Upbeat Optimists don’t ask mayor about city manager; instead, they suggest closing Second Ave. SE could turn them into pessimists

CEDAR RAPIDS - Mayor Ron Corbett spoke to the Thursday Noon Optimist Club at noon Thursday out at Veterans Memorial Stadium. And going into the event, he figured club members would pepper him about this week's resignation of City Manager Jim Prosser.

They didn't.

Four of the first five questions from the group related to the city's proposal to close Second Avenue SE between 10th and 12th streets SE so Physicians' Clinic of Iowa can build a medical ‘mall' there.

The Optimists stand and recite a lengthy mission statement after they eat and before the meeting's featured speaker begins, and the statement is all about being, well, optimistic.

Even so, the drift of the questions to Corbett left the impression that closing down Second Avenue SE was enough to turn an optimist into a pessimist.

Why, one club member wondered, can't PCI use skywalks over Second Avenue SE? And another asked if it was possible to have Second Avenue SE tunnel underneath the medical development.

A third wondered if the city really needed to formally designate a Medical District with PCI's new building in it between the two hospitals.

Corbett explained that he and most of the others on the City Council had told PCI they were open to considering the Second Avenue SE closing for PCI's new building. Corbett, though, said that the city had yet to conduct cost studies and traffic studies to see the ramifications of the closure of what is a major arterial street into the downtown.

As the subject continued to come up, the mayor emphasized that the closing of Second Avenue SE was not “a done deal.”

Yes, he continued, PCI may have other options such as reconfiguring how its new building will sit on the property and if the street, perhaps, can tunnel under the complex.

As the Medical District, Corbett said its creation was vital.

One option for PCI apparently was to build its new $44-million complex in Hiawatha, to which Corbett said some have suggested that PCI's physicians would never do that, that the doctors need to be close to the two Cedar Rapids hospitals.

Corbett, though, said PCI easily could have moved to Hiawatha and begun to provide services there which are now provided at the Cedar Rapids hospitals. Before long, Corbett said the metro area would have had a third hospital - the two non-profit hospitals in Cedar Rapids and a private one in Hiawatha.

He said the city isn't ready to give PCI each and everything it might like - including closing Second Avenue SE. But he said the city does want to do what it can to keep PCI in Cedar Rapids.

Thursday's one question about the city manager came from a woman who is on a focus group that provides feedback to city government, and she wondered if that group would continue now that the city manager has left.

Corbett said it is not the intention of him and the City Council to micromanage the day-to-day operation of city government. He noted that a new city manager might have some different ideas from what now are in place.

Corbett told the group that he expected some of city government to move into the former federal courthouse downtown by late fall or early winter, and some of it to return to the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island next year. For now, city hall operates out of a northeast Cedar Rapids office park.

One questioner asked about the condition of the city's streets, and Corbett noted that the cities of Davenport and Waterloo devote their 1-percent local-option sales tax revenue to streets. Cedar Rapids must use 90 or its 1-percent tax through June 2014 for flood recovery and 10 percent for property-tax relief, he noted.

Corbett noted that the City Charter gives the mayor of Cedar Rapids specific responsibilities related to economic development.

He said he has met with four different firms looking at Cedar Rapids and he said he would be meeting on Friday to try to persuade a company to locate 450 jobs in downtown Cedar Rapids.

The mayor said he wants economic-development entity Priority One to try to locate jobs downtown more than it has. He noted that some of the city of Des Moines' largest employers are located downtown, and, while Cedar Rapids employers Rockwell Collins and AEGON USA in Cedar Rapids are not downtown, they both agree that a healthy downtown is key to recruiting new employees, Corbett said.

One questioner asked Corbett if the mayor's job really is a part-time one, and Corbett noted it really wasn't right now. He hoped it might become that is about six months, he said.