The bottom line is private cars don't scale

Czech Village parking lot, November 2020

My latest brush with fame came last weekend, when the Cedar Rapids Gazette published a long article by reporter Steve Gravelle on the Czech Village-New Bohemia district, suggesting that development in the area has reached a sort of inflection point: 

A wave of new residential and mixed-use building construction over the past decade nearly tripled property values in the neighborhood, from $12.9 million in 2015 to $37 million last year, according to Jennifer Vavra Borcherding, director of The District: Czech Village and New Bohemia.... The recent projects were built on property the city acquired through post-flood buyouts, replacing dozens of single-family homes that were swept away. The shift to high-density apartments and town houses has altered NewBo's historic aesthetic.

The article included a number of quotes from "Bruce Nesmith, who studies urban design and is a founder of the Corridor Urbanists group," including:

Ten years ago, when I started hanging out down here, I hoped it would evolve in the direction of urban village--places for people to work, places for people to shop, places for people to live. It's probably not done that. The direction now is economic development as a tourist destination, which is OK.

I'll own those statements, though I hope my original comments followed "OK" with "but..." or "if...." In any case, despite much new residential construction, commercial development has been specialized rather than fulfilling "normal daily needs;" and that prospects for hotel construction seem optimistic given the city has been unable to find a private buyer for the big downtown hotel it pushed in 2013. I wrote more about all that last fall.

My participation in the article got a fair amount of attention. Several people expressed to me concern about proposed additional development discussed in the article. They told me about the difficulty of parking for events in the district, and worries that additional residential and commercial development would bring more people competing for fewer parking spaces. Not everyone can walk to every place, I was told, which while true, can get psychically translated into "Not anyone should be expected to walk to any place." 

Given the amount of space this blog has given to tracking the vast waste of space that parking lots represent--even on Black Friday--I was resistant to their concerns. Everyone should understand, if they don't already, that car storage takes up enormous amounts of land at low taxable value, increasing the distance between destinations, squashing vibe, and making any other way of getting around inconvenient if not outright impossible. (See Grabar 2023.)

And yet! I'm not here to preach about personal choices, to residents or shoppers. This blog is first and foremost about public policy, which should make personal choices possible. But Cedar Rapids has developed in a way that Czech Village and New Bohemia are heavily dependent on recreational consumers coming from elsewhere, and the vast proportion of those consumers are simply not in a position to get there except by private motor vehicle. That's not the fault of individuals, it's the fault of the community.

The Czech Village-New Bohemia district is basically Edgewood Road, except for being a whole lot cuter. Maybe this all was inevitable, and the urban village was always going to be a pipedream. Or a sales pitch.

Drive-to urbanism is a thing, but without the valuable attributes of real urbanism. (For an egregious nearby example, see Kaplan 2016.) You can't drive your way to real urbanism. Driving requires parking; you've seen the aerial photos of a 75,000-seat sports stadium surrounded by untold acres of parking. Or how many bicycles fit into a single car-parking space. People don't take up much room, but their cars do.

Parking lot, Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg FL

If getting someplace, whether it's New Bohemia or Lindale Mall, requires driving, it's going to require parking. Parking requires way more space per person than practically any other use of urban land. Way more space requires way more city infrastructure without the revenue to pay for it (Mieleszko 2025). Land used for parking can't be used for housing or shops or parks or schools or anything else that contributes to quality of life. Without the ability of people to walk or bike or take public transit to places, locations become placeless. Roads then need to become wider in an (ultimately fruitless) effort to keep up with the demand to drive. This too is a financial loser for the city.

The bottom line is private cars don't scale. I don't know how New Bohemia ultimately solves that problem, but you can't parking lot your way to long-term prosperity.

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Steve Gravelle, "New Bo Comes of Age," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 3 August 2025, 1A, 4-5A

Is it too late to build an urban village(s) in the core?

Mixed use building on 1st Avenue SW in Kingston Village

SOURCE: David Sucher, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village (Seattle: City Comforts Inc., revised edition, 2016)

It is one thing to note the unbalanced, car-dependent way in which Cedar Rapids's showpiece New Bohemia neighborhood--and to some extent, other post-flood areas like Downtown, Czech Village and Kingston--are developing. It is quite a different matter to suggest steps that ought to be taken to remedy matters. It is likely, for one thing, that the present situation has resulted from rational (if short-term-focused) assessment of what is achievable. We have the residential and commercial mix we have because those projects seemed most likely to succeed.

