Shields says City Council needs to help save Sinclair smokestack

CEDAR RAPIDS -- Save the Sinclair smokestack is the message from City Council member Justin Shields.

At the council's Tuesday evening meeting, Shields offered a passionate defense of the smokestack when Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, made new mention that the demolition of the flood-and-fire-damaged former Sinclair packing plant was beginning and that a solution to reinforce the structurally unsound smokestack would be needed by late July or early August.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission wants to save the smokestack, and Shields said the council needs to get on board in that effort.

The commission and council meet this morning.

Shields called the Sinclair smokestack “one of the identifying” features of Cedar Rapids. A local labor leader, he said it stands as a tribute to some of the best-paying union jobs in the city from an earlier era and a manufacturing operation that attracted other industries to the city and resulted in the construction of working-class neighborhoods here.

In its time, the Sinclair plant put Cedar Rapids “on the map,” Shields said.

“We ought to restore some of our history,” he said. “ … Just to tear it down because we can is terribly shortsighted.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide the city with some $18 million for the city-owned Sinclair plant to use on alternative projects because the flood-damaged plant can't be reused. Prior to the flood, part of former meatpacking plant had been leased for warehousing and part for small businesses.

A piece of the FEMA money can be used to save the smokestack if the council so chooses, Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, reports.