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

The Youth Movement and Cedar Rapids

Census tract 11.02 has gained 153 of the "young and restless" since 2010

The idea factory that is City Observatory reported this week that census data show educated young adults continue to settle in city centers. The researchers looked at population change within a three-mile radius around the central business district in the 52 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. They found the number of those aged 25-34 with at least a bachelor's degree increased in each of those 52 cores; that in the vast majority of those areas the annual rate of increase was greater in 2010-16 than in 2000-10; and that college-educated young adults are 2.5 times more likely than other people to live in these city centers (Cortright 2020).

The site includes a dashboard where you can look at the record for individual metros. For example, downtown Chicago's young educated population was 93,179 in 2016; it increased at an annual rate of 3.5% between 2010 and 2016, down from 4.4 percent between 2000 and 2010. Downtown Washington, D.C. had a young educated population of 99,051 in 2016; its annual increase was 4.1 percent between 2010 and 2016, down from 5.6 percent between 2000 and 2010. Downtown Seattle's young educated population of 53,775 in 2016 was up at an annual rate of 8.8 percent since 2010, after rising a mere 3 percent annually between 2000 and 2010.

Highlights of Table 4 (Cortright 2020: 13)...

Biggest downtown populations, aged 25-34 with bachelor's degree+

New York NY 242,380

San Francisco CA 116,248

Washington DC 99,051

Chicago IL 93,179

Boston MA 90,889

NEXT: Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland OR

#52: Las Vegas NV 2,393

Largest population changes, 2010-2016, aged 25-34 with bachelor's degree+

San Francisco CA 25,213

Seattle WA 22,120

Washington DC 21,400

Philadelphia PA 21,395

Boston MA 20,799

NEXT: Chicago, Denver, New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Dallas

#52: Rochester NY 279

Largest annualized rate of change, 2010-2016, aged 25-34 with bachelor's degree+

Detroit MI 16.0%

Phoenix AZ 12.9

Indianapolis IN 11.3

Nashville TN 10.4

Kansas City MO 9.5

NEXT: Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, Richmond, Oklahoma City

#52: Rochester NY 0.4%

Cortright concludes that cities continue to attract well-educated young adults, limited only by housing supply (see New York City), demonstrating "strong and sustained demand for urban living" in spite of rising costs and how easily technology facilitates mobility. This seems to sustain even in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, as early data from Zillow and Apartment Finder show searches in downtown areas actually increasing. The concentration of talent in cities, and within cities, in close-in urban neighborhoods is a key characteristic of the increasingly knowledge-based, urban economy that primarily drives US economic growth.... [H]aving an urban environment that both attracts and retains these talented workers is an essential part of any local economic development strategy (Cortright 2020: 3; see also Herriges 2020, Patino 2020).

Cedar Rapids is, of course, a much smaller city than those in Cortright's dataset, but a first pass with U.S. Census Bureau data shows similar growth in the young educated population of our core.

A three mile radius around the center of the business district roughly extends from Edgewood Road on the west to Forest Drive on the east, and from Wilson Avenue on the south to 29th Street/Coldstream Avenue on the north. That area includes, more or less, census tracts 11.01, 11.02, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27. Following Cortright (2020: 23), data are from the American Community Survey's 5-year estimates, comparing the 2012 and 2018 surveys (to which Cortright refers by their midpoints, 2010 and 2016). 

Between the 2012 and 2018 surveys, the Cedar Rapids metropolitan statistical area as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau increased its population of young educated people by 1,578, dispersed this way:

    Linn County 1,510

        Cedar Rapids 1,114

            downtown core 499

            rest of city 615

        Marion 117

        Hiawatha -227

        next five towns in size 125

        rest of county 381

    Other counties 68

The core of Cedar Rapids, defined as those 13 census tracts I listed above, increased in population from 42,568 to 42,852, a scant 0.67 percent, much smaller than the 7.5 percent gain in the largest metros reported by Cortright (2020: 11) . The young educated population in the core increased at a much higher rate, 30.8 percent, from 1,619 to 2,118. This is comparable to the 32.8 percent overall for the largest metros (Cortright 2020: 12), and much larger than the city as a whole (17 percent) or the Cedar Rapids metropolitan statistical area, which grew about 12 percent in young educated population. Outside of the city limits, experience was mixed. Some towns outside Cedar Rapids added well-educated young adults, albeit from tiny bases. Lisbon grew 333 percent (42 to 140), Mt. Vernon 21 percent (285 to 344), and Fairfax 15 percent (74 to 114). Linn County outside of its eight largest towns actually grew 67 percent (570 to 951).