Development surely is constrained by external factors beyond the control of anyone in the core: increasing economic inequality, siting practices of grocery chains, local transportation that particularly favors private motor vehicles, and physical isolation of the core from older residential neighborhoods, to name a few. To name another, the hyper-convenience of the Internet is changing shopping and work habits.

ped crossing island and bike lane, 3rd Avenue and 2nd Street SW in Kingston

I am not in business, and never have been, nor do I have professional training as a city planner. "I know what I like," to borrow a timeworn cliche, but so do a lot of other people, so this needs to be about more than my personal taste and preferences.

A good starting point for a conversation with stakeholders would be to know why they are in the core instead of some other place. I imagine they've specifically chosen to be there, but the owner of the (Downtown) CR Chophouse restaurant blamed its recent closure on the presence of homeless people and the lack of convenient parking (El Hajj 2024). If these truly were problematic, why on earth was the restaurant located where it was? This metropolitan area is replete with commercial opportunities with fields of parking and no homeless for miles. 

3rd Avenue SW: The core has bike infrastructure and bus options,
not great but often serviceable 

Right now the core is heavy on apartments and bars, and light on pretty much everything else (except hair salons--why are there so many hair salons?). It is now the case, and likely to continue to be so for some time, that the economy of the core is heavily dependent on people from elsewhere in the region driving there to shop or dine or drink.

Waste of prime space: Surface parking, Kingston Village

You can be, I would think, the new hot spot only for so long. When I first arrived in Cedar Rapids, the area hot spots were the Amana Colonies and maybe the malls. Today those serve as object lessons: hot spots show their age pretty quickly. If the opening of the admittedly fantastic Big Grove location on 1st Street West has been a body blow to the other bars in the core, wait til you see what happens when the casino opens! Marion has invested a lot of money in restarting its downtown area, but counting on the government may not be your most reliable or timely option. Political decisions are unpredictable, and government finances are ever-shakier.

It seems the best long-term strategy for core areas is to become self-sustaining. That is, if the residential population in the center of Cedar Rapids can become large and stable and diverse enough, there will be a steady source of demand for goods and services throughout the day and week, as well as a steady source of people on the street to provide liveliness and atmosphere attractive to visitors. This will require a different mix of housing and businesses than can currently be found anywhere in or adjacent to the core. Some of this will happen of its own accord once the ball starts rolling, but it may need some advocacy to get started.

David Sucher called his development handbook City Comforts because:

Human comfort is the measure of a city.... The main task [of city building] is making people comfortable, the same task faced by the host at a party. (2016: 20)

The means to this end is mixed-use development, in order to facilitate "mixing" of people, or as he titles an early chapter, "Bumping Into People."

The purpose of mixing uses, allowing different activities to rub cheek by jowl, is to foster more complex and intertwined human relations and thus more interesting places. The purpose is to help create human connections--not to mix activities per se. There is nothing magic about mixing uses. (2016: 32)

wall, 1st Street SW

What an urban village can offer people, that car-dependent shopping corridors like Edgewood or Collins Roads cannot, is accessible, comfortable liveliness. That can be self-sustaining only if there are connections to a steady stream of people at different times of the day, rooted in local residents doing the stuff of daily life. (See Jacobs (1961) 2011: 65-71.)

In subsequent chapters, Sucher provides detailed recommendations, with plentiful illustrations, about transportation, sense of place, safety, child-friendliness, necessities, compatible building, and entry points. Some of this we can see in the core: most building is done up to the sidewalk, most building fronts are active rather than blank walls. (See his chapter 3.) My own sense is we could do more to welcome children, encourage transportation alternatives, and provide necessities like rest rooms, as well as to make new buildings compatible with the neighborhood's physical history, but maybe conversations will reveal other opportunities.

