Background
When Al Pierson looks around the Time Check neighborhood in northwest Cedar Rapids, he sees some progress and still a lot of potential.
The neighborhood, which sits just west of the Cedar River, was devastated by the 2008 flood. Homes were destroyed and hundreds of former residents left the area. Buildings were wiped out, leaving empty lots.
Over the past six years, the nonprofit group Matthew 25 has spearheaded an effort to rehabilitate the neighborhood. That effort is bearing fruit, thanks in part to a $1.4 million capital campaign and multiple grants and tax incentives.
Matthew 25’s achievements include a nonprofit grocery store and the rehabilitation of 11 housing units. Developers have taken an interest in the neighborhood, bringing in more businesses and housing.
Jena Adams of Cedar Rapids shops Wednesday at the Cultivate Hope Corner Store in northwest Cedar Rapids. Adams is a regular at the nonprofit neighborhood store. She likes to stock up on apples and will use them to make apple crisps and apple butter, as well as make banana bread from bananas picked up at the store. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)
What’s happened since
Much work remains ahead for Time Check to realize a full recovery, local leaders say.
And one key piece to the puzzle moving forward, leaders say, is flood protection to help ensure the neighborhood is never again wiped out by the Cedar River.
“You know, when flood protection gets started down here, they actually start building the levee, they’re going to start some of that construction on the greenway (park plan) because they both involve moving earth,” said Al Pierson, president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association.
The city’s greenway parks plan will guide amenities along the west side of the river.
“When that greenway gets done, the flood protection is done, this neighborhood is going to be dynamite. It’s going to be the best one in the city, I think,” Pierson said. “So we’re looking forward to seeing it all done.”
Matthew 25 held a public event last week to showcase the progress made in the neighborhood thus far. The group highlighted the nonprofit grocery store — Cultivate Hope Corner Store — which the group said was created by transforming a “rundown building on a high-crime corner.”
During the event, Matthew 25 also highlighted the 11 rehabbed housing units and new construction on energy-efficient homes in the neighborhood.
Jana Bodensteiner, chief development officer at Matthew 25, on Wednesday retrieves the key to one of the new houses the organization built in the Time Check neighborhood in northwest Cedar Rapids. Homebuyer subsidy, grant and loan opportunities make the new construction, single-family home more affordable. The home features three bedrooms, two bathrooms, high-efficiency furnace and energy efficient appliances. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)
The group has spent $1.1 million of the $1.4 million raised, according to Executive Director Clint Twedt-Ball.
“The next phase really is we’ve probably got six more units of housing that we’re still looking to complete,” Twedt-Ball said. “And then I think the next phase is going to be really continuing to push for, and in some ways wait for, flood protection in that area so that we can take the next leap. Because a lot of the lots that are vacant now are in that 100-year flood plain and really can’t be developed until flood protection exists.”
Pierson considers progress made in the neighborhood welcome, but slower than he would prefer. “I’m happy with where we’re at and where we’re going. It just can’t happen soon enough,” he said. “The majority of the rebuilding is going to have to wait until flood protection is in.”
Meantime, work continues. Twedt-Ball said three units of new housing will be net-zero, meaning the electricity used onsite will be produced onsite. He said that means other than connection fees, utility bills in those units should be virtually non-existent.
Site work continues Wednesday at the location of Matthew 25’s NetZero housing development in the Time Check neighborhood in northwest Cedar Rapids. The new houses are being built on land left vacant after the 2008 flood. The houses will be built using sustainable building practices, will feature energy efficient heating and cooling systems and appliances and are designed with front porches and yards that encourage community building among neighbors. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)
Another home in the neighborhood, developed by Matthew 25, cost $290,000 to build but the group will be able to sell at $220,000, Twedt-Ball said. Subsidies from the city enabled the group to sell the home at a lower price, and it will be marketed to families who are at 80 percent of the area median income.
Matthew 25 is also working with the city to solve an issue of parking outside the Cultivate Hope Corner Store.
“How this all ties together is obviously if you’re going to have something like a corner store, you have to have rooftops and people living there,” Twedt-Ball said. “So the more people we can get back into the neighborhood, the better the corner store does, the better other things do, the more property values go up. “All that kind of thing.”
Jana Bodensteiner, chief development officer at Matthew 25, walks past the kitchen with island and quartz counter tops Wednesday in one of the new houses the organization built in the Time Check neighborhood in northwest Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)
Twedt-Ball said he hopes that by rehabbing Time Check, Cedar Rapids is gaining an area that will provide a place where families can “live up to their full potential.”
“We have this neighborhood in Time Check that has really good bones. It’s close to where the jobs are. It’s got lots of good parks. It’s got the river right there. And yet, we’ve kind of as a community, in some ways, just left it sit, and not really living into all of the good potential it has,” Twedt-Ball said. “So the focus for us has been, how do we rebuild that neighborhood in a way that builds on the assets that it just naturally has? …
“We just need to love on it and rehab the whole neighborhood and put it back into a place where people can thrive.”
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