Initial steps on Veterans Memorial Building fix now underway; will be fun to see vets commission and City Council sort out who decides what

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's not clear what role Cedar Rapids' elected officials are going to play in the multimillion-dollar renovation of the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island.

The building opened in the late 1920s and, until the flood of 2008, always has been home to City Hall. Most in the city know it as City Hall.

Even so, there's been a long debate over just who is responsible for what in the building – the elected City Council or the Veterans Memorial Commission, which is appointed by the City Council.

At its meeting on Monday evening, the commission sounded in the driver's seat on a renovation that could reach $25 million, Mike Jager, the city's veterans memorial director, has estimated.

Mayor Ron Corbett, who is an ex officio member of the commission, did note at the Monday evening meeting that he asked the staff in the city manager's office to come up with a plan on which city offices might return to the Veterans Memorial Building and which might make the old federal courthouse down the block their new home. The city will own the courthouse in exchange for the city's donation of property for the new courthouse, now under construction.

Corbett and Pete Welch, commission chairman, seemed to agree that fewer city offices will be in the renovated Veterans Memorial Building than had been in the building before the 2008 flood.

The commission is talking about using some of the building's space for a new veterans museum and to have areas to provide services to veterans. The commission and city have hired Neumann Brothers Inc., Des Moines, as project manager and Alt Architecture + Research Associates, Chicago, as project architect.

Just how matters of space utilization and building renovation get sorted out remains to be seen.

The project architect, Paul Alt, told the five commission members on hand Monday evening that he had some interesting ideas on how to use the little-used auditorium space on the first floor of the building's Second Avenue side.

In response, a veteran in attendance - the only person in the audience other than council member Chuck Wieneke, a city employee, architect Alt, Marshall Linn III, who is president/CEO of Neumann Brothers, and a couple of what appeared to be Neumann employees - noted that two local veterans posts wanted to make it clear that “they” did not favor any alteration of the Veterans Memorial Building's Second Avenue side on the first floor from the Grant Wood stained glass window to the auditorium stage.

The commission's Welch wondered who “they” were, and he said he expected that the commission would conduct a public participation process to get some idea of what the future of the Veterans Memorial Building should look like.

The city has received a $4-million I-JOBS grant to help with renovations. Some $12 million in disaster funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay a bulk of the renovation, and Jager has suggested that as much additional FEMA money might be available to help protect the building against future flooding.