Ellen Shepherd of Community Allies speaks
at Loyola University, 2016

There are a number of organizations that can support local grass-roots place making efforts. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ilsr.org) provides research and advocacy on behalf of locally-owned businesses; co-director Stacy Mitchell's 2017 post, "8 Policy Strategies Cities Can Use to Support Local Businesses," is a good starting point and conversation-starter. Community Allies (communityallies.net), based in Chicago, provides speakers and training towards building local economies. The Center for Neighborhood Technology (cnt.org) focuses on Chicago, but provides experience on which others can draw. 

There are a lot of forces, and a lot of sunk costs, pushing the core to be a quaint, beer-soaked version of car-dependent suburbia. That doesn't mean we can't push back, and there are reasons to believe the long-term viability of the core depends on pushing back.

SEE ALSO: 

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities [Modern Library, (1961) 2011], esp. chs 13 ("The Self-Destruction of Diversity") and 14 ("The Curse of Border Vacuums")

Alexander Garvin, The Heart of the City: Creating Downtowns for a New Century (Island, 2019). His "six lessons for any downtown" (ch. 6) include:

1. Establish a distinctive downtown image that is instantly recognizable and admirable

2. Improve access into and circulation within downtown

3. Enlarge and enhance the public realm esp. reconfiguring space used by pedestrians, moving vehicles, and parking

4. Sustain a habitable environment downtown (trees, parkland)

5. Reduce cost of doing business for both governments and private actors

6. Flexible land use, building use and new construction

The Suburbanization of New Bohemia

900 3rd St SE: Loftus Lofts (186 units) under construction

The New Bohemia neighborhood, located on the east side of the Cedar River south of downtown, was largely decimated by the 2008 flood. What had once been an industrial area with some working class housing and artists' studios suddenly became a tabula rasa. When I started spending serious time here in 2016, several historic buildings had been functionally rehabbed, joined by the New Bo City Market in a former factory-warehouse, and the newly constructed Geonetric building. There was also a great deal of open space. 

1014 2nd St SE, 2012: Where the Row Houses are now
(Google Earth screenshot)

That space, so close to the city center, was going to be filled with something, though for years what that something would be was up to the viewer's imagination. So it was possible for to look out over an area dominated by bars and hair salons and touristy shops, and imagine an emerging urban village, where a diversity of residents would find all the necessities of life as well as food and entertainment within convenient walking distance. There was a time when it seemed a highly likely outcome. It wasn't there yet, but that was okay, because New Bohemia was very much a work in progress.

Big plans for New Bohemia: 2019 Action Plan, p. 40

It's still a work in progress, and ten years from now it will still be a work in progress, so we are far from pronouncing a final verdict, even as some of that open space gets filled up. Quite a few residential units, mostly apartments and condominiums, have responded to the gap in housing, with more in process or proposed. 

Adaptive reuse:
Water Tower Place Condominiums, 900 2nd St SE

 

 

Compatible construction:
Row Houses on Second, 1008-1018 2nd St SE

The Cedar Rapids Gazette, in one of the last stories by ace reporter Marissa Payne (cited below), listed a number of ideas in circulation for some of the remaining lots in New Bohemia:

900 3rd St SE: Loftus Lumber site under construction by Conlon Construction, to be five-story mixed-used property including 186 market-rate apartments ranging from studio to (two) two-story lofts. [In the Action Plan, the 10th Avenue side is projected to be a "shared space street."]

Loftus Building, taken from the Cherry Building

1000 block of 2nd St SE: Conlon Construction proposed a 150-room hotel plus 10 townhomes between 2nd Street and the river, across the street from the Row Houses, on what is now part of a long parking lot. [In the Action Plan, this land is projected for apartments.]

Future hotel site? The federal courthouse is in the background

116 16th Av SE: Darryl High wants to build Vesnice, consisting of one six-story residential building (63 units) facing the river and one four-story mixed use building facing 2nd St with 22 residential units above 1443 sq ft of commercial space. [In the Action Plan, this land is projected for apartments.]

1600 and 1700 blocks of 2nd St SE: Chad Pelley has bought land (from Brett "Bo Mac" McCormick), and intends to purchase additional city-owned parcels on both sides of 2nd Street.

