Latest idea: 'Co-locating' new City Hall with new downtown library

The latest effort to build a case for a new $50-million City Hall apparently involves tying some of its construction and operating costs to the costs of building a new $45-million public library.

A passing comment during a presentation last week to the City Council by city staff and a city consultant about “co-locating” a new City Hall and the new library prompted some members of the library board to request a meeting with city staff and members of the City Council, Doug Elliott, library board vice president and head of the board's building committee, said on Monday.

“We were surprised to learn of it,” Elliott said of the comment about co-location.

Council member Monica Vernon on Monday said she was equally surprised.

Furthermore, Vernon said she has no interest if holding up the construction of a new library, which she said many in the city support, by pairing it with a “City Hall deal” that she said many, including her, do not support.

“I'm not interested in marrying the most popular thing (the library) with the least popular one (a new City Hall),” she said.

The library board's requested meeting was held early Monday morning in private.

After the meeting, Elliott said he and three other members of the library board attended along with council members Vernon and Justin Shields, City Manager Jim Prosser, two other city staff and a representative from consultant OPN Architects Inc. of Cedar Rapids.

Elliott noted that the next round of City Hall open houses on the city's key flood-damaged city facilities are set for Nov. 17 and 18, and Monday's meeting was partly to prepare for the open houses.

Elliott said City Hall has been studying the co-location idea for the better part of a year, though he said the library board never got any “big nibbles” about the idea before.

Most talk of co-location has centered on the city, Linn County and/or the Cedar Rapids school district, all of which have flood-damaged administration buildings, sharing an administration building or a campus of buildings. The county and school district withdrew from talks months ago, and the city's recent effort to revisit the matter has not brought results.

Monday's meeting revealed that co-location can mean sharing a building or sharing a campus that houses separate buildings, Elliott noted.

He said the library board feels obliged to look at any and all options that might help lower the cost of the new downtown library to replace the flood-ruined on First Street SE.

At the same time, one of the “guiding principles” of the library board is that the new library be the “dominate partner” in any kind of arrangement in which it might share space with another entity, he said.

“We want to be sure the library is still a conspicuous function of any shared structure,” Elliott said. He noted that city government is a “big function” with which to share something.

At Monday's meeting, Elliott said the library board also expressed concerns that any effort to co-locate a new City Hall with a new library might slow down the construction of the downtown library.

In the end, though, the library board realizes it is the City Council that will make decisions about where the new library and any other new city building will go, he said.

The City Council and City Manager Jim Prosser have said they are in negotiations to purchase a two-block site just off the downtown now used by PepsiAmericas as warehouse and office. The city's plan is to build the long-delayed Intermodal Transit Facility on the site, but that new structure will take up only part of the PepsiAmericas site.

The site is close to a site that now houses TrueNorth across Fourth Avenue from Greene Square Park, which has been called one of two “preferred sites” for the new library. The second preferred site is between First and Second avenues SE and Seventh and Eighth streets SE.

Elliott said the city also considers a site between Fifth and Sixth streets and Fourth and Fifth avenues SE - next to the TrueNorth site and across from Waypoint and the women's shelter for women and families - as a site in play for new city buildings.

Elliott said the new library actually could achieve some cost savings if it shared parking with another building or was built near an existing parking structure. He said he also likes the idea of an underground geothermal heating and cooling system – for instance, under Greene Square Park – that might provide service to a new library and other nearby buildings.

Council member Vernon said she is all for finding cost-cutting efficiencies, too.

“On the other hand, we've had too much delay,” she said.

Vernon asked the city's consultant Monday if he knew of other cities that have a library and City Hall in one building. The Iowa cities of Monticello and Ankeny do, she said she was told.