Cedar Rapids residents share thoughts on proposed flood memorial
Many other homes and business in the area were demolished. Lives shattered. Roads washed off the map. Years later, memories remain fresh in an area that bears little resemblance to how it looked before 2008.
During a public meeting held Tuesday at the
The plaza would sit on a bout a quarter-acre of land along
"I would go with the monument there and have a place to sit and think about things," said Skelton, 79. "It would be a nice place for people to find closure."
Concepts for the plaza are still being vetted but it could have a brick or concrete surface with seating and landscaping.
"It brings focus to the neighborhood," said
"I think it will be a favorite place for the neighborhood to gather, to reflect," he said.
Pierson is involved in raising money for the sculpture and said more than
Creating a plaza has been a priority since the earliest post-flood community meetings and is especially meaningful given the re-emergence of the neighborhood, said
"It's not only celebrating the transformation of this area, but all the reinvestment and the repopulation," she said.
City officials on Tuesday solicited feedback based on three design concepts put forth by architecture and engineering consulting firm Shive Hattery. Residents were asked to place green stickers on the concepts they liked best.
The clear favorite was a circular plaza to the north of
"We are trying to create a home for it, a setting for people to go up and connect to it,"
Some want names listed in bricks for the people whose homes were lost in 2008. Billick described it as two memorials: West Side Rising recognizing the significance of the flood event, and a second memorial much more specific to who and what was there before.
"I want to show this is a place where people and families lived," said
She wants to see a replica of the old neighborhood as a mini grid with the old streets and names etched in bricks where homes would be, which is similar to a memorial constructed in
An archway is another component of the project and will symbolize the transition into this specific part of the community. Planners are still deciding whether the archway will be connected with the plaza or to the eventual berm, but renderings show it as a stand-alone with large columns.
The berm could still be 15 years off, but Pratt said work on the plaza should get underway fairly quickly in hopes of having it at least partially complete by the 10th anniversary of the 2008 flood in
A preferred design for the memorial is to be reviewed at the next regular meeting of the
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