View from the riverside trail of the property under construction, 
New Bo Lofts in the distance

Pelley hopes to build a mixed-use development that's heavy on owner-occupied units. Before he acts, he told the Gazette, "I definitely want buy-in from this neighborhood. What are we missing?" [In the Action Plan, this land is projected for townhouses. 2nd Street will be extended beyond the current cul-de-sac to an unnamed cross street, which will run to 4th Street, past a planned Sinclair Plaza.]

Looking towards the river from the cul-de-sac at the end of 2nd St,
National Czech and Slovak Museum in the distance

Besides these, the Matyk Building, which until recently housed the delightful but financially unsustainable Bohemian (1029 3rd Street SE), is up for sale. Asking price is over $700,000, about double the assessed value. Maybe the hope is someone sees the future value of that land surging? And uses it to build... what? (The only reason I can think of that someone would pay double the assessed value for a property is because they believe it would bring more value with a more intensive use.) 

For sale: Matyk Building

While 1st Avenue East empties out, building and occupying are going gangbusters in New Bohemia. Demand is clearly here, not there. Marissa Payne in the Gazette attributes that to "[t]he NewBo District's arts and cultural scene, entertainment options and a mix of restaurants." Community Development Director Jennifer Pratt told the Gazette: "It is a continuation of what we've seen since the reinvestment after the 2008 flood.... We definitely saw in the market that people were interested in walkable neighborhoods. That has just continued to grow" (Payne 2024).

☁

Friends of New Bohemia are beginning to express anxiety about all the development. A lot of the newest construction has been of the cookie-cutter variety, and some of the proposals are relatively huge. Given that a lot of New Bo's allure relates to its historical character, it should be a no-brainer to insist on compatible form. In the words of the city's Assistant Community Development Director Adam Lindenlaub, "There's an aspect of character that is unique here that you don't see in other parts of the city" (Payne 2024). Beyond that, though, you don't own your view, and when all is working well, the core neighborhoods will be the densest and most valuable in the city.

Inevitably, a lot of the concerns about development in New Bohemia center on parking, particularly for major events. If parking is used by residents, where are the rest of supposed to park? they ask. Sigh. It should no longer be debatable that parking is the enemy of vibe, not to mention wasteful of city finances and land) and no place with plenty of parking is worth visiting (see, for example, Grabar 2023). In this car-dependent city, though, we always imagine ourselves one surface parking lot away from paradise.

Is this heaven? No, but it has a lot of parking!
(New Bohemia on Google Earth, 2019)

And yet, the parking-concerned are not wrong to sense an issue, because New Bohemia has developed in a way that is heavily dependent on traffic from outside, which in the vast majority of cases is going to arrive by personal car. (So has Downtown. Don't even start me on the casino, which the Gazette reports is now Miss America-approved.)

This, then is the real issue: New Bohemia, though still a work in progress, has become a suburb. It is "walkable," to recall Pratt's description, but only for entertainment, and even then walkers must contend with many moving vehicles in search of the same entertainment. Other than that it is a bedroom community. The Czech Village/New Bohemia Main Street District claimed 250 businesses in 2022, but few are significant employers. Schools, groceries, hardware, and pharmacies are far away, and bus service is spotty. There isn't a park (though the west side Greenway will be close by once it's built).

Stoney Point, August 2013: More houses, fewer apartments and bars

The only difference between New Bohemia and, say, the world of Leave It to Beaver, is most of New Bo's housing is multifamily and there are a lot of bars. Maybe too many? The closures of Chrome Horse and Bo Mac's are possibly signs that such an economic monoculture is not sustainable, particularly when bigger newer bars (like Big Grove in Kingston) inevitably come along.

With apologies to Andres Duany, the transect in Cedar Rapids starts with commercial playgrounds in the center, surrounded by a moat of emptiness (MedQuarter, I-380, parking lots for the impending casino); beyond these are residential areas, where getting almost anywhere requires a car. Beyond those are greenfields, waiting to be subdivisions, or part of a wider I-380. Maybe all this was inevitable, but it is indeed regrettable. At least the city should stop subsidizing more of this sort of development.

