Life after City Hall

CEDAR RAPIDS - To be able once again to make the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island - which had been home to City Hall before the June 2008 flood, but is no longer - vital and relevant remains the hope of the city's Veterans Memorial Commission.

The hope now is taking a first step toward reality.

The Veterans Memorial Commission is preparing to lease a second-floor office space in the largely empty Vets Building - which is undergoing an $18.5 million, flood-recovery renovation - to the Riverview Center, a non-profit agency with headquarters in Dubuque that provides help to those affected by sexual assault.

The pending lease with the Riverview Center will let the commission fill a small spot on the building's second floor where the city's Civil Rights Commission once had its offices.

It's a start toward the future for the building in the middle of the Cedar River, a building which opened in 1927 and features seven stories on one side and four on the other with a towering, two-story auditorium and a Grant Wood-designed stained-glass window in the lobby as the building's prime attractions.

“We're very grateful that the citizens have supported the commission and the veterans for decades,” Mike Jager, executive director for the commission, said on Monday. “And so we want to make the best possible use of the building. It's a tremendous opportunity. People don't realize what's here, between the Grant Wood window and the size of the facility. It's a real treasure.”

The commission, appointed by the mayor and City Council, envisions that the building might become a bit of a revenue producer for the commission and city as it is used by entities serving and representing veterans and those serving the larger community.

“We also want to make it a community space so you don't have to show you're veterans card to get in,” Gary Grant, a Veterans Commission member, said on Monday.

Jager said the commission is offering a market-rate lease to the Riverview Center.

Space on the first floor of the Second Avenue side of the Vets Building is in the process of becoming a veterans museum. Meanwhile, the Veterans Memorial Commission has taken over part of the third-floor on the building's Second Avenue side that once housed the city manager's office, the city clerk's office and City Council offices.

Jager makes his office in what had been the office of former City Manager Jim Prosser before the 2008 flood. In fact, Jager sits in the same chair Prosser left behind when City Hall left the building after the flood, took up temporary quarters in a northeast Cedar Rapids office park and now has moved into the former federal courthouse down the block from the Vets Building. Jager said he also is negotiating with a couple of entities that provide support services for veterans, including one that helps veterans with substance abuse problems.

Most of the Vets Building's renovation, Jager said, should be complete by the end of the year.