Cedar Rapids Downtown Housing Picks Up Momentum

Downtown Cedar Rapids will see many new residential units created over the next few years.

In the next few years at least seven housing projects, with 118 total units, will be built in downtown Cedar Rapids and core neighborhoods. Many of these are already under construction or will start construction soon. Unfortunately finding out information about new downtown housing is a scattershot process. Not every project has an easily found website or robust press coverage.

Things should get much easier for those interested in downtown housing in the next month. The Metro Economic Alliance is hosting a meeting May 20th that will bring developers and people interested in urban housing together. There are also plans to launch a website that will have pricing information, locations and links to downtown projects on one central portal.

The website is being modeled off the one for downtown housing in Des Moines. In recent years downtown Des Moines has seen a surge of residential development. There are now 5000 residential units in our capitals core.

“We have to get that mass of housing before retail,” said Scott Olson of Skogman Realty, “Momentum is picking up, the demand is now there.”

Some of the reasons why Cedar Rapids was late to the party on downtown housing are a lack of available space for new buildings in core neighborhoods, no historic buildings large enough to make economic sense for developers, and a lack of incentives such like tax abatement for converting commercial to residential.

“Rehab is more expensive than conventional construction”, said Olson, “most developers want to convert 40–50 units. No building in Cedar Rapids comes close.”

This means prices for a lot of what’s under development will be high, between $1000 and $15000 a month for a rental unit. This is especially true for projects in the heart of downtown. Other projects outside of the downtown core will have more units and lower prices.

Developers are also pushing for a law that would give them a ten year tax abatement for converting commercial space to residential. There’s well over a million square feet of empty commercial space in Cedar Rapids and a lot of it is downtown. A tax abatement would allow developers to offer rental units for lower prices.