Chance to Start Again

Cedar Rapids, IA, where I live, has currently been hit hard with unprecedented flooding. Fortunately, my house has not been affected. My company's office building, however, has had an estimated 5' of water on the ground floor in its downtown location. Our local and national news has been showing many pictures of the downtown Cedar Rapids area and it is an understatement to say that the downtown has a massive clean up ahead.

With this tragedy is the opportunity for a glorious rebirth. Our city officials have been making plans to improve the downtown area anyway, and now we have been offered the option to show how we can come back and improve upon what the downtown once was. Starting July 1st I will be a member of the Corridor MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization), and I hope to post some ideas I have that are more specific to that, but right now I wanted to highlight the importance of the Cedar Rapids Downtown Rebirth, CRDR, I just made that up, but it kind of has a nice ring to it.

1. The city should continue with plans for revitalizing the downtown, with the one addition of protecting the area so individuals and businesses will stay and more will come. Dubuque built a wall along the Mississippi and it definitely saved them this time (and it's gorgeous). We may never know how high is high enough, but I would vote that using this year as a reference point would be a safe bet.
   
2. Encourage businesses to stay downtown. I have several selfish reasons for this, but a lot of them are reasons that the others in the city have too. I love riding the bus or biking to work. I love that restaurants are starting to succeed and stay downtown so I can walk to lunch. I love that the YMCA is right down the street. If my company moves to a non-downtown location, I see that as losing a huge benefit of working there.
3. The location makes the city cohesive. If we lose our downtown, then the center of the city dies and we lose the connections between the sides of town.
4. The downtown is home to people and many businesses. If they leave then it could be hard to retain them in the community in general. This may be a reason for some to move out and start fresh somewhere else like several of the Katrina victims tried to do when they moved to CR.

These are only some of the reasons that I have thought of and discussed while watching the news. Many of these stem from my personal stake in the issue, so other views are welcome. I don't have the high power to make everything happen, but that hasn't stopped me from trying before. Our downtown does affect our city as a whole and I want to see our city improve its status to become the best that it really can be.