A 9-0 vote says no new $38-million City Hall; city government will return to May's Island and the former federal courthouse nearby

CEDAR RAPIDS - The three new members of the nine-member City Council campaigned last fall against building a new, $38-million or $50-million city hall, and last night they helped convince the entire council to abandon such an idea for good.

Mayor Ron Corbett suggested last night that any member of the council that favored building a new building had had 21 months since the June 2008 flood to sell the idea to the public, but had not done so.

The best option left to the council, he said, was to return City Hall to its pre-flood home in the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island and to put some part of city government in the former federal courthouse, which the city will own, just down the block.

Chuck Swore, who along with Don Karr joined Corbett on the council in January, called on the council to quickly see what parts of city government it can move into the former federal courthouse, which has had $14 million in renovation work since the June 2008 flood, he noted.

“It's beautiful. We ought to get in there as soon as we can,” Swore said.

City Manager Jim Prosser and his staff presented the council with five possible options related to City Hall, but the council ended up voting in favor, 9-0, on an option proposed by council member Monica Vernon, which she called Option 6.

Vernon's option committed the council to giving up on the idea of a new city hall and, instead, moving to renovate the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building and the already-renovated federal courthouse.

Vernon's idea was that the council could assess what its accurate space needs are as it moves from the temporary city hall in a northeast Cedar Rapids office park and occupies the two downtown historic buildings.

The city staff last night continued to tell the council that city government needed 117,000 square feet of space, and the staff said the options included leasing 60,000 square feet of space in a downtown building or staying in a 30,000-square-foot suburban building even as city government returned to the historic Veterans Memorial Building and the former federal courthouse.

Corbett, Karr, Swore and Vernon rejected the city's staff space and cost figures, and council member Justin Shields simply joked at all the figures.

Council members Pat Shey and Tom Podzimek spent a little time talking about the need to look at operating costs over 50 years rather than upfront capital costs, which they suggested might make a case for building a new city hall.

But Karr and Swore dismissed the idea, saying that the historic buildings were likely to be every bit as energy efficient as a new building.

Vernon saving and using historic structures is good way to practice “sustainability.”

Vernon said occupying the Veterans Memorial Building in tandem with the federal courthouse - the city gets the courthouse in a trade for the land on which the new courthouse is being built – will provide more space than the city ever had at the Veterans Memorial Building before the flood.

Some workers now in the Public Works Building, who were slated to move into a new city hall, will stay where they are now.

“If you believe the premise that we need 117,000 square feet…,” Vernon said. “We don't want to have a mausoleum where people come in and they have these huge executive offices. I think we can make it work.”

Corbett credited council member Shields with working state lawmakers hard for additional state I-JOBS funds. Corbett said the hope is that the city will receive I-JOBS money to help with renovation costs at the Veterans Memorial Building not covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and for some renovation work at the federal courthouse.

He said he will ask the city manager to begin drawing up plans of which departments will go into which buildings.

"Without forcing that vote, we would have been back and forth for six months on all of this," the mayor said.