Cedar Rapids Flood-- 1 Year Later (Des Moines, Waterloo: loft, how much, houses)

[DMRyan]

Cedar Rapids is a small industrial city with a metro area of 255,000 in East Central Iowa. I went there intending to take photos to highlight the city. What I saw floored me. There wasn't a way to positively highlight this city in a promotional photo gallery after the destruction there from the historic June 2008 floods (4th largest US disaster in cost)--not at this time. Perhaps in a few years, after much recovery I can come back and give the city better photographic justice.

The scale of damaged parts of the city was immense. Downtown is largely under construction, at least the first floors of many buildings. It looks like they lost a lot of commercial tenants, but by and large, this area of town is recovering strongly and will likely end up better than it was pre-flood a few years down the road. The other lesser seen parts of the city have a tremendous hill to climb, and that was what I focused on capturing. The photos show a mix of working class neighborhoods and older commercial districts affected by the flooding. An eerie feeling takes over you when you see blocks and blocks of former neighborhoods shelled out and completely empty, except for the stray cat problem which seems to be affecting these parts of the city. The only plus side to the flooding is that some of the city's most decrepid housing stock will be removed. Maybe in due time, newer neighborhoods and green space can fill these industrial parts of town. Residentially, there wasn't a tremendous amount of incredible residential architectural vernacular that was hit. The biggest loss architecturally may come from the loss of commerce and small industry in these blighted areas.

These photos were taken pretty quickly, some without even getting out of the car due to the sheer amount of territory to cover. Take what you see in these photos times 500 to get a feel for how drastically large (10 sq. miles total) of the city that this flood covered. In fairness to Cedar Rapids, there are beautiful areas of the city. The housing you see in the photos is charactaristic of the working class neighborhoods, however there's still plenty of nice victorian, craftsman houses, old money neighborhoods and slightly more eclectic areas of Cedar Rapids to see. I still cannot believe the tremendous work ahead of Cedar Rapids in gaining some sort of normalcy again.


A house that was prominently photoed when the flood recovery was just starting out, just SW of downtown in the Time Check Neighborhood.




Commercial strip on one of the main streets leading north into downtown.


Now a jump over to the Cedar Valley and Rompot neighborhoods, just SE of downtown Cedar Rapids. This appears to be one of the hardest hit areas of town. This is a semi industrial area along the riverfront with some older commercial districts (including a portion of the Czech Village north of the Cedar River) mixed in.








CSPS Building, partially back in use as a community center of sorts.










I couldn't tell if this grand old bank building was back open for business. This is the northern fringe of the Czech Village, north of the Cedar River.


This old building has one open tenant, a pretty popular biker bar.




Cool bank building again.


This block of buildings has brought back to life. A popular bar/restaurant called The Pourhouse has occupied the building on the left.




Cedar Rapids' premier loft conversion is in the background, marking the eastern entryway into downtown.


A mural of the Czech Village in happier times.





A mix of the Rompot/Cedar Valley and Time Check/Ellis Boulevard neighborhoods:





























Some parts of the neighborhood further away from the river are starting the slow path towards repopulation


A freakin beaver making his rounds right in front of me.




A well understood political message is visible on this former home, and many others throughout the disaster areas.








Even the newer homes built in these very old parts of town were no match for 8+ ft. of water.


A few of the heart of Czech Village, south of the Cedar River. This is the home of the one of the largest historical concentrations of Czech populations in the US:



The former home of the National Czech Museum, boarded up and empty.


A public market and banquet building in a Czech Village Park.




Hopefully, this industrial city on the apparently mighty Cedar River can rise again:

[Persimmony]

I have to say I used to prefer Cedar Rapids way over Waterloo/Cedar Falls where I am from ... but now I would take Waterloo/Cedar Falls any day. CR is somewhat depressing these days... as the pictures show.

[DMRyan]

I agree that this is depressing and sad to see. However, there's still a good 3/4 if not more, of the metro area that was not affected and does not look like this.
These houses don't appear to have ever been built to last the test of time and the neighborhoods are very near industrial areas.

[SharpHawkeye]

Des Moines came back after the Flood of '93, when there were neighborhoods that looked like this too. Cedar Rapids will come back from the Flood of '08, stronger than before.

[zz4guy]

You went to ground zero of the 4th worse natural disaster and took pictures of the worse sites you could find. What are you trying to prove? A lot of businesses and homes DID come back 100% in less than a year. Those are the newsworthy pictures - wish you would have snapped some of those.

By and large if you don't live/work in the flood zone you are unaffected by the 08 floods. I think CR has made great progress considering our incompetent leadership.

[DMRyan]

You went to ground zero of the 4th worse natural disaster and took pictures of the worse sites you could find. What are you trying to prove? A lot of businesses and homes DID come back 100% in less than a year. Those are the newsworthy pictures - wish you would have snapped some of those.

Did you even read my comments above numbnuts? I didn't take these photos to make Cedar Rapids look bad, it's a compelling point in the city's history that I wished to document. I took plenty of photos on my trip of other parts of the city unaffected, which I intend to post once I have them off my camera and photo-shopped.

I don't know how much more I can pussyfoot around with my comments above to indicate that these neighborhood aren't indicative of the entire city.

[Busch71]

It's sad to see my city like this. I live near Ellis Park and except for a few houses here and there it's still mostly abandoned houses everywhere.