New Central Fire Station and Downtown Library on track; Vernon calls on City Council to drop notion of a $50-million City Hall

The City Council last night seemed ready to move ahead with building a new public library and new central fire station in quick order to replace those ruined by the June 2008 flood.

Key decisions about just where those new buildings will end up - the council and library board have been looking at two sites for a new downtown library - are yet to be made and apparently will come after a next round of public open houses on Nov. 17 and 18.

Council member Monica Vernon said replacing the city's flood-damaged infrastructure and the central fire station and public library were top priorities.

But much of a consultant's presentation to the council last night consisted of a case for building a new City Hall, and after Dan Thies, president of OPN Architects Inc., finished, Vernon told him and her council colleagues that she had lost interest in what OPN of Cedar Rapids has said would be a $50-million City Hall.

The city's temporary City Hall in a northeast Cedar Rapids office park at 3851 River Ridge Dr. NE houses most if not all that had been in City Hall's longtime, still-flood-damaged home in the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island and does so in 31,500 square feet, Thies said in answer to a question from Vernon.

Thies pointed to a space study by a second city consultant, Camp Dresser & McKee Inc., that he said made the case for a 140,000 sq. ft. City Hall called a city services center.

One argument for a new City Hall is the ease with which the public can use it, but Vernon noted that many of the city employees who are housed in the current City Hall never interact with the public at all. That was largely true, she said, of accounting and finance and information technology departments to name two departments. Those in the development department deal primarily with developers, she noted.

“I just think it costs too much to house too many who see too few,” she said of talk of a large new building.

Vernon also discounted the cost model used by OPN that at last month's public open house used life-cycle costs over 50 years to make the case for building a new building. Vernon said cost estimates beyond even five years are iffy.

“I really want to caution us as we look at this,” she said. “The more I looked at this, the luxury of being able to have everybody together … We just can't potentially afford the luxury of having everybody under one roof.”

Vernon, who owns a research firm, said more and more people connect by telephone, e-mail and teleconferencing these days and so they don't all need to be in the same place. She said one of the goals of the council is to have a “walkable” downtown, and she said she could imagine some employees in other downtown buildings if they couldn't fit into city- owned ones.

Council member Kris Gulick said Vernon's comments brought him back to his own comments of recent weeks when he talked about the “fiscal realities of some of the decisions we have to make.”

Council member Chuck Wieneke made the case for a new City Hall, saying that $50 million may be cheap over 50 years if they city pays to house employees in more buildings than necessary.

Mayoral candidate Ron Corbett and three of the five candidates competing for two at-large council seats have said they don't want to build a new building and want to return city government to existing buildings. The city is also slated to take ownership of the existing federal courthouse a half block away from the Veterans Memorial Building. The city gets the courthouse in exchange for buying land where the new courthouse is going up for $1.3 million and giving the land to the federal government.

Last night's presentation by OPN's Thies focused on what he said was the poor layout of both the Veterans Memorial Building and the existing federal courthouse and how relatively little usable space was available in both buildings for city services. The Veterans Memorial Building will need a new stairway and new rest room facilities that will take up what was once usable space, he said.