Zombie downtown won't help the rest of the city

At times during Cedar Rapids' city council campaigns, I've worried about the zombie menace.

I'm not talking about any of the candidates, certainly. It's actually all the smacking and hacking aimed at downtown.

Some candidates have insisted that the city is too focused on downtown development, to the detriment of the rest of the city. At a forum last week, at-large hopefuls Carl Cortez and Justin Wasson said the city is spending too much on a downtown convention center and library. Later in the forum, they each said the city should have purchased Westdale Mall.

Do they believe that the city is better off sinking money into a limping 1979 mall than into the historic heart of the city dating to the 19th century? I seriously doubt it.

And what I've learned in four years here is that there are actually two downtowns - one real and one symbolic.

The real one is a place where thousands of people work every day, home to many small, independently owned businesses. The symbolic one is the headquarters of the Chamber, the Downtown District, the dreaded “elites” many believe hold too much sway over city policy. It's the second, symbolic downtown that's really drawing election-year ire. It's usually good politics in this town to divide up and pit your side of town against another.

Otherwise, the criticism makes little sense. Most of the money being used on downtown projects would not be available for spending in other parts of the city. And if someone has hard proof that a declining downtown will be a boon to other neighborhoods, or help us attract jobs and private investment, I'd like to see it.

Maybe you shrug at downtown's demise. But the truth is, death will not come. The real risk is a zombie downtown.

Zombie downtown will linger on with its streets, sewers, water systems, need for fire and police protection, etc., intact beneath its pale, lifeless surface. Zombie downtown will keep on sucking public resources. But its empty buildings and declining property values mean it will pay much less into the public pot.

Zombie downtown won't make Wellington Heights vibrant, spur Time Check, boost the Czech Village or help any part of the city. It will be a money-sucking drain that drags on every taxpayer and every neighborhood.

After the flood, this zombie threat loomed large. So city leaders decided to use the recovery to redevelop the city's core. Maybe you dislike their methods and choices. Maybe it works, maybe it fails. But the risk of doing otherwise would have been much scarier than building a library that's too “fancy” or owning a hotel.

Big picture, long-term, trying to fight off zombies is the right thing to do for the whole city.