10th Anniversary Post: MedQuarter and Westdale

Cedar Rapids Public Library's temporary downtown location,
where ideas for my earliest posts were hatched

In May 2013, I continued the momentum from starting Holy Mountain a month earlier. I posted 12 times, down from 14 the previous month, but not equaled since. I included three photo essays--on downtown construction (while noting the sudden departure of union picketers), my sabbatical spent partly in and around the temporary downtown library in the Armstrong's building, and the installation of the skywalk across 1st Avenue between the Doubletree hotel. I liked being where stuff was happening.

Another type of post I haven't employed as much since is commentary on national politics. I had complaints about scandalmongering, misrepresentations of the Affordable Care Act, and overall dysfunction in Congress. The posts reflected the underlying rationale for concern with place, rather than with place making itself: "The real losers in all this are the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the "other" and the environment," I wrote on May 15.

I was hardly less grumpy about place making in Cedar Rapids, as the month presented two major development projects that looked nothing like urbanism: the development of a medical quarter anchored by our two hospitals adjacent to downtown, and the redevelopment of the former Westdale Mall site into a massive strip mall.

Plans for Westdale, printed in the Cedar Rapids Gazette on May 10, 2013, showed a senior center, a hotel, offices, and "mixed use" development, where there had once been a 1970s-era shopping mall.  Mostly, however, 

This is definitely old stuff. What they're essentially going to do is rearrange the many many parking spaces, and reconfigure the stores. Beyond the parking lots, the new Westdale will be no better integrated into the city than the old one was.... The designers' schematics all show happy people walking, but they all got there by car. Technically you could walk or bike to the new Westdale--just as you can now--but you would be foolish to make the attempt.

The city, for its part, was kicking in $10 million to make this happen.

Some of what they planned has come to pass. I was out there last fall to do Black Friday Parking. It's pretty much a sea of parking and big stores, though.

Westdale, Black Friday 2022

I also saw apartments and a hotel under construction, within easy walking distance of the big stores, but hardly walkable.

The MedQuarter event was mainly to solicit public comment. Their big plan full of promises would come later in 2013. Their goal seemed to be to be more attractive to visitors to the medical facilities, regardless of the impact on the broader community. "This would be done with better signage, prettier landscaping, and clearer branding." And plenteous parking. In 2013 I described the area between 5th and 12th Streets SE as "a large swath of large buildings and large parking lots." And that's still what's there, a great blankness instead of connection between the east side neighborhoods and downtown.

Medical parking lots, January 2018

The development of the MedQuarter and Westdale show that Cedar Rapids remains all in on the car as the normal way to get around. This is understandable--the city is built on cheap real estate and easy access to anything by car--if not commendable. Carrying that forward, and meeting the expectations of current residents, are stronger incentives than adapting to an uncertain future. The density and connections that make walkable areas vibrant and sustainable continue to be afterthoughts, but those are what will get us to a sustainable future for all, not bigger cars and easy parking.

MedQuarter businesses and the city share interests in sustaining viable businesses and job creation. But the city's interests extend beyond that set, and I'm not hearing that the businesses consider that theirs do. I hope the SSMID will do more than turn an empty quarter into an empty quarter with a brand and better signage, but is there any reason to anticipate they will?

Not yet.

Ten years ago, it was enough to revel in my new knowledge and criticize the old ways of doing things. In time, though, the euphoria of the new wears off, and one comes to realize the depth of the challenge in making change. Change is difficult, and slow. Yesterday's Gazette featured a letter to the editor wondering why the city doesn't provide (even) more parking in New Bohemia. Like most of the country, we in Cedar Rapids are used to getting around by car, and if gas is up to $3.50 a gallon, and the weather is occasionally wacky, well, we can get used to that, too. The long haul required of urbanists seems to be considerably longer than a mere ten years!

SEE ALSO: Ellen Dunham-Jones TED talk on "Retrofitting Suburbia"

End of May 2013: the river was up again!