SOURCE: Marissa Payne, "New Development Coming to NewBo," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 7 September 2024, 1A, 10A

SEE ALSO: "More New, Less Bo?" 4 July 2022

"Where are the Metro's Destinations Heading?" 28 July 2021

"Bridging the Bridge," 26 June 2019

"Envisioning CR I: A 24-Hour Downtown," 1 March 2015

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post named the former owner of the Matyk Building. It has been updated, with passive voice being used.

Urban thoughts on a Sunday morning

 

Crosswalk sign, New Bohemia, May 2023

Urbanist thoughts that arose from a coffee meetup this morning:

Capitalism vs. community? There's a lot to be said for the capitalist economic system, but there are a number of tensions between the needs of the market and the needs of the community. Do we see ourselves as consumers of our locale's amenities, or citizens participating a common project? And how do our employers see us? 

As someone who benefited from the tenure system in American higher education, I recognize that I possessed job security and continuity which most people in my town do not enjoy. The agility of producing firms allows for innovations that benefit consumers--compare the performance of the private and public sectors on this dimension--but from the workers' perspective, employment can seem like a perpetual mad scramble. This tends to push out people who have fewer competitive advantages: the poor, female heads of households, recent arrivals, and older workers. 

Stable careers allow people to make long-term decisions and commitments to their communities, which resound to everyone's benefit. Today, even though the pandemic-related surges in unemployment and inflation have largely returned to normal, the aroma of economic insecurity continues. Such insecurity inevitably turns people inward and less able to look at the big picture, either in their own lives or in the world around them. Towns, like stores, are reduced to using amenities to try to get people's money, rather than being a collective project. This is connected to...

The perils of drive-to urbanism. New Bohemia and Czech Village have sprung like miracles from the disastrous 2008 flood, though so far what has sprung forth have been predominantly commercial developments catering to visitors rather than organic neighborhoods serving residents. (There is a striking lack of connection between the shops of New Bohemia and the residential section of the Oak Hill Jackson neighborhood on its eastern edge.) So despite the easily walkable proximity between shops and restaurants, there is a lot of car traffic as well. 

As a friend and I crossed 12th Avenue this noon, a driver anticipating a left turn onto 12th suddenly accelerated towards us. I am not proud of the expletive I yelled--my lizard brain apparently dwells in some dark places--and the young man at the wheel apologized, but this sort of thing is going to happen in any area that relies on car traffic in a city where "everybody" drives "everywhere"--even if pedestrians are thick as thieves.

Everybody makes mistakes, including me. Those mistakes are magnified when they're made in a heavy machine that can maim or kill a human being. We'll live longer and better if we rely on cars less. (And thank goodness it wasn't one of those gigantized trucks that are so popular these days.)

How to connect? A hyper-competitive economy and car dependency work against community building; is anything working in its favor? For those wanting to find out more about what is going on in their community, some suggestions emerged:

• neighborhood associations, where they exist, have monthly meetings that can serve as forum to discuss developments and issues of common concern;
• social media, if you can stand it, have groups dedicated to historic preservation, local restaurants, local government, performing arts events, and more;
• a print subscription to the Gazette, which despite losing staff does a pretty fair job of representing different points of view on local events;
• volunteering with an organization working in the community (I wonder if working at a bar or cafe would have the same benefit?)

Of course, regularly following the Holy Mountain blog is also a necessity!

Bridge of Lions reopened: What's on the other side?

July 22, 2022: cutting the ribbon on the Czech Village side

City officials, business owners, and neighbors gathered last week to celebrate the reopening of the Bridge of Lions over the Cedar River, which connects the New Bohemia and Czech Village neighborhoods via 16th Avenue South. It was closed for nearly a year while flood protections were added on both sides of the river. Just this month, the cherry was added to the sundae in the form of gateway arches on each end of the bridge.

Entrance to Czech Village, July 11, 2022

The arches tell you the name of the neighborhood as you enter. The reverse side of the Czech Village arch says "Gateway to New Bohemia," and the reverse side of the New Bohemia arch says "Gateway to Czech Village." That should settle that, in a way that only a quality branding operation can do.

The speeches ahead of last week's ribbon cutting focused on the flood protection rather than the arches. Gates on each end of the bridge are on rollers which can roll across the road to connect to the flood wall on the other side. They are 14 feet high, providing protection to the volume of the catastrophic 2008 Cedar River flood. For the record, the gates are 67 feet long, four and a half feet thick, and weight 61,200 pounds. 

