Prospects upbeat for downtown entertainment venues; Theatre Cedar Rapids will be ready with renovated digs in February

Tim Boyle said he needed four words: “Our time is coming.”

That was the message Boyle, executive director of the Cedar Rapids Convention and Visitors Bureau, gave the Downtown Rotary on Monday as he helped detail the progress afoot at the U.S. Cellular Center, the Paramount Theatre and Theatre Cedar Rapids.

Downtown, he said, is about to become a better place than it was before the June 2008 flood temporarily crippled the three, key downtown entertainment venues.

The most apparent immediate change is coming at the Iowa Theater Building, home to Theatre Cedar Rapids at First Avenue SE and Third Street SE.

Casey Prince, managing director of Theatre Cedar Rapids, told the Rotary that the building renovation should be complete by late February for the theatre's production of “The Producers.” The expanded lobby of the renovated theater building will extend into what had been a storefront along First Avenue, and large display windows facing First Avenue will give passers-by an inviting view inside, Prince said. Technology, he added, will let the theatre change the color of the lobby walls, which he suggested would mean differing colors coming out of the windows at night.

Across First Avenue at the city's U.S. Cellular Center, Boyle noted that the city already has secured a $15 million I-JOBS grant, which will fund a major face-lift of the arena as well as permit an assortment of interior improvements, including better lighting and wider concourses.

Boyle also spoke confidently about the hoped-for arrival of bigger news: a $39-million grant from the U.S. Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration, which will pay much of the $52-millon cost for a new convention center, the Cedar Rapids Events Center, next door to the U.S. Cellular Center.

Boyle said the federal grant “seems it will occur in the not too distant future,” a comment that has been echoed in recent weeks by other downtown and city officials.

Boyle said the plans for the Events Center, which will sit on what is now Third Street next the U.S. Cellular Center, call for a two-or-three-story building that will provide 60,000 square feet of display space. That size will rank the Cedar Rapids center second in Iowa behind Hy-Vee Hall's 100,000 square feet of exhibition space in Des Moines, he said.

Boyle noted that the developments at Theatre Cedar Rapids and across First Avenue at the U.S. Cellular Center and at the site of a proposed new Events Center next door are happening exactly where a visiting panel of experts from the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Land Institute said that downtown investment should occur. The Institute's panel said this summer that investment in downtown recovery should start in one small spot, and the panel identified First Avenue and Third Street as the spot for an “iconic attraction,” Boyle reminded the Rotary.

Jim Hoffman, vice president for facilities on the board of Orchestra Iowa, said negotiations between the city and Federal Emergency Management Agency likely will be complete by the end of October on what needs to be done to restore the orchestra's downtown home, the Paramount Theatre. FEMA will pay for much of the work, and a $5 million I-JOBS award should allow the city to install more comfortable seats, expand the stage and improve lighting and acoustics at the Paramount, Hoffman said.

Brad Brown, an architect at OPN Architects Inc., told the Rotary that OPN will lead a team of five firms in the Paramount renovation.