City's open houses this week provide plenty to digest; Is a new city animal shelter located at Kirkwood Community College one of the easier calls?

Chewing through all that comes at you this week at City Hall's open houses on key flood-damaged city facilities and the city's parks and recreation system is one big test of a person's digestive system.

Good luck.

During three hours of mingling at Tuesday's event, it seemed like there had been 5,000 people come in and look around. Actually, the number was 283. The more crowded feel, no doubt, came from the 60 or 70 so city employees, consultants, elected officials and others who were there to help answer questions. And it came from 126 poster boards of information, each like another person standing there talking to you.

Arguably, one of the clearer decisions might center on the city's Animal Control operation.

The open house is giving the public three or four options to consider about the animal control operation – which the city wanted to move prior to the June 2008 flood – the central fire station, City Hall, the library, the city's parks system and a couple other things, and so Kent Choate, the police sergeant who has been overseeing the operation in recent years, isn't cheerleading for any one particular option related to animal control.

But two of the four options would put the animal shelter back at the flood-damaged site far out on Old River Road SE either in its former state or with an expansion. Choate notes that the road into the old shelter site starts taking on water when the Cedar River reaches 12 feet, and at 14 feet, a boat is needed to get in. The river reached 31.12 feet in 2008.

A fourth option would be to retrofit an existing building, perhaps one like the temporary shelter the city is now in at 2109 North Towne Ln. NE. The temporary site is acceptable for now, Choate says, but it is too small as is and in a building never designed for an animal shelter.

The third option would have the city build a new facility on land at and donated by Kirkwood Community College. Choate says this option, with a construction cost of $3.2 million, would have benefits for both the city facility and Kirkwood as Kirkwood's  veterinary-technician students and students in related specialties could get first-hand training at the shelter.

The Kirkwood site is nicely accessible, Choate notes, compared to the former shelter site. It's 11 minutes from the Kirkwood site to downtown Cedar Rapids compared to 17 minutes on a tough road from the old site. It takes nine minutes to get downtown from the temporary shelter in northeast Cedar Rapids.

Choate says the city has a two-year lease at its temporary site, with one year now used up on it. The city also can add two years to the lease, a year at a time, if it chooses, he says.