City Hall must repay feds as new Intermodal bus depot refuses to become reality

CEDAR RAPIDS - City Hall has had plenty of trouble over nine or so years trying to spend $9 million in federal money for a new Intermodal Transit Facility.

The latest development: The city now has to pay the Federal Transit Administration back a total of $570,000, which is the part of the FTA's $9-million grant that the city used in late 2005 to buy a half block of property on Second Street SE between Sixth and Seventh avenues SE.

However, the Intermodal facility, which back then featured a 500-space parking ramp with it, never got built on the Second Street SE site. Instead, in late 2007, a new City Council concluded it didn't make sense to build a new transit facility within shouting distance of the existing Ground Transportation Center bus depot.

Then there was the June 2008 flood, a proposed new site for the Intermodal on property owned by a Pepsi warehouse and maintenance operation between Fifth and Sixth avenues SE, and now nothing but questions about the Pepsi site as well.

These days, the Downtown District continues to agitate for a new parking ramp on the Second Street SE site where a ramp and Intermodal facility had been slated to go back in 2005. At the same time, Mayor Ron Corbett has talked about moving back into the flood-damaged Ground Transportation bus depot on First Street SE, at least temporarily.

In paying the federal transit agency back the $570,000, the City Council actually will be allowed to open an interest-bearing account and deposit the money in that account for safekeeping. The city can then use the money to buy some other site for the Intermodal, if that's what the City Council decides to do.

By parking the money in a special account, the city also will be allowed to use or sell the Second Street SE site.

At the top of the list of prospects for the site is a parking ramp, according to a city staff memorandum to the City Council.

By the way, City Hall has given federal and state money back before. Actually, the city gave the state Vision Iowa program back money twice in the 2000s: $10.5-million for the RiverRun redevelopment project and $5 million for an offshoot of RiverRun called Cedar Bend.