Linn County looking to sell Fillmore Center

Linn County officials are pursuing the sale of the county-owned Fillmore Center in northwest Cedar Rapids. At a work session Monday, the Board of Supervisors approved an application for final approval of a subdivision plat for the Fillmore Center, at 520 11th St. NW, in preparation for putting the building and its surrounding property on the market. The Fillmore Center was constructed in 1961 as the second location of Fillmore Elementary School. The school was closed in 1982 due to declining enrollment. Linn County subsequently purchased the property and repurposed it as the County Services Building, housing a number of county functions including Linn County Youth Services and the Abbe Center for Community Mental Health. It also served recently as a water and cooling station and as an overflow shelter for the area’s homeless population, in partnership with the City of Cedar Rapids and Willis Dady Homeless Services, before those functions were moved to a building formerly owned by Alliant Energy at 1017 12th Ave. SW. Linn County director of policy and administration Darrin Gage said the building, and its surrounding property, is being subdivided into four different lots, allowing a buyer to purchase one or more of the lots as desired. Supervisors also discussed a proposal to contract with Eide Bailley LLC, a public accounting firm headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota with Iowa offices in Dubuque and Des Moines, to help evaluate the county’s eligibility for energy investment tax credits and incentives. Under the contract, Eide Bailley would charge the county a maximum of $8,000 to help the county determine which energy investment measures might qualify for energy tax credits under the federal Inflation Reduction Act. Officials said they believe the county may qualify for several energy efficiency incentives for projects recently completed or that are currently under way. Linn County finance director Dawn Jindrich also said the fees paid to Eide Bailley would likely be rebated under federal energy guidelines “as a cost of doing the project, so the outlay would be no cost.” Mr. Gage noted that federal reimbursement for certain renewable energy projects, such as the installation of new solar panels, is a fairly straightforward process, while reimbursements for energy-efficient construction of new county facilities, such as the new secondary roads shop and engineering facility, “get quite a bit more complex.” “In order for us to be able to maximize the credits we get back on future new building projects, it is worthwhile working with an agency like this to get us from maybe that baseline of 30% eligibility of closure to 80% or even 100%,” Mr. Gage said. “We might be able to do something very simple here in house, but we're talking about millions of dollars in new buildings, so I think it’s worth the investment to use these folks.” A formal contract between Linn County and Eide Bailley will be on the consent agenda for the county’s regular meeting agenda Wednesday, Nov. 22.