Spirit Inc. Pizza Sale Pictures

Empty boxes ready for pizzas at the start, and towards the end, a truck loaded with boxes full of pizzas.

About 1500 pizzas an hour being made.

Nearly 8,000 pizzas were made, bagged, and boxed in less than 6 hours. A lot of good kids and their families and friends helping a good cause.

Swing Lose (the baseball game)

Nothing political. Seriously.

My schedule hasn't worked out well for baseball games, so this was my first Swing game of this season. It was "Swing Into Reading" night, so plenty of kids had free tickets, and the General Admission section was packed. However, I'd say there were less than 300 of us in the box seats. They really should have some bench seats with backs that cost less than box seats and more than the backless benches in General Admission. Kind of like they did at JOD before the renovation... It seems to me if their business model works by giving away tickets to kids, who then bring their parents to the game, they could lower all the ticket prices and get more people at every game. Right now they've priced themselves out of being a frequent family outing.

In their defense, it did look like it was going to rain tonight. Hopefully they get more than 2300 people at a normal Friday night game. Or it could be that people are angry at the owner for not paying the city. (ok, a little bit of politics in there)

In other news, I'll be mostly unavailable this weekend as I'll be helping to make 8000 pizzas.

Where in the QC is this? #4

Update: It's Saturday afternoon and someone's gotten it.
Anonymous 5:41 PM guessed correctly that it was a building within the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds (before I gave that clue)
Anonymous 11:57 AM guessed correctly that its the Starlite Ballroom.

Clues:
#1. It's in Davenport, but not in downtown. I'll give more clues later but at the moment it wouldn't be fair. (that was a secret clue)
#2. Its within the fairgrounds

It's Thursday, so here we go again.It looks like I've finally found a tough one.

Swing Things, Part 2

It looks like the preliminary Swing purchase deal would indeed pay the city back up front for the majority of the renovation costs. That part is an awesome deal. I'm not sure how getting the money up front instead of in payments would work out financially for the city, but it seems like having the money to put in the bank and get interest on is better than getting yearly payments. The less cool parts are the greatly decreased rent, and some of the other requests, such as having exclusive control over the stadium, and losing money from the naming rights. The talk of lowering ticket prices could certainly be good for Davenport.

The city has to fight the attempt to have exclusive rights to the stadium. Maybe give them an IOC-type deal where the city won't let new baseball teams come in and use the stadium, but its our stadium, and the city should be able to use it if it wants. Hopefully our crack negotiators can get that part dropped, or maybe it was just a bargaining chip in the first place. I also wish that either the interested buyers or the city would be proactive in explaining how this could be a good deal for Davenport instead of letting rumors and guessing run rampant.

We'll see what the final deal ends up being, but it also sounds like Kevin isn't that interested in losing a ton of money on his investment.

Here's a quick fix for Kevin: Suck it up and pay your bills. The longer you wait, the more damage you've done to your already bad relationship with the city.

Bad Times for Baseball

Alderman Meyer posted the details of the agreement that is being discussed with the new potential owners of the Swing over at SoLo. Hopefully this wasn't confidential information, but I guess it certainly isn't anymore...

I'll summarize it in a couple words: Its crap.

Here's the important section:

"...Our anticipated proposal will have a net acquisition cost to RBI of approximately $7 million... While we are willing to pay top market for the franchise and assets, we cannot layer on top of that the nearly $4.5 million in lease obligations presently imposed by the agreements in place between the Club and the City. So, as we discussed 10 days ago, we cannot overpay 7th Inning Stretch for the assets and franchise it currently holds, nor can we commit to the City to retire a heavy debt burden going forward.

Instead, we will propose that the all existing debt be retired, save for $1 million that would be restructured as payments going forward under a new lease.

Basically the reason the team can't make money is because the city is mean and making them actually pay for having a shiny new stadium. I'm sure that's true, but that was part of the deal they signed up for.

The question I have, is whether the debt is truly retired, and is entirely dumped on the taxpayers, or whether Kevin would have to pay it off out of the 7 mil that he'd get from the new owners. He had better have to.

If Kevin Krause ends up sitting around with millions of dollars in his bank account while the city eats the renovation costs, I might just stop liking Mr. Malin. This is Kevin's failure, not the city's, so until he moves into a $75,000 (or less) house and has no savings, I'd say he still owes the city money.

My initial reaction is that the city should turn this deal down, unless the renovation costs are paid for out of the $7 million price tag. This is a bad deal for Kevin, as he wouldn't get the money back he put into the team, but that's what happens when you fail at something.


"Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up." ~Bob Lemon

Mid-week Open Thread 3

What's the top story this week?

