A and W Root Beer in CR struggles to recover

Doug Ward drives through a subdivision made up of rows of trailers. You can hear the sadness in his voice as he says, “This just doesn’t feel like home.” He longs for the life he lived before devastating floods destroyed his Cedar Rapids neighborhood.

“I want to come back. I miss (my friends) very much,” Ward said as he escorted CNN on a tour of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, nearly a year after the floods.

Ward, 64, is an institution in the historic Time Check neighborhood just across the Cedar River from downtown. He owns the A&W Drive-In on Ellis Boulevard, a fixture on this street since 1948.

Historian Mark Stoffer Hunter calls the drive-in Cedar Rapids’ “Eiffel Tower.”

“It’s been there for us over the decades,” Hunter said. “It’s one of those landmarks that tells you you’re in Cedar Rapids.”

When floodwaters ravaged Cedar Rapids last June, Ward’s drive-in drowned in almost 10 feet of water. Now, the drive-in sits in ruins. A&W root beer mugs covered in dried mud sit on the restaurant floor. The stench of floodwater lingers in the air.

Putting together the pieces of Ward’s life hit a snag in the fall of 2008 when an economic storm swept across the country. In a matter of months, the financial support Ward needed to rebuild dried up.

“Life’s got to go on. If you sit and worry about it too much, you’d probably be at my funeral today,” Ward said.

Ward estimates that it will cost close to $1 million to rebuild the A&W Drive-In at its current location. He’s been able to line up $350,000 in loans, but that’s far short of what he needs.

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Story Highlights
- The A&W in Cedar Rapids was Doug Ward’s life for 30 years until last year’s flood
- Almost a year later, the drive-in sits in ruins, the root beer mugs still muddied
- The drive-in has been a landmark in the Time Check neighborhood since 1948
- It will cost upward of $1 million to rebuild or change locations