Downtown Mt. Vernon and Lisbon

 

1st Street NW, Mt. Vernon: Downtown with homey feel

Two small towns in eastern Linn County, Mt. Vernon and Lisbon, have retained pleasant traditional downtowns with historic buildings and nearby residential areas. The towns are growing in population, unlike most small midwestern towns, probably because they're within commuting distance of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Note that Mt. Vernon has grown more (nearly all in the first decade of the 21st century), and is younger and more middle class than Lisbon.

	POP 2000	POP 2020	% INCREASE	% BACH DEG	MED AGE
Cedar Rapids	120,563	137,710	14.2	35	36.4
Lisbon	1,922	2,233	16.2	27	40
Mt Vernon	3,394	4,527	33.4	49	28.2
IOWA	2,926,324	3,190,369	9	32	38.6
USA	281,421,906	331,449,281	17.8	36	38.8

(data from U.S. Census Bureau)

Cornell College in Mt. Vernon brings in some outside money and youthful energy. The campus begins at 5th Avenue SW, and includes the public library. Cornell's enrollment has grown about 7 percent since 2017-18, defying national trends, from 1009 in '17-'18 to 1074 in '22-'23 ("Cornell College Institutional Profile").

101-103 1st St NE, Mt. Vernon (built 1894)

Fuel Art and Espresso is a friendly coffee house, surprisingly full at mid-morning, with a fair number of groups and a lot of interaction between customers. Another coffee house, Little Scratch, is two doors down at 113. There are a variety of bars and restaurants as well. The Lincoln Wine Bar is among the tonier:

125 1st St NW, Mt. Vernon (built 1893)

Their wood-fired pizza is worth the trip over from Cedar Rapids.

Downtown Mt. Vernon abuts the college and several residential neighborhoods. Two blocks from 1st Street, I found this creative reminder to drivers to keep their eyes out for children coming down the hill on 3rd Avenue. "Pres Hill" is left unplowed after snowfalls for use by sledders.

3rd Avenue and 3rd Street NW, Mt Vernon

I rode my bike over to Lisbon. I live in hope for the interurban trail, but for now 1st Street to Lisbon Road (Main Street in Lisbon) is workable. It follows the route of the original Lincoln Highway. There's a wide sidewalk for an alternative to the street.

I didn't get as good a look at downtown Lisbon because Main Street was closed for Sauerkraut Days!

Gearing up for Sauerkraut Days:
South Washington Street approaching Main

Downtown Lisbon is two blocks' worth of Main Street, with one restaurant, a couple of bars, and (gasp!) no coffee. There's also the public library and an arts space. (Parallel to Main is the perplexingly-named Market Street, which has no businesses on it.) You see the same mix of older and compatible buildings as in Mt. Vernon... 

Downtown living: Lisbon Apts, 145 E Main St (1899)

...and a lot of the houses have capacious front porches.

There are several vacant buildings in the downtown area.

Vacant restaurant, 125 E Main St, Lisbon (1877)

When I returned after Sauerkraut Days, I estimated at least a third, and possibly as many as half of downtown buildings are vacant, though the existing stores are very up-to-date.

Gwen's, at 119 W Main St, was a Lisbon institution in an 1894 building mentioned in a Dan Bern/Dan Colehour song, but it has closed

 A recent city survey found 76 percent of Lisbon respondents favoring a "more prominent Main Street with more commercial opportunities" (City of Lisbon Comprehensive Plan 2021-2041, p. 7). This will be even more of a challenge if the center of the town's gravity shifts towards the highway bypass.

Lincoln Square Park, at the corner of Main and Walnut Streets, commemorates the Lincoln Highway and has a nice picnic shelter

Back in Mt. Vernon, just over the boundary line is a short north-south ped/bike trail...

Just off 3rd Street NE

...that goes by the skate park.

Under Hill Skate Park, 331 B Ave NE, Mt Vernon

This gives a safe alternative to the street for the boys who were just leaving the park when I arrived, and could eventually connect up to the planned Interurban Trail to Cedar Rapids.

Lisbon Future Land Use Map
(City of Lisbon Comprehensive Plan 2021-2041, p. 11)

Development along the recently-constructed US 30 bypass is likely to bring in some new property tax revenue to both Mt. Vernon and Lisbon, although that's not a long term winner (see Strong Towns on "The Growth Ponzi Scheme") and may ultimately draw resources away from the town cores and/or the residential neighborhoods. That's for the towns to figure out, for at present they have downtowns worth keeping.

Abbe Creek School Museum, just west of Mount Vernon

P.S. With traffic having been rerouted twice from the original Lincoln Highway, you don't have to get far out of town before you get a real country road feeling. I drank my coffee on the grounds of this one-room schoolhouse built in 1844, kicked off my sandals to walk in the wet grass, and then walked barefoot across the highway to this cemetery, where about half of the occupants seem to be Keplers.

Abbe Creek Cemetery

Bypasses and suburban development

(Video: US 30 construction from Cedar Rapids Gazette)

Two substantial highway projects are underway in Linn County: extension of Iowa 100 around the northwestern side of Cedar Rapids, and diversion of U.S. 30 to the south of Mount Vernon and Lisbon. With total federal and state commitment in the mid-nine figures, it’s worth asking what impact these projects will have on our towns? With widening Interstate 380 between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City also still a live option, what does all this rural concrete say about the vision for our future?

These bypasses will have different effects than the bypasses around small towns I surveyed in my last post. Those moved through traffic out of the center of town, but besides that had no immediate effect, either positive or negative, on the towns themselves. In Linn County we’re dealing with one entirely new road, and one replacement for an existing two-lane bypass. Moreover, we’re dealing with them in Iowa’s second-largest county, one that has seen 17 percent population growth since the 2000 census (average for the U.S., but much faster than the whole State of Iowa). The Cedar Rapids metro area presents a more dynamic context than do the towns in the last post; so, given that change is already happening and ongoing, what will the bypasses contribute to it?