Will the Swing get sold? Will the stadium get locked up?

Will tomorrow's "Where in the QC is this?" take longer than an hour to figure out?

Will the new Davenport sign being constructed between Brady and Welcome Way be as big as the Hollywood sign?

How's the 53rd Street construction mess working for you NoLo (or NoKi?) people?

Will I ever find my way out of this cave?

Dedicated Fishermen

Not what I call a beautiful fishing day, but I believe these are commercial types.

In unrelated news, someone came to my site this morning using the Google search: Apartments in the quad cities that u dont have to be 18 to rent

Welcome... I guess.

A Couple of Links

First of all, everyone should check out Bridge to Somewhere more often now that QCBS is gone. Pioneer98 has some good posts, especially his or her recent post about moving from Bettendorf to Davenport. I miss Liberal Lion's posts on QCBS, especially since now I'm back to being the #1 target for the againsters...

Secondly, I have added a new link to the link bar on the right of the blog. I linked directly to the forums section of absoluteDSM.com, but most of the Davenport/QC news is within the Iowa Cities and Development section of that forum. The absoluteDSM "About Us" section has this to say about the website as a whole:

AbsoluteDSM.com is the creation of web page administrators, Ryan Moffatt and Josh Garrett. The site was created to discuss the amazing construction and development underway in the rapidly growing Des Moines, Iowa metropolitan area. Showcasing Des Moines' architecture and built environment through photograph became an obvious inclusion to the site, that will eventually grow to include many cities across Iowa. AbsoluteDSM.com is intended to fill a niche in the Central Iowa web community, by providing a source of information and a format for discussion regarding the construction projects and development of the region.

I've known about absoluteDSM pretty much since it launched, because it was right around the time I was trying to develop quadcityimages.net. They have a section for Davenport pictures, and some of them are definitely better than mine. The whole website is worth exploring, but I was especially impressed with their forums, which I didn't know about until recently. Its interesting to see what people from across the state think of various things Davenport is doing.

Underrated Treasure

No, I wasn't refering to Maquoketa Caves State Park as underrated in the title, although I suppose it is too. While its an amazing place, there are only 29 campsites in the whole park. Unsurprisingly, they were nearly all taken, so my group of 13 ended up camping at Scott County Park. These are all people I know through WIU, and few of them are from this area. As I was leading the caravan back to the Sac Fox campground, I was trying to imagine what the park would look like to someone seeing it for the first time. I decided its a pretty great park, but I know that its never one of the first things I think of as an asset to the area. Many picnic areas, over 200 campsites, an olympic-sized pool, miles of well-cared-for nature trails, no admission fee. Its another thing that we probably take for granted around here, but isn't something every community has.

Weekend Open Thread

Behave yourselves, as I won't be around to moderate.

I'm off to Maquoketa and who knows where else.

13 people + 4 tents + 4 vehicles - any organization = good times.

Guest Images

Thanks to AIF for these shots from Lindsay Park.
Being a train buff I especially like the one of the BNSF train coming around the bend.



Click the images for a larger view.

Where in the QC is this? #3

Update: 57 minutes later, East Ender the overachiever already got the right answer. Its the back of the building next to the Crescent Macaroni Building, (I know, I was lazy this week) on the northeast corner of 4th and Iowa. Apparently that sign used to say Halligan Coffee, so I learned something today. I swear, next week I'm going to use a picture of a blade of grass or something.


Its Thursday, and that means its time for another mystery QC Image.

The only rules are its somewhere in the QC area. Hopefully I've found one people won't recognize right away this week, but I doubt it.

From the Desk of the Colonel (Guest Post)

VETO II

Times like this, I wish I had my site. Thanks to QCI for the guest post. I have confirmed Mayor Winborn will indeed Veto the City Council action of Wednesday night, which moved the legal counsel away from the authority of the City Administrator.

This is a rather bold step, as it alienates Alderman Barnhill, which has been a constant supporter of the Mayor. As I understand it, the Mayor believes this is typical city council micromanagement. If you review his past, this makes sense given wide powers the County Administrator has enjoyed over the years.

Thankfully for Thee, Malin is not a reactionary kind of guy. Its well known Thee supported this move and did everything possible to see it clear. What the fall out will be is unknown. My sources tell me to look at an attempt of some elected officials to continue this type of agenda.

Yours truly,

George

Legal (Dept) Mumbo Jumbo

Ok, so the council changed their mind and voted to take control of the legal department from Craig Malin. Firstly, as I didn't go to the meeting, who changed their vote? Tom Saul doesn't mention that in his brief article about it.

