Prosser suggests downtown Pepsi site could house government campus

At a noon meeting Wednesday, City Council member Justin Shields distilled all the recent talk about “co-locating” local government facilities this way: The City Council, he said, wants Linn County and the Cedar Rapids school district to share a new administration building, at least in part, to help pay for it.

“The city is very interested in trying to make this work,” Shields said. “The cost will be huge for the city (without any partners).”

Shields represented the City Council at the meeting on co-location with Linn County Supervisors Lu Barron and Ben Rogers and with Melissa Kiliper-Ernst, president of the Cedar Rapids school board.

City Manager Jim Prosser and Dan Thies, president/CEO of OPN Architects, attended along with some others. OPN is providing consulting services to the city and school district as they and Linn County each wrestle with how to rebuild or replace flood-damaged administration buildings.

At one point in Wednesday's meeting, the county's Barron noted not a lot of spots are at the ready and available in Cedar Rapids for the construction of new public buildings, particularly in the core of the city.

City Manager Jim Prosser responded by saying the city is negotiating with PepsiAmericas to buy more than two blocks of warehouses in the downtown on which to build a new Intermodal Transit Facility. There would be sufficient excess land “for a potential government campus” on the site, he said.

After the meeting, the county's Barron said she was aware of that while Rogers said he was not.

Both said they favor asking the public about the co-location concept at upcoming county open houses. But Rogers noted the county already has hard cost numbers to show for four other building options, none of which would involve a new building.

Barron said, too, that Linn County remains on its own “aggressive” timeline, in which it hopes to have feedback from the public to present to the state I-JOBS Board before Thanksgiving. The I-JOBS Board earlier “deferred” the county's request for $8.8 million in I-JOBS funds to help renovate the county's existing, flood-damaged Administrative Office Building, Barron and Rogers noted.

Both the county and the school district earlier this year rejected the idea of co-location, which the City Council resurrected after city open houses in September revealed a new City Hall could cost more than $50 million.

As recently as the mayoral candidate forum on Tuesday evening at Coe College, council member and mayoral candidate Brian Fagan expressed optimism that the idea of co-location might still gain some traction. Fagan said co-location did not necessarily mean building a new building.

However, at Wednesday's meeting of city, county and school district representatives, the discussion about co-location centered on building a new building.

Much of Wednesday's meeting centered on the open houses coming up for all three entities. The school district has one scheduled Oct. 20; the county has five scheduled between Oct. 26 and 29; and the city has them set for Nov. 17 and 18.

At one point, Prosser said he didn't want to offend anyone, but he said the purpose of the Wednesday meeting was, in part, to prepare for the coming open houses so that the public best understands the pluses and minuses of co-location.

He said the public especially expects such an examination from the city because the city's damages from the flood and decisions related to it are “so huge.”

Melissa Kiliper-Ernst, president of the Cedar Rapids school board, said she “appreciated” what Prosser said, then added, “I think we've done that.”

Kiliper-Ernst said that she had not heard a “groundswell of support” for co-location from the public or the school board. Instead, the school board is eager to push forward on its own options for an Educational Services Center, two of which would re-purpose existing buildings and two of which call for building new.

Kiliper-Ernst pointed out that location seemed important to Linn County because of what Barron said was the high traffic that county services generate. Barron thought a central location also would require less time on buses for people to get to county services.

On the other hand, Kiliper-Ernst said, the public generally does not come to the school district's services center. A central location isn't that important, she said.

The city's Prosser expressed interest in being able to present information about the possible county and school district building options at the city's open houses as the city presents the co-location option.

OPN's Thies said talk has been “percolating” in the community about what more can be done to control government costs.