FEMA Sez It Can't Support Site for New Cedar Rapids Library

Link to September 15 Cedar Rapids Gazette article,

Excerpt:   A lightning bolt of complication has hit the city’s plans to build a new public library to replace its flood-ruined one.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has concluded that it can’t now financially support the city’s chosen site for the new library – now occupied by TrueNorth Companies across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park – because it is too expensive based on a “benefit-cost analysis” tied to the National Flood Insurance Program requirements, Mayor Ron Corbett said this afternoon.

Building a new library on either of two other sites that the city had considered for a new library also is too costly, the mayor said FEMA has concluded.

Furthermore, he said FEMA has now suggested what the Cedar Rapids library board long ago rejected — that the city demolish the existing library on First Street SE and replace it on the site with a new library built one-foot higher in the flood plain than the old one.

Related articles:
New library construction will include old bricks.  (8/18/2010)
Library circulation plummets at temporary location.  (8/6/2010)
Library staff looking at the best design ideas. (5/6/2010)
For sale, old library, needs work.  (4/9/2010)
Site Selection Raises Ethics Concerns.  (2/9/2010)
Cedar Rapids Library Board to Recommend Site for New Library. (01/26/2010)
FEMA Reconsiders, Decides Library Provides an Essential Service. (12/24/2009)
Hide and Seek: Downtown Cedar Rapids Satellite Branch Library. (11/30/2009)
Early Days of Cedar Rapids Public Library. (11/20/2009)