Gazette Daily News Briefing, July 14
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Friday, July 14.
There will be another day with a chance for rain, although a lot is uncertain. According to the National Weather Service it will be partly sunny in the Cedar Rapids area on Friday. There will be a 50 percent chance of showers all day. The amount of predicted rain will be less than a quarter inch in total, except in areas where thunderstorms develop.
The city of Cedar Rapids will soon launch its process of refreshing the master plan guiding development of the approximately 130-acre greenway along the west side of the Cedar River — providing a vision for enhancements and recreational amenities alongside flood protection.
The Cedar Rapids City Council this week signed off on a contract with Brooklyn, New York-based Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc. to update the greenway parks plan for $262,800.
The greenway plan will cover three areas: the Time Check neighborhood running north; the central riverfront in Kingston Village; and Czech Village in the south.
The greenway project will be coordinated to work with other city renovation and flood control projects as the city seeks to continue to improve the spaces that were heavily hit by flooding 15 years ago and by a derecho in 2020.
There will be some new local flight options available to Florida, just as the temperatures start to get colder here.
American Airlines on Thursday announced it will add a direct flight to Miami from Cedar Rapids, starting in November,
The Saturday-only seasonal service will run November through March.
The announcement came the same week that Allegiant announced that, also starting in November, it will offer nonstop flights from The Eastern Iowa Airport to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport — marking the airline’s ninth nonstop flight route out of the Cedar Rapids airport.
The new flight will fly twice a week. Allegiant announced introductory fares would start at $60, for one-way flights.
Initial plans called for the new Cedar Rapids flight to be offered year-round, but Allegiant considers all of its routes to be seasonal because its business model is built on offering low-cost airfare during vacation seasons.
Mike and the late Esther Wilson of Cedar Rapids have given $1 million toward the renovation of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch.
The Hoover Presidential Foundation said the gift has pushed the “Timeless Values | Modern Experience” fundraising campaign to roughly 65 percent of its $20 million goal.
Esther Wilson, who died in July 2022, was an active volunteer with RSVP, assisting Erskine Elementary students with mathematics and providing bookkeeping support to older women.
Mike Wilson, now 97, was an engineer at Rockwell Collins, who had limited time for other activities while working but embraced volunteer work after he retired, assisting student robotics teams and serving on his church’s board of trustees.
An area in the museum dedicated to standards and regulations, a topic in which Hoover, an engineer, played a pivotal role while U.S. secretary of commerce, will be named in Wilson’s honor.
