Talk of new $50-million City Hall continues despite Tuesday's election; Prosser says Uncle Sam might pay

There's a certain unreality to some of City Hall's discussions right now about key flood-damaged city buildings, particularly the longtime home of City Hall, the Veterans Memorial Building.

That's because there was an election Tuesday in which Ron Corbett soundly defeated current council member Brian Fagan for mayor, and Corbett objects to the city building a new $50-million city hall, as does newly elected at-large council member Chuck Swore.

Runoffs for two of the nine council seats are slated for Dec. 1.

Even so, much of the talk to the City Council last night from consultant Dan Thies, president/CEO of OPN Architects Inc., and City Manager Jim Prosser was about a new city hall as the city prepares for the third in a series of open houses on public facilities on Nov. 17 and 18.

A frustrated council member Monica Vernon at one point told Thies and Prosser that she wanted to hear about options that would put some city employees back in the Veterans Memorial Building, some in what will be a city-owned former federal courthouse and others in other downtown buildings.

Vernon doesn't accept many of the premises that Thies and Prosser are using to make a case for a new city hall, such as the need to have many city employees under the same roof, what Prosser calls a building with “full functionality.”

Vernon said she needs to see some proof that the city can't be fully functional just because some city employees aren't sitting next to one another.

Prosser said the open house on Nov. 17 and 18 will include options other than building a new city hall, options with what he called “limited functionality.”

Council member Chuck Wieneke said a $50-million city hall might make sense compared to the cost of keeping employees in several buildings over time.

Prosser repeated what he has said before: That the city might convince the federal government to pay for a new city hall in a centralized “civic campus” of buildings. This could be the “one opportunity” to get funding for “something really unique,” he said.

What is certain is that the city is going to replace its flood-ruined downtown library with a new one as well as build a new Intermodal Transit Facility.

Thies and Prosser said putting those two buildings and a new City Hall next to one another would allow them to share parking, perhaps a geothermal energy system and a meeting room.

Thies assured Vernon that the library project could move ahead independent of talk of a new city hall.

The city continues to work on buying a two-plus-block downtown site now occupied by a Pepsi warehouse operation. An adjacent block across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park, which now houses the offices of TrueNorth, figures in a couple of the plans. In one, the park would expand to two blocks, and in another, the park would add an extra half block with the library built on the block's other half. The library would face the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art in that option.