City council majority eager now to save Sinclair smokestack; a city is defined by what it preserves, says Podzimek

CEDAR RAPIDS - Life for the historic, 180-foot-tall Sinclair plant smokestack looks a little more promising.

The City Council last night voted to immediately hire a structural engineer to quickly ascertain the structural integrity of the smokestack even as demolition on the flood-and-fire-damaged former packinghouse moves ahead around it.

The immediate complication in saving the smokestack is trying to do so without stalling the demolition, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency is paying millions of dollars to do, but only because the agency has deemed the plant's buildings an “imminent threat” to public safety.

Under current OSHA work rules at the site, demolition must stop as soon as the work gets within a distance of one-and-half times the height of the smokestack, Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director informed the council last night.

Council member Tom Podzimek, who spoke passionately about the city keeping the smokestack as a link to its past, also called on the city to push OSHA to modify its rule to allow demolition work closer to the stack.

Podzimek advocated using local hotel-motel revenue if necessary to pay to reinforce the smokestack, which will allow the demolition of the plant to proceed to conclusion while the city's Historic Preservation Commission, the community and the city figure out where additional money will come from to fully restore the stack.

Eyerly called on the council to immediately get moving to assess and stabilize the smokestack, noting that the stabilization, if not done quickly, could interfere with demolition and also stop the demolition effort.

He said the goal is to complete the entire demolition by winter. All the plant's debris is being treated as if it contains asbestos, which means it must be wet down as the demolition proceeds. Winter prevents the use of water for the work, Eyerly noted.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission is advocating that the smokestack be saved, and the commission's chairwoman, Maura Pilcher, made the case for doing so.

She pointed out that the FEMA just Tuesday said that between $150,000 and up to $200,000 in FEMA historic preservation funds will be available for the smokestack project, which, by current estimates, could cost between $115,250 and $508,757 to stabilize and, perhaps, as much as $690,000, by one estimate, to both stabilize and restore.

But Eyerly noted that a good engineering assessment and bids for the work will be needed to firm up prices.

Podzimek and council members Justin Shields and Monica Vernon strongly advocated for preserving the smokestack. Vernon lamented that the old train depot in Cedar Rapids was knocked down, and she said she still thanks Jackie Kennedy for stepping in to save the Old Executive Office Building that sits next to the White House.

For now, only council member Chuck Wieneke voted against preserving the stack. He said there were “too many ifs” and he said he didn't want to jeopardize the costly demolition of the Sinclair plant using the federal government's money.

Eyerly noted that it might cost the city $40,000 if local demolition contractor D.W. Zinser had to stop the plant demolition for work on the smokestack. Such a fee drew a word of anger from Shields, who noted that Zinser had made millions on flood-related demolitions in the city.