Vernon is as passionate as Shey in support of TrueNorth site for library; coming council debate should be something

Council member Monica Vernon could not be reached last week to make a comment about her thoughts on where the city's proposed $45-million library should be built.

On Tuesday, though, Vernon said she was firmly in the same camp as council member Pat Shey: The site she likes most - none other compares, she says - is the TrueNorth site across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park.

Vernon says she likes the idea of having the new library as one bookend for Greene Square Park with the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, which sits across Third Avenue SE from the park, as the other bookend. She also likes the idea of using the TrueNorth site to expand the park and then to build the library beyond it.

The city has been in exploring the purchase of the two-plus-block property beyond the TrueNorth site – PepsiAmericas operates a warehouse and maintenance operation there now - for use, in part, for a new Intermodal Transit Facility. The new Intermodal is proposed to go on the PepsiAmericas property between Fifth and Sixth streets, so conceptually, a library could go on the block next door between the railroad tracks and Fifth Street SE.

Vernon's thoughts on the library site only further assure a captivating debate on the issue once the library board is done with it and it reaches the City Council next month.

The library board has taken a position it had embraced last summer - that the library should go on property untouched by water from the June 2008 flood.

The board likes the Emerald Knights site, between First and Second avenues SE and Seventh and Eighth streets SE, first and The Gazette Communications site, between Second and Third avenues SE and Fifth and Sixth streets SE, second.

Mayor Ron Corbett has said, for now, he also likes the Emerald Knights site as has council member Don Karr.

Other council members are still studying things.

Council member Tom Podzimek has said the one thing that strikes him about the Emerald Knights site is that every time people talk about it they talk in terms of cars getting to it to park. Talk of a site closer to the core of the downtown usually centers around how people can walk from the library to other places downtown. A “walkable” community has been one of the council's goals, he has said.

Podzimek, too, has said that the City Council, which makes any final decision on the library site, is in the process of trying to figure out where to put the Intermodal Transit Facility and, likely, a Central Fire Station. Is the Emerald Knights site better for a fire station than a library? he has asked.

Shey has dismissed the library board's concern that any library site be one which took on no water in the June 2008 flood.

Shey said grading of the TrueNorth site easily can raise a building on the site above the June 2008 flood level.