Commercial strip on Bus US approaching 151/13 bypass (Google Earth)

Officials in each town anticipate the bypasses will accommodate, indeed will facilitate, future growth. (The population density of the city of Cedar Rapids is a modest 1,189/sqmi, but we do like our personal space.) Cedar Rapids projects a 2035 population of 161,073, assuming 1 percent annual growth, a gain of 29,000 from the current estimate of 132,228 (EnvisionCR 54). Cedar Rapids's future land-use map anticipates the area around the new highway to be a mix of commercial and "urban medium-intensity" characterized by 4-12 units per acre, a "high-connectivity grid pattern" and "transportation, housing and shopping choices in close proximity to each other" (EnvisionCR 69). 

Future land use map including areas to be annexed (Envision CR 67)

Mount Vernon's map shows a mix of "suburban residential," "general commercial," and "business park."

Future land use map including areas to be annexed (cityofmtvernon-ia.gov)

Lisbon is still working on their map, but they too are bullish on the town’s expansion. City Administrator Connie Meier told the Gazette: We’re hoping to grow the community by having developments up to the bypass, hopefully on the east side of town and south of town, and also incorporate some commercial business along the bypass (Payne 2018: 11A).

The most likely outcome of federal-state highway spending and local growth ambitions is suburban sprawl, by which I mean low-density, car-dependent, loosely-controlled expansion into unsettled areas. Here’s why:

((1)) The new and expanded highways will induce demand, but even so the areas available for expansion would accommodate growth beyond the most optimistic projections. Eyeballing, the area around Highway 100 adds about 20 percent to the Cedar Rapids current area; at current density that would add over 26,000 residents. Mt. Vernon expects to spread not only to the new U.S. 30, but southward along S.R. 1, and as new U.S. 30 swings south it provides Lisbon with plenty of room to grow. So I'll say to fill up all three areas even at low suburban densities would take at least 30,000. That's nearly double the three towns' combined growth between 2000 and 2016, and equals the optimistic growth projection for Cedar Rapids alone. Development is going to be low-density here, and unless economic development and demand for labor ramps up in a hurry, the newly-opened areas will add residents by competing for existing residents with other parts of the county. 

((2)) Because development will occur before annexation, the future land use maps are merely suggestive. This limits their influence on the nature of development, for all that Mt. Vernon city administrator Chris Nosbisch tells the Gazette "it's imperative" for the new commercial area by the bypass to fit with what the town already has (Payne 2018: 11A; see also Kalk 2018). Town leaders ravenous for “game-changers” will accept whatever’s done.

Newer suburban development south of U.S. 30, Lisbon (Google Earth)

((3)) Previous bypasses, like Iowa 13 east of Cedar Rapids or U.S. 30 to the south, have produced exactly this kind of development. Exits off U.S. 30 in Cedar Rapids lead to the miles of big-box stores and commercial strips along Edgewood Road, Williams Boulevard and other "stroads" in that area, with characteristic swaths of pavement and low tax yield per acre. Entering Marion off Highways 13/151? Same. Residential developments around these highways are either large-lot subdivisions or mobile-home complexes, and never both. (The latter are, admittedly, densely-populated, but in a way that's more efficient for the owner than walkable for the residents). Public transit out here is scanty where it exists at all. The current two-lane, non-limited access U.S. 30 south of Mount Vernon and Lisbon mostly features a typical highway commercial strip of gas stations, fast food and car dealers.

((4)) While the last decade has shown some impressive appetite for walkable urbanism living, particularly among younger consumers and empty-nesters, gasoline is too cheap, commutes too short, and the environmental consequences too remote for this preference to expand enough to reshape our development pattern.

((5)) It’s what developers want to build anyway (Samuels 2015).

Edgewood Road SW, looking towards U.S. 30

The negative consequences of the suburban development pattern have been thoroughly catalogued (for example, in these older essays, "Urbanism Review" and “The Urbanism CLEF”). Inducing more driving stresses the environment, the school system and the local economy. The arterial stroads typically used to funnel traffic through populated areas to the highways have seen the greatest increase in pedestrian deaths ("On Foot, At Risk" 2018). An increasing pile of studies have shown negative health impacts of sprawl (Jackson and Kochtitzky 2009). Sure, Cedar Rapids, Lisbon and Mt. Vernon can use the property tax revenue, generated by anticipated new development around the highways, to fund existing services and older parts of their towns. However, like the energy from a sugar buzz, this can’t last forever, and in the meantime will largely be spreading out the metro area population. Given the proclivity of all three towns to expand in low-density, auto-centric ways, this is not good news; in the long run suburban development over-extends the cities' financial capacity (Marohn 2011). Annexations rarely pay for themselves after the initial infusion of property tax revenue (Nielsen 2018).

The solution to ongoing suburban development probably needs to be cultural change, and depending on who you read and how alarmed they are, the impetus for that may be closer than we now think. In the meantime, we could use a regional governmental entity for Linn and Johnson Counties that has the resources to do long-term planning, make the public case for policies designed for resilience, manage and possibly even limit urban growth, and which shares revenues among all the local governments so that they don’t feel the need to pursue separate sugar buzzes to the detriment of the whole (see also Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl [Island, 2001]).

A resilient city is prepared when current conditions--cheap gasoline, new infrastructure that can go maintenance-free for a while, ready access to federal money, a booming economy--change. Suburban commuting is the opposite of resilient, draws resources away from the city particularly poorer residents, and draws open land and resources away from the natural environment. Sprawling our way into the future is not the way to go.