EDA chief (and former Bloomington, Ind., mayor) in town to talk about agency's $35-million Event Center grant; largest ever made by EDA, he says

CEDAR RAPIDS - John Fernandez, the head of the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration, provided the Noontime Rotary Club with this fact: the EDA's $35-million grant for the city's coming $67-million Event Center project is the “largest single discretionary grant” the EDA has ever made.

Fernandez, who assumed his post with the title of assistant secretary of commerce in September, said the grant is intended to do more than help the city recover and rebuild from its June 2008 flood. The grant, too, has been made with the thought that it will let Cedar Rapids “reposition” itself to compete more effectively in the global economy.

He said the grant would help turn the city's new Event Center project – which will consist of a new $52-million convention center and a $15-million upgrade of the U.S. Cellular Center arena - into an anchor and a “generator of commerce” in the downtown.

The convention center will go up next the arena and Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel complex. In fact, Fernandez spoke in the hotel Ballroom over Third Street NE which is slated to come down to make way for the new convention center.

The EDA also has provided a $3-million grant to the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce to help it build a regional commerce center and business incubator program on the chamber's current First Avenue NE site.

Fernandez credited Congressman Dave Loebsack, D- Mount Vernon, with dogging the EDA to help the city of Cedar Rapids and others in Iowa recover from the June 2008 flood. Loebsack was in the audience on Monday.

The assistant secretary encouraged Rotary Club members to think in terms of regional economic development, and he said the Obama administration is attempting to tailor funding to promote “engines” of regional economic development.

He pointed to Duluth, Minn., as one spot which is having success positioning itself for advanced aviation. He also singled out Austin, Texas, and the states of California and Florida.

Fernandez fielded question from the Rotary audience, Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, asked if the EDA and its push for regional economic development might help the city make its argument that Cedar Rapids is a regional economic engine and so needs a flood-protection system to protect those economic interests. Eyerly noted that the Army Corps of Engineers' benefit-cost formula doesn't take the economic development issue into account.

Fernandez noted that the Obama administration is pushing federal agencies to work in concert with one another.