Tour the Market, Become a Friend

The old buildings have come down and the NewBo City Market site will soon begin its reconstruction phase. But before that happens, people who’ve purchased memberships to the NewBo City Market are invited to attend a tour of the future Market Hall in the former Quality Chef warehouse. Now is a great time to become a NewBo Friend if you haven’t already.

Friends Tour
Sunday, March 18, 2012
3:00 –  6:00 pm
NewBo City Market site – 12th Ave. and 3rd St. SE

Becoming a Friend is easy. Go to this link at newbocitymarket.com. Fill out the form and click on “Become a Friend,” a button at the bottom of the page. Membership costs $50. You’ll get discounts and special offers at the market when it opens, and your membership will be good for a full year after the market opens. Plus, you’ll be helping create a fantastic addition to our community.

Enjoy an exclusive preview. Come see where the permanent vendors will be located, how the Kirkwood teaching kitchen will lay out, and what we’ve planned for the Market site. This tour is our first Members Only event and a great way to familiarize yourself with the NewBo City Market.

NewBo News

A few changes have been made to the project in recent weeks. The most significant include: the market is now scheduled to open in Fall 2012 and the second-floor mezzanine and corner grocery store have been eliminated to save money.

NewBo City Market will be a one-story market, but it will be significant in size – 8,000 square feet – with 49 permanent vendors, 30 seasonal and day sellers, a cooking kitchen, distribution for a low-income food co-op, and space for indoor activities and events such as concerts and festivals.

NewBo Progress

Here’s an update on the progress of the NewBo City Market:

• Awarded a $750,000 Vision Iowa CAT grant
• Cedar Rapids is removing the old Quality Chef buildings ruined by the 2008 flood
• Capital campaign donations from private donors are up to $2 million
• Friends of NewBo City Market are purchasing $50 annual memberships to help the Market cover its operating costs and to enjoy benefits, such as discounts and early entrance on open days
• Site plans continue evolving as details get worked out
• The vendor committee is developing contracts and talking with potential vendors

The project continues moving forward!

Who Decides What Linn County Does Next?

Today a group of residents, along with the staff of the Linn County Planning & Development Department, will meet to discuss ways to get the public involved in updating the Linn County Rural Land Use Plan. That’s a mouthful, but what does it mean, exactly, and why should we care?

Les Beck, Linn County’s Planning and Development Director, explains, “Our goal is to identify a widely supported vision for land use in Linn County that balances rural and urban interests.”

The plan will help decide such things as how the county will deal with flooding, storm water, controlling erosion, protecting natural resources, incorporating renewable energy into Linn County projects, housing development, etc. A variety of work groups, centered on these topics and several other areas of focus, will develop elements of the plan. Then the Linn County Planning & Development Department and the steering committee, a group of local residents representing various stakeholders, will use those recommendations to update the land use plan, ensuring it complies with the Iowa Smart Planning Principles adopted during the 2010 legislative session.

In case you’re wondering about the Ten Iowa Smart Planning Principles, they are:

1. Collaboration
2. Efficiency, Transparency, and Consistency
3. Clean, Renewable and Efficient Energy
4. Occupational Diversity
5. Revitalization
6. Housing Diversity
7. Community Character
8. Natural Resources and Agricultural Protection
9. Sustainable Design
10. Transportation Diversity

Today’s meeting is the second steering committee meeting and is open to the public. It will take place from 4:30 p.m. – 6 p.m. and will be held in the Board Room at Linn County West, 2500 Edgewood Road SW in Cedar Rapids. If you’re interested in joining the discussion as a member of a work group, you can contact Les Beck at 892-5130 or by email at les.beck@linncounty.org.  

How we deal with the land in Linn County effects all of us – as residents, farmers, businesses, government, and particularly nonprofit groups such as NewBo, as we work to bring together our community under the umbrella of sustainable commerce and fresh, local food.

Groundbreaking News

Scott Byers, Sarah Ordover, and Mayor Ron Corbett

Last night a sizable group of NewBo supporters gathered at Water Tower Place to celebrate the successful launch of the Growing Cedar Rapids Capital Campaign. So far, NewBo has received $1.2 million in pledges from businesses, organizations, and individuals in Cedar Rapids. The groundbreaking for the NewBo site can begin, as scheduled, this September.

There are new project illustrations that reflect the designs of project architect Greg Sundberg of Sundberg Design (designer of New Pioneer Food Co-op in Coralville), Kim Schmidt of Vantage Point Architects, and PointBuilders. You can see the site illustration on the Gazette’s Eastern Iowa website.

The goal of the capital campaign is to raise $3 million – which means we’re nearly half-way there – with the remaining $1.25 million coming from state, city, and county resources as well as public memberships. It just so happens, yesterday the Iowa Legislature voted to approve $5 million in Vision Iowa Community Attraction and Tourism (CAT) funding for next fiscal year and $15 million for the following year, which is great news for our project. Vision Iowa already accepted our application and now the decision-making process can move forward.

