CEDAR RAPIDS — In Marion Mayor Nick AbouAssaly’s State of the City address Tuesday, he touted Marion as a rapidly growing city that has elevated the quality of life and earned residents’ trust at a time when trust in government is declining.
At the Cedar Rapids Radisson Hotel on Collins Road NE, AbouAssaly highlighted the city’s 2023 successes and upcoming plans as Iowa’s 13th largest city and one of its fastest-growing communities. According to the Linn County assessor, Marion’s expansion of residential, commercial and industrial development has boosted its total valuation by nearly $2 billion in the last eight years.
In that time, AbouAssaly said, Marion has “put behind us the contentious, divisive politics of the past and unified all corners of our town in speaking a common language of ‘reaching higher’ and ‘doing better,’ building an inclusive, progressive community where all voices are heard and where all people belong, are valued, and have opportunities to add value.”
Marion’s most recent community survey conducted in 2023 showed that residents reported that confidence in Marion city government increased by 10 percent to 71 percent from 2017 to 2023. In 2023, 593 residents responded.
The city has added 1,231 single-family homes, 649 multifamily units and 176 senior housing units in the last eight years, AbouAssaly said. Plus, there are 11 new subdivisions under construction with hundreds of units planned in the Rookwood Estates project from an entity led by Marion-based developer Chad Pelley of Twenty40 Building Concepts.
With projects like the Uptown Artway, he said Marion is “catching the attention of leaders across the state as a model for how cities in Iowa can compete by investing in quality of life and sense of place.” The artway between 10th and 11th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues transformed an underused alley into a destination for art and spurred private investment in the area.
In the last decade, he said the city has spent more than $100 million on capital projects and infrastructure — mostly on transportation projects. The Central Corridor and Tower Terrace Road have seen more than $40 million invested alone. The city is paving its portion of the connection between Alburnett Road and C Avenue this year, and is finalizing plans to reroute Alburnett Road to take traffic directly to Seventh Avenue. That project will be bid in early 2025.
Redevelopment of library site, curbside collection coming this year
On top of that growth, AbouAssaly teased other projects to come.
AbouAssaly said a team is reviewing several proposals developers submitted to transform the old public library site, but it’s “hard to miss the excitement … over the potential redevelopment of this highly visible block.”
More than a year after the new Marion Public Library opened in November 2022 as “a prototype for libraries and a regional asset,” AbouAssaly announced the city’s new mobile library would soon arrive to take books, technology and other services directly to undeserved areas and senior facilities, “ensuring equity and maximizing the public impact” of the library.
The $400,000 investment in this mobile library, similar to Iowa City’s, comes after the new library welcomed 4,700 new patrons and more than 132,000 visitors in its first year of operation.
Additionally, Marion this year will roll out an automated curbside collection program for garbage, recycling and yard waste. Households will select the container size that best suits their needs. The city has ordered a new fleet of vehicles and 19,300 containers, which are slated to arrive by the fall.
This summer, the city will complete its new Public Services Maintenance Facility — a 144,000 square-foot building that includes expanded equipment storage, fleet maintenance, fabrication facilities and a safe room certified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Parks improvements include Central Plaza, maybe a new aquatic center
If voters eventually approve, AbouAssaly said the city also is planning for a new aquatic center to replacing Marion’s aging city pool. The project still is subject to voter approval and construction would remain several years away.
Crews will break ground this month on the approximately $7.3 million project to transform City Square with a new Central Plaza. The city in February kicked off the public portion of the capital campaign to raise $1.3 million, with more than $850,000 already secured. AbouAssaly said Marion still has a ways to go on fundraising and asked people to consider supporting this “transformational project and the impact it will have for generations to come.”
The refrigerated ice-skating loop will not open until winter of 2025 because of the delayed start, though most of the work will wrap up this year, he said.
Draper Park will house the popular caboose that stood in City Square since 1990. Once the caboose gets a face-lift, AbouAssaly said it will become the centerpiece to the park named after former council member Paul Draper.
“Our new standard is informed by a new consensus that growth and development for their own sake are not, and never should be, our goal,” AbouAssaly said. “… With each new project, we’re focused on maximizing the benefits and asking how the project will add value, improve curb appeal and contribute positively to our quality of life.”
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