This shot was taken last week, of the foundation of the first home in the QC's first attempt at new urbanism, Prairie Heights. I still don't think Ruhl is marketing this subdivision enough, but there is at least a website at PrairieHeightsQC.com.In other news, it seems almost like the Brady Street corridor that was struggling to the point that we needed to study ways to revitalize it, has begun revitalizing itself. Starting at the bottom, you have the new 605 Main halfway house beginning construction to replace the dated former-hotel currently being used, all the Palmer progress and future plans, and the new Walgreens going up at Brady and Locust. As I posted about a while back, Pleasure Pools is building a new place on the former Buysee Dodge lot, with another TBA business going in on the other half.
Now today's QCTimes article reveals that the Handicapped Development Center is renovating and adding on to the former Halftime Sports Bar on the other side of Brady. All of this is in addition to the new Menards, and the fairly trustworthy rumors about TriCity and others redeveloping the former hotel and movie theater site. Not a bad list of things for a corridor that was or is considered to be blighted.
8 comments:
I agree that the corridor is moving forward; though, I would have to disagree that a new halfway house should be tabbed as progress.
Can you expand on the Tri City rumors for the theater/hotel plots?
A few threads ago someone mentioned that the reason the hotel was demolished was that TriCity was looking at moving out there. Either that person or another commenter mentioned a rumor of the area "being developed to house a group of showrooms for home ideas and contractor offices to take advantage of the Menards development."
I've heard similar but slightly different versions from at least one other person, and I doubt they'd pay to tear down the hotel without a plan in mind. We'll see.
As far as the halfway house, they're kind of a necessary evil. I'd rather prisoners were released through those than directly into the community, and eliminating them isn't going to keep people in prison longer unless we build new prisons. They actually add capacity to the system, although essentially minimum security. Mostly I just meant that the new building will look nicer than the old one though.
I agree that the 1/2 house should not be viewed as economic development. For so long now, low income service structures and developments have been viewed by Davenport as economic development when it is not. In fact, we too often build low income complexes using all tax dollars without understanding their impact on our city and without budgeting in more tax dollars to maintain the places. For example, low income housing (any new housing) takes more money to man more police and fire etc. These places don't generate tax dollars, usually they are abated. So, they cost us money. We have failed to add more services but keep approving more developments. The cost has been the decline in our established areas and the higher and more violent crime, less manpower to quality of life services.
The half way house will just be a brand new motel for the Howards!
NO - it will be a hotel for the Hoawards and their cousins who are getting out of the pen. We will be making things so much worse being the host of crimeland. We are so dumb in this town. Build it and they will come. And come. And so will thier transient families and they will then deal the drugs and shot each other. Can you say - stupid.
So if the halfway house wasn't built, these ex-criminals who originally came from the Quad-Cities would magically decide to NOT move back here?
Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
I'd rather have them in supervised housing than released directly back onto the street, personally.
That really is the other choice. Its not "if we don't build this, they'll stay in prison longer." If we don't send them to a halfway house for x number of weeks, they just get out fully x number of weeks sooner.
The thing that is funny to me is that I'd bet 90% of Davenporters couldn't have told you where our halfway house was prior to the controversy around moving it.
The people coming to the 1/2 house aren't all just returning home to Davenport. The 7th judicial district has many counties in it, we are host and now home to many people who aren't from here and they all have bad criminal histories. They all are required to have jobs and they all are dumped here into Davenport. It's all about location location location. The 1/2 house is in a bad location for the health of our community. Davenport is too small to support all the public housing, service orgs, poverty orgs and criminal 1/2 houses. We are seeing the effects of these things on our community. We are not attracting self sufficient people here, we are attracting poor people with and without criminal records. We are known for our many many food services for the poor, Cafe on Vine, St.Anthonys, the one by the Lofts, Salvation Army, plus the food pantries. We have tons of public housing and shelters, we have 1/2 way houses for criminals, we have Castlwood, Horizon Homes, Emeis,a section 8 Program - on an on an on. MY point is that our population is not that big, 100k - that is it. We are poverty stricken. We are seeing the effects of being a community that supports poverty. Crime is really bad now, the areas south of kimb are deteriorating, thugs all over, gang bangers, slum housing, etc. Time for our leaders to crub this noise.
Post a Comment