Thursday, April 05, 2007

ebay, trailers, etc

  • I know I'm late on the bandwagon, after the QCTimes and QCOnline articles about it, but here's the ebay auction for the Pierce School Mall. Eleven hours to go as of 7am, and no bids yet. Seems like just the existing tenants and investment potential would make it worth the third of a mil. Just don't try and open a Mexican dance club there.

  • Keith Meyer presents another reason why I'll never be able to see eye-to-eye with my Alderman. In this QCTimes article about the council barely approving the contract to design the already-funded concession/restroom pavilion, it says that Alderman Meyer would like to have a concrete pad for a "concessions trailer." If there's one thing that says world-class riverfront to me, its definitely NOT "trailer." Maybe instead of spending $20 million on the new police station, we could have enlisted some of our homeless to help cobble it together out of pieces of plywood, twine, and corrugated metal. I think Davenport should behave like a city of 100,000, and some of the council thinks we should spend weeks arguing over a couple hundred thousand dollars for a logical project. I guess we'll just always have to agree to disagree.

  • While going through my 4+ gigabytes of digital photos, I found a couple that I might be able to use for "Where in the QC is this?" threads, so I'd predict one of those in the next week or so. I was looking through the images looking for stuff to upload to my growing Flickr album.

  • The Office finally makes it return tonight, if you're into that sort of thing.

  • Speaking of making returns, the Swing of the Quad Cities will be playing their home opener next Monday, at noon. Its magnetic schedule day, so who can miss that? I urge many of you to turn out and show your support for the soon-to-be new owners. Hopefully they can make a night at the ballpark fun and affordable for families once again. I'm definitely planning on attending.

  • No images for now; I'll give you dial-up folks a break.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

On Monday there was a great story in the Argus about my local hero-Rick Moliterno. Standard Byke and Goodtimes-great home town businesses looking to expand as a result of the skatepark. A sign of more good things to come in the West Central Davenport Business District.

Anonymous said...

So they should build a flood proof concession stand if they are going to offer food at the skate park. If the city expects to hold any type of event at the park something for concessions is not a terrible idea.

Idealism costs money, just do not let it be tax dollars.

Anonymous said...

QCT said, “…the facility will be designed so alderman can cherry-pick the features they want”. So what is it that Keith disagreed with that prompted him to suggest that only certain features be included in the design? Wasn’t the intent of the design, as requested by the council, clear to Keith? Or, is Keith simply prone to being redundant?

Anonymous said...

QCI, Maybe your pockets are bottomless, most of ours are not.

QuadCityImages said...

The video game room jumps out at me as the only thing that should be dropped. Lockers make sense, concessions make sense, bathrooms make sense, and combining the park's utility room with these other things makes sense.

Cut the video game room, feel good that you spent thousands of dollars in staff time to save a few thousand dollars, and move on.

Anonymous said...

That's great!! Another new building for the river front and the west end is in parallel. Help!!. We are floating down river and have no anchor! Where is this alderman that is back fresh and ready to represent us?

Anonymous said...

I guess I wonder when we aill tap into the city staff we overpay to plan and engineer for this city. Why do we need to keep paying them and consultants? Why not wither have city staff do the work or fire them and have consultants run the city?

QuadCityImages said...

Designing a structure isn't exactly like filling out a coloring book, you know.

Do the same people that oppose any building the city tries to build, suggest that the city have a full-time architect?

Anonymous said...

I don't know, a bathroom and snack bar cannot be that hard to design. We have some good staff that should be trusted and encouraged to prospose something.

Anonymous said...

I am sorry, but the price is too high considering the condition of this city. We don't have basic city services and we are building a 1/2 mill pavilion? Wow. Where are our leaders. Howard, Brooke, Frink Dumas and the Mayor need to to get our city cleaned up. I pray we have good candidates that will make up a BASIC SERVICES majority next round.

QuadCityImages said...

What basic services do we "not have"?

We have a crime problem, but that doesn't mean we "don't have" police.

Anonymous said...

I love it, at least Moline has the balls to go after more police officers. If I was a Davenport cop, I'd be applying in Illinois, better pay and working conditions

QuadCityImages said...

Yeah, being able to drink on the job must be a nice perq.

Anonymous said...

You don't think Davenport cops do it? Get a life kid!

QuadCityImages said...

Despite some negative news, the Davenport Police are easily the best QC-area police department. They have a lot more challenges to deal with, and get a lot more press because of the QCTimes focus on Davenport.

Anonymous said...

Well, some of the finest work at the PD, but with Bladel saying no high speed pursuits, no re-engagement after a bad guy gets away, and no more then 12 cops on the beat at any given time, it is hard to call the DPD the finest in the QC. Maybe they could be, but Bladel would have to start listening to some of his officers for a change.

Snarky Chick said...

It really is sad because I think there are some great officers. I was having a beer with one who was applying to other area cities. He said he just wanted to be able to do his job and make a difference. Davenport is too political. It's just a problem that needs to be dealt with from the top down. We could have a really quick turn around in moral and crime with the right leadership decisions.

Anonymous said...

What is a few $100k, pencil dust!

Anonymous said...

DPD officers don't arrest enough and don't give out enough cits to the bad guys when you need them to. I like the officers, but I think it is a management problem.