Now This Is Interesting...

So the Iowa City Post Office is looking to move out of their current location to a smaller building. I suppose, given the current difficulties that the US Postal Service finds themselves mired in, something like this was going to be inevitable.  The Post Office downtown is a big-ass building so I could understand if they wanted to downgrade to something more compact- where and what that's going to be, they don't yet know but there are a couple of local issues that this could impact.

First and foremost is the issue of the Jail/Justice Center.  Call me crazy, but I'm willing to be it's got more square footage and would be a whole lot cheaper to repurpose than building an entirely new Jail from scratch.   The 'architectural aesthetic' of the Courthouse that Jail Opponents were so in favor of preserving would be preserved.  The County would get bigger digs and potentially some more jail space as well (you'd have to see how many more cells you could get in there but I'm willing to bet it'd be at a sweet spot for a lot of voters- not so many that we're looking to fill beds and not so few that we're sending people to other counties.)   If the Board of Supervisors and the Sheriff don't jump on this, they're crazy.

Second and potentially far less likely would be a new Museum of Art for the University.  If the City is looking to expand the downtown footprint southwards towards the new Riverfront Crossings District, a new Art Museum where the post office is could lead a huge push southwards.  Would they wan to keep the existing building and just repurpose it?  I don't know.  My preference would be to build a new building that could be potentially a more modern compliment to the Courthouse across the street but the right facility in that spot could be a huge boost for the Riverfront Crossings District (which would be good for the City) and would house a new Art Museum in a prominent, centrally located place right down the street from the shiny new school of Music that's being built.  I can't imagine the University would strenuously object to that notion either.

Either way, keep an eye on the local media and see what develops.   If the Post Office wants new digs then suddenly there are all kinds of interesting possibilities in the air...