My second thing, is how is this going to change anything? Now instead of having conflicts of interest with Craig Malin, won't they just have them with the council? If the city council is your boss, and a majority of them would like a legal opinion to go a certain way, isn't that a conflict of interest?

It seems like we took away one possibly iffy situation, when Legal helps set up a contract for their own boss, with a million iffy situations, where legal is asked for their opinion on various ideas that their new bosses have. I guess some Aldermen will do anything they can to get tiny increments of power away from Malin. Seems like they should have better things to do.

Also, I thought this council was morally opposed to motions to reconsider? Why didn't Brooke and company have a walkout to stop them from having a quorum? Oh yeah, professionalism.

Againsters trying for a River Renaissance Petition Rematch

Petitioners: Time to end public market plan -QCTimes

Here they go again. The person quoted most in the article admits that he was also involved in the failed (miserably) attempt to block the River Renaissance projects. He also says how nothing downtown is working. Strange, but I'd say 90%+ occupancy in this building is working pretty well. I'd say the Figge being featured in the Chicago Tribune and NYTimes is something to be proud of. The RME's 3rd version (The Redstone Room) seems like it might be the charm, and has already sold out one of its first concerts.

As of yet, no city money is even being spent on the Freight House project. One thing that D1 needs to do is revise their pie-in-the-sky 54 million dollar figure that keeps being thrown around. Unrealistic stuff like that just gives the againsters more ammunition. If even $20 million is reinvested in that area it would be well worth the investment of a million bucks for the Freight House. In addition to leveraging the surrounding development, the public market would be another attraction that we can show off when attracting both tourists, and new businesses interested in locating here.

Of course, this goes against the Againsters brilliant plan for solving Davenport's problems: Don't do anything remotely risky, and certainly don't do anything that might attract new residents to Davenport. Oh yeah, and Davenport has to somehow provide plentiful city services with no taxes. Its tough to win people over when all your side has is not wanting to do things.

CyberSquaters

QCBackstage's former blogspot address has been taken over by "Student Loan Consolidation." Hopefully QCOnline's QCBloggers page stops listing it soon. The internet is a strange place.

Last Day (or 2?) to register for Fish & Fire

From RiverAction.org:

River Action will host its fourth Annual Earth Day Fish & Fire Fundraiser and 7th annual Eddy Awards Presentation Saturday, April 22nd at the Credit Island Lodge in Davenport. Following a catfish fry, the Eddy Awards are presented for six categories. This event will also include lighting of the fire stacks, a raffle and auction, and live music from the John O’Meara Group.

Fish & Fire Tickets are $25 for adults, $12 for children 8-16 years. For reservations, please send a check to River Action, 822 E. River Drive, Davenport, Iowa 52803 by April 18th.

Now, the postcard I got in the mail from them says to send a check by April 19th, but I'll just say if you want to attend this event, you'd better make your reservation tomorrow.

QCI's Crescent Macaroni & Cracker Museum

In my time here at the Davenport Lofts, I've amassed a bit of Crescent Macaroni and Cracker Company memorabilia. Searching eBay for "Crescent Cracker," "Crescent Macaroni," or "Crescent Davenport" almost always nets me something. My parents also keep an eye out for stuff while they visit antique shops and shows. Here's a sampling:









I got the darker, greenish box last year for Easter, and the orange one this year. My parents found both at a big antique show they go to every spring at the UNIDome in Cedar Falls. Here's an close look at the
inside of the green one.










I found this envelope on eBay, and it was only a couple bucks, so I bought it. It's postmarked July 1st, 1935. It mentions the "Crescent Hour" of music from 4-5pm every Friday on WHO-WOC, which is pretty interesting. The 3 cent stamp would sure be nice these days too.

This is my most recent eBay purchase, although it was being sold by a guy here in town. I am unsure of the age, but the seller said he believed it was from the 1920's. It doesn't show up well in the scan, but the text is still incredibly clear and easy to read. It also shows the Rock Island Lines/ Waterloo Mills building behind the Crescent building. Its an 8x10 print, and I'm not sure what the printing process was, but the black "ink" is shiny and reflective.

There are also postcards that I've seen for sale online too, so I'll be keeping my eye out for any further items.

Iowa City Images

Seeing Iowa City in person today really increased my amazement that no one was killed. Brick walls and chimneys collapsed all over, and hundreds of windows were blown out, so flying glass must have been everywhere. A commenter on my previous article about the storm was angered by the idea of me visiting the city during this time, but it was a full 40 hours since the storm had hit, and I was careful to keep out of the way. Some things just need to be experienced in person. What the news sites, TV news, CNN, etc, don't show are the blocks and blocks of slightly damaged homes. Maybe just a big tree down, or a couple windows broken, or sections of shingles gone... I would put the number of homes in those categories in the hundreds.