Roller gate on the New Bohemia side, as seen from the street

The total cost was $12 million, paid by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps in 2018 reversed their earlier decision not to fund flood protection on the west side of the river, possibly because a Republican administration was concerned about a vulnerable Republican member of the U.S. House, but that need not detain us here.

April 2020: Bridge closed

May 2020: Construction begins

July 2020: Construction continues

Speakers included Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell... 

Mayor O'Donnell addresses the gathering

as well as City Manager Jeff Pomeranz from the City of Cedar Rapids, Lt. Col. John M. Fernas from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Monica Vernon, Director of the Czech Village/New Bohemia Main Street District.

There even was royalty:

Czech Village queen, prince and princesses.
One of the princesses had to be rushed to the hospital with heat prostration

Ribbons were cut on both ends of the bridge, for symmetry's sake....

New Bohemia side

...and seldom was heard a discouraging word.

Achieving flood protection for Czech Village and New Bohemia was a prodigious achievement--technically, politically, and financially. These investments of time and energy have clearly created a turning point for this area. Our question here is: turning point to what?

1. Investment. There has already been a lot of momentum on both sides of the river. One of the speakers at the ribbon cutting noted that the number of businesses in the District has more than tripled to 250 in recent years. There remains plenty of space, and unused capacity in existing buildings. Flood protection will encourage construction, and I imagine will make property insurance a lot simpler.

Assuming the increased flow of dollars to be inevitable, the future depends upon what kind of investment comes. Will the current dominance of locally-owned businesses continue, or will chains move in? That matters to how much money stays in the community. Will bars, restaurants, and shops continue to cater to occasional shoppers from outside the neighborhood ("drive-to urbanism"), or will there be places for residents to satisfy everyday needs? Housing construction is underway in New Bohemia, and is planned for Czech Village and the New Bo Extension, so we can hope for a critical mass of local residents, but as Oak Hill Jackson Neighborhood Association president Dorothy De Souza Guerdes points out, nothing has resulted from construction so far.

Loftus Lumber site in New Bohemia:
City is trying to juice some mixed-use construction

2. Connection. Growth in the District is likely to affect adjacent neighborhoods, Oak Hill Jackson on the New Bohemia side and Hayes Park on the west side. These connections are not certain to happen--at present the District and its neighbors are leading rather parallel lives--but as activity and especially population increase there's bound to be some spillover.

Increased investment in historically underserved neighborhoods is known by the snarl word gentrification. But neighborhood investment surely is desirable, because areas of concentrated poverty are bad for everyone but particularly the residents. Yet it comes, infamously, with risk of widespread displacement of current residents. Growth that includes and provides opportunities for current residents is good. Growth that pushes current residents aside so well-off newcomers can take advantage of the primo location is not good, and where done with public funding is outright scandalous. This could go either way in coming years.

Oak Hill Jackson has a lot of older housing as well as
post-flood construction

3. Broader social impacts. I'm in no position to measure the return-on-investment for the federal funds. Some level of benefit is highly likely, but in these inflationary days, we are surely aware that the government can't fund every good thing. What are the opportunity costs of putting their money into Cedar Rapids? Don't know. Can't say.

From the town's perspective, dense development near the center of town saves on infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, and makes efficient public transportation service possible. Should the school district follow the movement of people into the core, they could save on bus expenses because students around Czech Village and New Bohemia would be within walking distance of their school(s).

The environmental impact of development in the District depends on how many short car trips can be replaced by walking or cycling. Not only has the city just passed a climate action plan, but the world has had enough signs of climate change this summer to alarm all but the hardest-core denialists. A residential population walking to nearby stores would have a substantial positive impact on the environment, not to mention their own physical fitness. Conversely, if the District continues to rely on "drive-to" urbanism, while residents drive out of the neighborhood to get groceries and go to school and work, we'll continue to contribute to environmental degradation, including the possibility of future flooding. 

