Joplin: A city rising from the rubble

By Eric Adler, Laura Bauer and Mike McGraw, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Dec. 18--JOPLIN, Mo.--Winter creeps closer. Mark Rohr rises for another 13-hour day of work along "the destruction zone."  Some call it "the dig site," "the war zone," "the scar."  More hopeful residents like Rohr, Joplin's city manager, reject all those names as too negative, inasmuch as they fail to recognize what he sees as the speedy and near miraculous clearing of mountains of debris, the businesses returning, the steady thwack of nail guns rebuilding homes....

Last month, Congress approved some $400 million in community development block grants that Missouri can apply for to help rebuild parts of Joplin and flood-ravaged towns. Exactly how much Joplin might get remains unknown.  Insurers, meantime, have already paid out more than $1 billion in claims, with losses estimated at close to $2 billion.

"We would all love to be seven months into this and say everything is rebuilt and we're all done," Rob O'Brian, president of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, said in a measured assessment. "But no one expected this to be a six- or seven-month recovery process. Realistically, we know this is going to be a several-year process.... I would say, by and large, we are even ahead of schedule."

As the year that will define Joplin for decades comes to a close, the city's landscape is already transformed....

Attitude aside, the tornado also heaved up a wave of problems that many acknowledge will take more than bricks, mortar and a can-do spirit to stem.

Exactly what the rebuilt city -- population some 50,000 before the tornado -- will or should look like continues to be debated.

In November, the city's Citizens Advisory Recovery Team, a panel of some 100 residents, community and city leaders -- offered the City Council a menu of recommendations.

The thinking is that the black cloud that tossed homes, schools, businesses and some 15,000 cars into twisted heaps might also offer a silver-lining opportunity -- urban planning by tornado, just as tiny Greensburg, Kan., was reborn as an environmentally friendly town after being wiped from the map.

The recommendations from the team, known as CART, ranged from bike lanes in all areas of new construction to storm shelters in new schools. It included a mixed-use pilot neighborhood that might serve as a model for future urban core construction: energy-efficient homes with underground utilities on a block where retail mixes with residential.

"I don't think we do justice to the lives that were lost, the people who were injured in the storm, if we don't do our part to build back better than what we had before," said Joplin School Superintendent C.J. Huff, a CART member. "If you don't take this opportunity to build back better and stronger, then we weren't the community I thought we were when I decided to come here."

But there lies a tension:
While planning for the future, city leaders also know they must deal with the here and now, striving to rebuild the city as quickly as possible and return to normal knowing "normal" will have to be redefined.

If displaced residents don't return -- and no one knows how many will -- city and school coffers are certain to suffer.

"I have no doubt we're going to lose families," said Huff, who is nonetheless hopeful. "I know we're going to gain some families in the years to come."

Sixty percent of the district's budget comes from property taxes....
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