock.

The council will vote on the rezoning at an upcoming meeting. Iowa City's Planning and Zoning Commission earlier this month voted 3-3, with commission members Carolyn Dyer, Charlie Eastham, and John Thomas opposed and Paula Swygard absent, to approve recommending a rezoning of approximately 27,200 square feet of the largely city-owned property on the corner of Gilbert and College Streets from public to commercial. The vote means the rezoning failed to reach the council with a recommended approval.

Several members of Trinity Episcopal Church - which has been located across Gilbert Street from the proposed Chauncey site since 1871 - spoke against the rezoning at last week's meeting, arguing that the building's height would block natural light for the church and that it would further reduce already sparse downtown parking options.

Area residents who spoke in favor of the Chauncey, including officials with the Iowa City Downtown District, noted the residential and commercial spaces, as well as the cultural amenities, detailed in the Chauncey plan.

Proposed as a 15-story mixed-use tower, the Chauncey would include two floors of 19,000 square feet a piece, lower-level parking, a 35-unit hotel and eight floors of apartment units. The Chauncey's first two floors would include 100- and 150-seat movie theaters, two six-lane bowling alleys, a cafe, art, and sculpture galleries and an outdoor patio.

It was more than two years ago that the Iowa City Council picked Moen Group as the preferred developer for the city-owned site.

Last year, the Iowa City Economic Development Committee recommended approval of $14.2 million in public assistance for the roughly $49 million tower.