Some tracts within the Cedar Rapids core dramatically increased their well-educated young adult population, though there were other neighboring tracts where that group decreased. Big increases were noted in 11.02 (Ellis Park west to Edgewood Road), 12 (east of Ellis Park along the river), 23 (east of Edgewood Road between 1st and E Avenues), 24 (stadiums west to Edgewood Road) and 26 (Czech Village and Hayes Park) on the west side, and 13 (Cedar Lake and the northern Mound View neighborhood) east of the river. For what it's worth--the tracts are not contiguous--these six increased their combined young educated population from 451 to 778, a gain of 72.5 percent .

Census tract 27, which has seen some very prominent construction in the New Bohemia district, saw a marginal decline in well-educated young adult population from 102 to 98.

New apartment construction in Oakhill-Jackson (census tract 27)

At this point, you may feel like saying "Nice confirmation," and prepare your clicking finger to move on to the next blog. However, humility compels me to say that:

1. because of how Cortright names his data points ("2010" and "2016"), I initially looked at the wrong surveys ("Big whoop," says a chorus of readers), and...
2. when a fellow uses the 2010 and 2016 surveys, the data for metropolitan Cedar Rapids look... totally different. Between those two surveys, Cedar Rapids's downtown core gained exactly 64 people aged 25-34 with bachelor's degree or higher, a mere 3.6 percent. That's less than the rest of the city (617), not to mention Marion (1,455) and Mount Vernon (130), and barely higher than tiny Lisbon (56).

There may be some volatility due to Cedar Rapids's catastrophic 2008 flood that would be affected by substituting 2006 and 2007 for 2011 and 2012 in the initial wave, or switching 2012-3 for 2017-8 in the second wave. Maybe cohorts of existing residents are aging into or out of the categories at once. Or there may be volatility due to random error in the survey data. Or maybe some of my math is off--only the 2016 and 2018 surveys include raw numbers, so that required calculations for 2010 and 2012--though I did double-check if some number looked weird.

Age 25-34 with bachelor’s or +	ACS 2010	ACS 2012	ACS 2016	ACS 2018
Cedar Rapids city	6252	6457	6933	7571
13 core tracts	1779	1619	1843	2118
Marion	846	2010	2301	2127
Hiawatha	331	530	382	303
Mount Vernon	101	285	231	344
7 LC towns not CR	1586	3246	3283	3261
Rest of Linn Co	1812	570	946	951
Tract 12	64	38	73	78
Tract 24	203	108	246	227
Tract 26	31	18	74	136
Tract 27	85	102	33	98

In any case, I'm not as confident in the robustness of what I reported above as I might have been if I'd just run it correctly the first time and left it at that.

There are other reasons to question how much Cedar Rapids's experience would match that of major metros. One way in which Cedar Rapids clearly differs is its lack of density, which when paired with its small size makes it very easy to get around as long as you own an automobile. If the reason to live in the core of a major city is to be close to the employment and entertainment action (Cortright 2020: 6-7, citing several studies including a 2015 NBER paper by Edlund et al. and a 2020 Knight Foundation/Urban Institute paper by Scott et al.), a short drive from anywhere in Linn County puts you smack in the center of the Cedar Rapids action. It takes about as much time on a Saturday afternoon to drive to downtown Chicago from 4950 N. Ashland Av (former address of my grandparents) than it does to drive to downtown Cedar Rapids from Mt.Vernon, but here the drive can practically be door-to-door, with parking plentiful and often free once you get to your destination.

My friend Chris Draper, a private economist and planner, suggested the earlier age of marriage and childbearing in Cedar Rapids might make closeness-to-entertainment less of a concern for young educated people. According to the Census, 37.1 percent of Cedar Rapids women aged 20-34 are married, which is about double the typical percentage for major metros. So that may be one factor encouraging young educated Cedar Rapidians to locate away from the city center. On the other hand, it doesn't explain differences between major metros. San Francisco (23.2) and Seattle (26.3) actually have higher percentages of young married women than Rochester, New York (16.0).

Cortright (2020:14) suggests one reason for low growth among young educated people in metros like New York City and Washington, D.C. is lack of available housing. That may apply to Cedar Rapids as well? We have a lot of pricey condominiums in the city center, as well as income-controlled apartments, but how much in between?

SEE ALSO: "Where are the Suburbs?" 24 June 2019

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.