Memorial to "the mayor of 2nd Street" in New Bohemia

Change is inevitable; as Addison Del Maestro writes: We owe it to ourselves and to the future to keep building where we live, to keep iterating, to see people as a resource, and to see growth not like cancer but like childbirth: something painful and beautiful at the same time, something that takes away some things while opening up many more. The development that's about to happen can and should do honor to those like Edward Kuba whose visions built the neighborhoods. 

What has been happening in Czech Village and particularly in New Bohemia doesn't look like "iterating," or course. To be sure our hands were forced by the flood and the need to forestall future floods. But it's good to remember that good change happens incrementally rather than relying on big wins and "game-changers." And that good change is inclusive, not a scrum where only the strong survive. The city can't dictate how change will roll out, but neither can it sit back and assume good change will happen automatically.

Let's continue to celebrate the efforts that have brought the District back. A lot of people worked really really hard to get us here. What happens next will make all the difference.

One of the lions overlooks his river

NOTE: The Czech Village/New Bohemia Action Plan contains a vast array of concepts, which roughly divide between placemaking (wayfinding, parks, streets and other amenities) and housing. Of particular interest to this discussion:

• The Greenway Park (p. 53), a large multi-purpose park southeast of Czech Village and potentially easy to access by surrounding neighborhoods across C Street SW
• The Community Arts Trail (p. 66), a pedestrian/bike walkway on the south side of 10th Avenue from the river past the Cherry Building to 6th Street, highlighted by public art installations.
• Infill housing (pp. 69ff.) in both Czech Village and New Bohemia as well as the New Bo Extension, anticipated once the various amenities are in place, and which "would bring a wide range of prospective residents and visitors into the districts."

SEE ALSO:

"More New, Less Bo?" 4 July 2022

"The Future of Downtown Cedar Rapids," 24 June 2022

"Where Are the Metro's Destinations Heading?" 28 July 2021

"Bridging the Bridge," 26 June 2019

More New, Less Bo?

 

View of NewBo Lofts site from Geonetric building

Big plans for what's dubbed the NewBo Expansion remain the most intriguing feature of the Czech Village/New Bo Area Action Plan adopted by the City of Cedar Rapids in December 2019. The city website explains the plan follows similar planning initiatives already completed... These plans take the concepts identified from the City's comprehensive plan, EnvisionCR, and develop action steps and goals tailored to a specific geographic region. Most of the development was anticipated within three years (pp. 81-87), but of course the coronavirus pandemic intervened and then came the derecho.

The NewBo Expansion covers the area between 16th Avenue SE and the Cedar River down to the Cargill plant (about 10th Street SE). Prior to the June 2008 flood the area contained a lot of derelict industrial properties as well as some small houses; nearly all of that has been demolished. The area action plan contains a variety of initiatives, spread across numerous pages, which I have compiled on this crudely-drawn map:

The disclaimer that comes with this plan, of course, is that dreams appear in plans that don't ever get built (see Westdale, the Highway 100 extension, or any schematic ever). But as I look out at the Extension through my summer office window it seems worth a tour of what's there now and what might be there some day.

Most of the anticipated development is described as "mixed-use" (p. 72): 

The NewBo Expansion area will develop around a core of mixed-use development sites. Retail and restaurant uses could occupy the ground levels of an office building and multi-family housing enclosing the Sinclair Plaza [on 3rd Street, where the pavement currently ends].... Stretching out from this high-activity public plaza, building uses would transition to strictly residential...

the future Sinclair Plaza (see p. 55)

Sinclair Plaza, looking up 3rd St towards 16th Ave

3rd Street will be extended to an intersection with 9th Street. (Despite their names, these  streets aren't parallel now, and will be less so in the future.) Alongside 3rd Street will be a "promenade" (p. 64) from Sinclair Plaza past 9th Street to a new branch of the Cedar River Trail. "Tuck-under" townhomes would line the north side of 3rd Street, providing the “eyes and ears” for the desired promenade and bicycle amenities" (p. 72).