At last night’s event, three area chefs demonstrated how to cook a variety of dishes and they’ve agreed to share their recipes on this blog. So if you want to learn how to pull your own mozzarella cheese or make a delicious grilled peach and arugula salad, check back next week for the details.

Rain Gardens Gone Wild

Living in eastern Iowa, we’re all sensitive to the impact of flooding and the need to address water runoff. Last year I planted a rain garden to do my part. It looked slightly pathetic. The spot I’d chosen was a patch in my yard along the yard’s natural water runoff pathway, so it was a perfect place to create a garden in a puddle. That was how rain gardens were described to me during a rain garden workshop at the Indian Creek Nature Center. The purpose of a rain garden is to plant native vegetation and perennial flowers that soak up rainwater before it enters the storm drain. Rather than send water from your downspouts to the sewer, you direct it to a depression in the yard where plants soak up and filter water that would otherwise enter our storm-water system. Rain gardens are not ponds but areas where water is quickly absorbed.

I was lucky to have a friend who’d planted her own successful rain garden and even accompanied me to buy plants for mine. The list of plants I brought with me (discovered on the Internet) were native to Iowa, looked fantastic, and were recommended for rain gardens. Of course, most of the plants I picked out weren’t available when I went shopping, so I relied on my knowledgeable friend. She pointed out plants that would work, and I chose a nice bunch.

Back at the ranch, I toiled away, digging a hole for my garden, then digging some more when my patch looked pathetically shallow. I sort of followed the directions from various sources, sort of fudged my way through. When I had my plants in the ground, I realized I hadn’t purchased enough. There was more mud than foliage in my rain garden.

But that was last year. This year’s a different story. Perhaps it’s all the rain we’ve gotten, perhaps it’s nature doing its job, spreading seed and so forth. Perhaps it’s the fact that weeds suddenly become native vegetation when you let a patch of yard grow wild. Anyway, it looks pretty good right now, especially since we planted strawberries on a once-bare spot beside the rain garden. If you want to plant your own absorbent little eco-system, take a look at the following sites:

Rain Garden Resources

• Natural Resources Conservation Service rain garden pdf includes a simple illustration and instructions.
• Friends of Basset Creek rain garden web page includes a listing of native plants.
• Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship shows in-progress photos of a rain garden preparation.
• The Iowa Rain Garden Design and Installation Manual is pdf with a big-picture overview of water quality and technically detailed how-to rain garden instructions.
• University of Wisconsin Extension offers a 32-page downloadable how-to manual with detailed instructions, technical information, and plant listings.
• Ion Exchange sells native species plant plugs and seeds as well as rain garden kits with live plant plugs and an installation manual.

Have you planted a rain garden? Is it on your to-do list? Do you have questions before you get started? Go ahead and comment, I’d love to hear from you.

The Business of Building Business

In a recent story by Entrepreneur Media, the Columbus, Ohio, North Market is featured as a successful business incubator/accelerator. Read the full story, Business Incubators for a Variety of Niches, which describes the North Market as “a place where small food businesses can take root.” The 44,000-square-foot facility is a renovated warehouse that holds 35 independently owned businesses. It attracts more than a million people each year. Can you imagine just such a place in Cedar Rapids? Yes, because many people are visualizing our own public market every day.

Various groups are coming together to work toward the goal of opening NewBo City Market in 2012. The real estate committee and design/build groups are working on the details necessary to move the design plan forward. The vendor committee is meeting with public health officials to determine how our building can meet state health requirements. We’re partnering with groups such as Iowa Community Capital, which provides small business loans throughout the State of Iowa, the Community Vitality Center, and ISU Extension. Trees Forever wants to contribute to our landscape, and various other community groups are looking for ways to help develop the Market into a fantastic resource for our area.

If you have comments or ideas, post them to the NewBo City Market Facebook page. If you’re an entrepreneur interested in the marketplace, fill out a vendor application form online. Now is the perfect time to participate.

Do-gooders, here’s your chance!

So far, most of the work developing the NewBo City Market has been behind-the-scenes activities involving the City Market board and a dozen or so NewBo City Market volunteers. Though many people have expressed interest in helping out with the project, there’s actually a lot of preparation necessary before a group can bring in volunteers and give them things to do.  Now, NewBo is ready to get volunteers moving with the creation of:

The City Seeders

This will be the core volunteer group working as an auxiliary for the NewBo City Market and performing the hands-on work to help bring the market to fruition. The first task requiring help from City Seeders is a late June event for the Growing Cedar Rapids capital campaign. And that’s just the first of many activities using City Seeders volunteers to propel the NewBo City Market toward success. Anyone can get involved. If you like to eat great food, meet people, learn about this project and tell other’s about it, you’re just the person to dig in and get involved. Contact Kim Vogel at: ktvogel66@hotmail.com and tell her I sent you.