The Cedar Rapids City Council this week approved spending $4 million to buy a 30-acre tract of land where an abandoned meatpacking plant sits.
The former Farmstead foods plant in Cedar Rapids and surrounding property must be surveyed and some clean-up is expected because there’s environmental contamination due to the property’s industrial past. But city council members and local developers met this past Thursday to talk about what might be built on the site. Cedar Rapids City Council member Pat Shey says the process shouldn’t be rushed, however. “We live in a world of instant gratification so that’s always a problem is to counsel patience in a big project like that,” Shey says. “It’ll be a message we probably need to deliver time and time again.”
Final decisions are likely months away.