Community Notes: Now is the time to dream about Charles City’s future

By Dean Andrews, Mayor, Charles City

This past week I have been attending the annual Iowa Rural Summit. As with most meetings, this summit has gone virtual for this year. I was a little hesitant to spend two 4-hour sessions looking at my computer in my office, but the summit has proved to be very interesting.

The opening keynote speaker, Steve Siemens, set the tone with his topic “Visualize or Fossilize Your Community.”

He said you need to measure the size of your community by the size of your potential rather than the size of your current condition. You need to have a passion for vision and bring others to buy in to that dream and vision. His point was if you don’t visualize your future, the other option is the fossilization of your community.

With that background, we have two projects in that visionary stage.

The first is the former Milwaukee Railroad Depot that is currently owned by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. This has been a project of the “Save the Depot” group for some time, but recently became a current issue for two reasons.

Number one, I got a call a couple weeks ago from the Canadian Pacific that they need to see some action on moving the depot off their property, or they are going to schedule the building for demolition.

The other event that happened about the same time was a donation by former Charles City resident Judy (Sebern) Beechy. She recognized the value of saving this historic building and has challenged the community to join in the effort to make this project a reality.

The first step will be to move the depot from its current location to a few blocks south to property owned by a group of rail car enthusiasts and The American Passenger Train History Museum.

The plan is then to restore the depot to a multi-purpose building owned by the train museum non-profit entity. The depot will serve as an entry to the train museum, but also as a potential trailhead for the Charley Western Trail around town.

It would have publicly accessible restrooms and also provide a public meeting space for special events and occasions, as well as maintain and explain the history of the depot.

But as you have already guessed, this all takes money. The cost to move the depot and set it on a foundation at its new site is approximately $279,000. Renovation costs are above and beyond that figure.

Obviously grants and outside funding will be needed, but so is local support. The “Save the Depot” group has secured funds of over $130,000 so far, but the time to reach the $279,000 to move the depot is now.

The group was scheduled to come to the City Council workshop on Monday, Aug, 24, to seek City support to recognize this effort, as well as possibly providing some financial help.

If you would like to be a part of this project, contact Mark Wicks at the Chamber of Commerce as he is helping to coordinate this project with the “Save the Depot” group.

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The next dream vision that is currently in the works is a new community pool/recreation center.

With the city pool being closed this summer due to Covid-19, the park board had the opportunity to actually inspect the current condition of our pool led by Park and Rec Director Tyler Mitchell.

It was pointed out that our 29-year-old pool is becoming quite elderly when you look at it in terms of pool years. Most pools have a useful life of 25-30 years before they need major renovation.

The other issue is that our pool had many of the bells and whistles that were popular in the 1990s when it was built, but new pools in 2020 now offer much more.

For these reasons, the Park and Rec Board decided they should explore the possibility of a new pool rather than incur major expenses repairing our current pool.

The YMCA has also had discussions on updating their facility, including their pool, for several years. Plans have been discussed for the city, the YMCA and the School District to combine forces and look at working together. However, those discussion have been just talk and have led to no action for a long time.

I decided that if we want to move forward, to have a vision, it is time to act. I have met with the Park Board and the YMCA Board, and have had some conversations with School Board President Josh Mack and will be convening those three groups together this week.

I have asked each of them to imagine what they see as their ideal vision for a new facility. This is the time to dream. I would like the three entities to decide if this is a project we can combine forces on, or if each entity decides they just want to move forward on their own.

The time to decide which way we want to proceed is now. The time to dream and move toward our dream is now.