City Council coming home

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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Today's open house and first City Council meeting in Cedar Rapids' new council chambers is a welcome event, a symbolic and practical leap forward in the city's flood recovery.

Many thanks are due to Hiawatha for allowing Cedar Rapids city councilors to use our neighbor's facility for more than a year. That generous cooperative spirit will be recognized.

Still, it will be good to have the seat of city government back in the heart of downtown where it belongs. It's time for council to come home.

The new chambers, in the new City Hall building at 101 First Street SE, the former federal courthouse, will be open to the public from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. today, followed by a news conference and ribbon cutting ceremony from 4 to 5 p.m.

After that, councilors will get straight to work, holding their first meeting in the renovated former courtroom at 5:30 p.m.

Although renovation continues in the rest of the building, city officials say most City Council meetings will be held in the new chambers on third floor.

When renovations are complete next summer, the new City Hall building will house offices for the mayor and City Council, City Manager Jeff Pomeranz, the city clerk and departments of finance, community development, housing services, land development and human resources.

Although the decision to move council meetings from their longtime home in the also-flooded Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island was not without controversy, city officials made the right move in choosing the former courthouse.

Because of their decision, a valuable, well-built historic building will be put to good use, at a lower cost to taxpayers than new construction.

The historic courtroom will accommodate large public meetings and serve as a suitable backdrop for debate of current weighty issues.

We hope the setting will produce much wisdom, vision and openness in city government - that the historic room will serve as a reminder that decision-makers bear much responsibility.

That the city has weathered tough times previously is made explicit in the newly restored wall-length mural “The Opening of the Midwest.” When Francis Robert White - once a member of Grant Wood's Stone City Art Colony - painted that wall-length mural for the Works Progress Administration, the country was in the heart of the Great Depression.

While that was perhaps our most difficult period in most ways, the city has faced adversity many times, most recently the flood of 2008. The future undoubtedly will bring more challenges.

With leadership and vision, and plenty of community spirit, we'll get through those, too. Occupants of our new City Hall must continue that quest.

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