Monday, March 18, 2013

Possible list of stores for Whalen's Elmore Marketplace

I was looking around for some site plans for the hotel and retail complex going up on Elmore, and I found this website. It appears to be one of the developers of the project, and they have a site plan on there, shown below.

Also on that website, they have a downloadable brochure for interested tenants. That brochure has another site plan that actually lists "Proposed tenants." I'd normally say these were just ideal tenants rather than real possibilities, except that some of the sites still show vacant. That says to me that the spots with actual names listed are probably at least spoken for, and quite possibly spoken for by the companies listed. They're fairly impressive but not so pie-in-the-sky as to be out of reach of the QC.


Here's a list of the stores on the above plan:

New to the area:
DSW
Fresh Market
White House/Black Market
Charming Charlies
Banana Factory Outlet
GAP Generation

Already exist in the QC:
Lane Bryant
Cold Water Creek
Children's Place

I was kind of hoping for a Cheesecake Factory, but this still isn't quite the "lifestyle center" that the QC is lacking compared to similarly-sized metro areas.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Recipe for a healthy downtown? Not hardly

Convenience store plan has some people angry -QCTimes

 So, if you follow Retro Quad Cities on Facebook or read the QCTimes, you've probably already heard about the plan to tear down the old gas station at 2nd and Warren and replace it with a new convenience/liquor store. This would make for 3 liquor stores within a few hundred feet of each other centered around Warren Street. In addition to those, there are a couple more within blocks, all loosely centered around the skatepark.
Its such a hassle to stumble that extra 60 feet to the next liquor outlet...
How this seems like a good idea is beyond me, but I'm starting to feel that this city council is beyond understanding in general. On the east end of downtown, the Crescent Warehouse District (Number of liquor stores: 0) is succeeding to a level that even I barely predicted. Within a couple years we could be looking at a situation where the east end of downtown has run out of buildings to be renovated. The Hilltop Campus Village is making great strides to the north of downtown. That leaves west as the only direction left for future expansion and gentrification. Instead of preparing for this, it seems like the council intends on following a textbook recipe for blight. At least they could try to mix in some payday loan joints, pawn shops, and plasma centers to get the whole scene they seem to be seeking.