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| Micro-area map |
(2/12/2026) Can a historic neighborhood business district near downtown be reincarnated in the 21st century?
The City of Cedar Rapids is preparing a Corridor Redevelopment Plan for First Avenue East between 12th and 16th Streets, roughly the same area as covered in the First Avenue East Micro-Area Action Plan adopted in 2025 (Nieland 2025). That plan, while not bold, took notice of the problems that have accumulated over the years in this area:
- It is historically a neighborhood business district in an area where housing stock and population have been declining for decades
- So, businesses have neither the surrounding population to support a neighborhood business nor parking capacity for chain retail
- It is the main commercial street for the Mound View and Wellington Heights neighborhoods, but with 20,000 cars a day along five lanes it mainly serves as a highway between Interstate 380 and points farther out
- So, walking across or along 1st Avenue is highly unpleasant and dangerous
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| Modest development across 1st Avenue from Coe College |
Ideas to mitigate these problems in the 2025 plan included more crosswalks, street trees, and business recruitment. The Corridor Redevelopment Plan is a sort of adjunct to the Micro-Area Action Plan, focused on design elements. Its stated goal is providing "a coordinated vision for new buildings, public spaces, and street improvements to support reinvestment."
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| Former Hy-Vee Grocery remains vacant nearly two years after closing (picture taken from A Avenue facing 1st Avenue) |
The city held an open house this week at Coe's Alumni House, at which they invited public comment on the Corridor Redevelopment Plan. Display boards located around the room looked very specific, but in fact they were imaginative concepts showing what a little nudge from the city might produce. What the city is committing to, if that's not too strong a phrase, is planting street trees and working with the State of Iowa to slow traffic, narrowing lanes and possibly inserting a tree lined median. (1st Avenue is also State Route 922 and Business U.S. 151.)
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| Hypothetical locations of new development (The mixed-use building with interior parking is at the former Hy-Vee site) |
Also: Emily Stochl, who co-owns the Cafe Allez that has been fixing to move into the old Brewed Awakenings space at 1271 1st for quite awhile, told me 13th Street SE will become two-way, which would make access to that block from 1st much easier. Betsy Bostian from the city planning department told the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association Tuesday night that the city was also going to try to rectify the crossing at 16th Street. Coe College is also willing to make some of their unused space east of campus temporarily available.
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| Some of Coe College's vacant land in the Mound View neighborhood |
From these improvements might come more business investment and maybe some housing as well--and if they don't, we'll still have improved safety and dignity for pedestrians, at relatively low cost. A plaza was shown at 14th Street and 2nd Avenue, across from the Commonwealth Apartments, though its provenance was unclear.
There were a lot of critical comments posted at the Coe open house, mainly complaining about slowing traffic on 1st, as well as missing some amenities like a grocery store and pharmacy. I'm all for having those amenities, too, but the current business models for groceries and pharmacies seem to require large buildings and large parking lots, neither of which is available in this historically neighborhood retail area.
The Wellington Heights neighbors exposed a flaw in the rosy scenario portrayed on the display boards. Efforts to develop the target area could easily fall afoul of the zoning process. The neighbors seemed primarily concerned with unwelcome uses, like smoke and vape shops and parking garages. The city people encouraged them to use the zoning process to voice specific concerns, but zoning is famous for derailing even good development by escalating time and costs (cf. Gray 2022). I feel the city should adopt a form-based code for this area to forestall this.
I think if the loudest voices prevail, 1st Avenue is doomed to be an underperforming stroad for the rest of time. I think, however, that the city is facing some other imperatives. With the state cutting property taxes on an annual basis, and city population not growing, Cedar Rapids just cannot let some of the most valuable property in the city rot. They simply have to do something to restart it, and if they can do it without kickstarting an ambitious housing program (my preference), so much the better. I hope the City Council sees it that way!
City of Cedar Rapids 1st Avenue East Corridor Redevelopment Plan and Micro-Area Action Plan page
EARLIER POSTS:
"Could 1st Avenue East Be a Grand Boulevard?" 1 July 2024
"Crossing Cedar Rapids' Busiest Intersections: 1st Avenue," 8 August 2023
Reducing vehicle speed and improving the pedestrian experience are good, solid steps for the city to take. The problem is that area needs substantial private investment in order to improve, which the city government has precious little ability to create or direct.
ReplyDeleteThe city of CR is actually pretty good at using all the levers they have to encourage investment, and those levers aren't enough to get private money flowing into this area. It does not help that the CR School District has made a number of decisions about this area in previous decades that have encouraged disinvestment.
Filling storefronts with businesses is probably more important to the health of the neighborhood and the city's tax revenue than caring what goes in. A vape shop pays a lot in taxes, and a leased building collects more in property taxes than a vacant building. It will be easier to make the private case for investment in a small business (to a bank for example) if you're entering a market where other businesses already exist.
Ultimately I think the challenge for getting anything done here is that the people who use 1st as a highway are politically more powerful than the people who would patronize the businesses, at least initially, and NIMBYs are more powerful than those who hope that this area could bloom yet. I hope the surge in city interest reflects some imperative that can override these.
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