3rd Street looking towards the river

4th Street, which will also be extended to 9th Street, will mostly have parking areas along it, though "Two small-scale “missing middle” housing buildings could sit on the west side of the 4th Street and 16th Avenue intersection" (p. 72).

non-Geonetric side of 16th: 300 block

Geonetric side of 16th: 300 block

NewBo Lofts development, which I guess is on the "east" side of 4th St

On the opposite side of 4th Street would be the 4th Street Trail Extension (p. 64), which completes a loop on the Cedar River Trail, connecting at 7th Avenue and across the river over the new Smokestack Bridge. It crosses 12th Avenue at 5th Street next to Geonetric, crosses 16th Avenue next to the roundabout, then angles over to where 4th and 9th Streets will meet.

future intersection of 4th and 9th Streets

From there it swings south to cross the river and meet the current trail.

the bridge that was, and will be again, from the NewBo side 

...and from across the river, on the existing trail

River access and overlook (p. 57) will augment a paved trail spur that already runs along the river from the end of 10th Street...

...to 2nd Street and 16th Avenue.

That intersection currently hosts Kickstand but has three undeveloped corner, including the former location of Hach Bottling House:

Mixed-use infill development is planned for all three corners.

The east end of the NewBo Extension will is projected for small single-family housing in the area of 9th Street and 16th Avenue (p. 77).

A old stone building on 9th Street is planned for retrofit: Some possible uses include an incubator complex, makerspace, arts cooperative, and destination restaurant or brewery.... Lying along the proposed 4th Street Trail, the renovated building program could extend out into a series of exterior spaces that would provide amenities for trail users specifically and also the public at-large (p. 74).

There are definite advantages to infill development, as opposed to further extending the edge of the city. One question is how much should the city pay to make this all happen? Working with the system we have, as opposed to the system we wish we had, I'm OK with the incentives for developing the Banjo Block downtown and First-and-First across the river in Kingston, because those are path breaking developments that can bend the curve in the core of the city. But where do you stop paying for development, and leave market forces to work their magic? For example, I'm less convinced on something like the Loftus Lumber block in New Bohemia, which is looking at $100 million in city incentives to get going (Payne 2022). New Bohemia is already going, and either demand exists for going an additional block (in which case developers should be jumping in on their own), or there isn't (in which case the city should stay out of it). Is there a public interest in developing the NewBo Extension that would justify significant public outlays?

Question #2: How many facets of this plan need to come true? Life teaches us that there's a big difference between the original concept and what eventually gets built. What if it's just buildings, without the trails and promenades and squares? What if the buildings serve a limited array of people? What if they don't get filled at all? There need to be some kind of market signals so we don't build too much of the wrong thing, but also social signals so we're not just responding to the first dollars coming from the young and well-off. My hunch is that infill housing once populated will generate its own economy, but a trendy economy (bars and hair salons) is not going to be as resilient as one rooted in daily life (grocery and hardware stores and schools).

The best case scenario is that all the infill developments bring in a diverse variety of residents to support a 24-hour downtown, where offices, grocery and hardware stores, restaurants, and entertainment venues will all want to be. If the people come, a lot of the commercial development will take care of itself. The third question, then: are local governments prepared for this to succeed? Can they take responsibility for supporting the ensuing growth with city services like schools (looking at you, Cedar Rapids Community School District) and bus transportation (looking at you, city). The NewBo Expansion is presently in the attendance area for Grant Wood School, more than two non-walkable miles away across Mt. Vernon Road, and scheduled to be merged with even-further-away Erskine School after 2025. With as much density as we're talking in the Expansion plan, there's no reason for anyone to be dependent on owning one or more automobiles.

Finally, the Expansion will abut the Oak Hill-Jackson neighborhood; in fact a lot of it was in the Oak Hill-Jackson neighborhood before the flood forced buyouts and demolitions. Will opportunities be taken to connect with this older section of town, or will the Expansion become an enclave of the young and well-off that has nothing to say to people living in working-class housing? Inclusion and connection are not easy to make happen, but seem critical to the overall well-being of the city.

These plans for infill development in the NewBo Expansion are hopeful. And there doesn't seem to be too awfully much parking on my crudely drawn map above. To make a real difference in the future of our city, they should occur in an open, inclusive, and sustainable way.

SEE ALSO: Erin Jordan, "NewBo Lofts Coming in 2024 After Coralville Developer Takes Over Former Art Tech Village," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 23 December 2021

mural on the Ideal Theater building, facing Kickstand