This sorority house is one of the worst-hit buildings that I saw. Girls and their parents were trying to sift through the wreckage and move out things that were salvageable.

This car flew into a creek, and someone added a humorous sign to it.
The utilities and electrical contractors struggling to get everyone's power back on. Some residents are reportedly being told it could take up to a week.Downtown parking buildings seem to have weaker glass, as I saw several of them missing a lot of windows in their stairwells.
Stoplights missing the lights, and highrises missing windows. It makes me realize that my 8' tall windows wouldn't be so neat in a tornado.
The famous shot... you've seen it everywhere, and now you've seen it taken by me. St. Patrick's has an excellent website with great images here. I know that St. Mary's and southwest Davenport misses Father Rudy, but I suspect he will be greatly appreciated at St. Patrick's during this difficult time for them.

Iowa City

I've been fairly quiet on this issue, mostly because I felt like everything was already being said on other blogs. I'm going to head over to Iowa City today and see things for myself. I'm hoping to park somewhere out of the way and walk into the area so as not to add to the gawker traffic jam that I'm hearing the city has become. Ambrose linked to this gallery at the official U of I page, and I think its the best and most comprehensive I've seen yet. And it doesn't require registering.

Looking at those pictures, I'm just completely boggled that no one was killed in this storm. Actually I'm fairly shocked that dozens weren't killed. As much bad as is being said about the party-loving students of U of I, they actually listened to the weather reports, and mostly seem to have taken cover. I would have thought that in one of the many houses they show collapsed, caved in, blown apart, etc, that there would have been a few people passed out, making out, studying, or getting drunk who wouldn't have been paying attention to the weather. Nobody had a brick wall collapse on them, or a 2x4 driven through them as they were driven through cars and buildings. Amazing.

Maybe Sauk Fox blessing that supposedly keeps Davenport tornado-free spread a little luck to keep Iowa City fatality-free during their tornado.

I'll post some pictures (probably similar to the million others around the internet) later today.

Random Pictures from Dwyer and Michaels's Adult Easter Egg Hunt

Sadly, I didn't win the CRV, but $10 off at Co-op and 2 free orders of Chick-fil-A nuggets.

Where in the QC is this? #2

Update: Moline83 was the correct guesser. This stenciled-on sign, and several others like it, are on a wall near the intersection of 14th Street and 5th Avenue in downtown Moline. They're around the corner from Bent River Brewery, where I often have the Tuesday night special $2 burger baskets. I've been very impressed with the first 2 rounds of this little game, and I'm going to keep picking harder images until it takes a few days for someone to get it.


Here's the second installment of this new feature. Hopefully its a little harder than last week's, but its hard to judge what people will recognize. I would prefer it didn't get guessed within 1 day. I'll give hints as the week goes on if required.

The moon this morning after the storms

I had to work last night, so I didn't have to endure the temptation to stormchase and take pictures last night. Before work I did attempt to catch some lightning images, but that was a dismal failure. I'm may drive over to IA City today and get some pictures, but they probably would like to keep the gawking to a minimum. With 30,000 college students, and probably 30,000 Iowa City blogs, Quad City Images probably doesn't need to help with this news story.

CityView at Night

This week CityView got their decorative sconce lighting turned on for the first time.

QC Area = Ethanol Capitol of the World?

Another ethanol plant heads to Galva -QCTimes

$140 million ethanol plant in Galva to use 36 million bushels of corn -QCOnline (only available to non-subscribers for a limited time)

This is good news of course, and combined with the $130 million plant planned for Annawan, that adds up to 270 million bucks worth of construction within a 40 mile radius of the QC. That's more than 2 River Renaissances right there, as far as the construction industry is concerned. These plants seem to be (annoyingly?) efficient though, so despite costing a fortune, the Galva plant would only employ 45 people. Even so, these are the kind of projects that almost everyone agrees we need, and seem less controversial than say, pork plants.

We've got the corn, so we might as well attract industries that take advantage of it.

Garbage Garbage

I'm not fully in either camp as far as automated garbage collection. I see the pros and cons. For me the real question is what the 5% of Davenport residents who seem to have no regard for any laws do with all the new garbage rules. Its hard to imagine the same people who are out running from the police, shooting it out at Crestwood, etc, carefully selecting the right size can on their postcard. Hopefully pawn shops don't accept City of Davenport garbage cans.

Aside from that, I think it should be a good system. No more garbage bags that animals can claw/eat right through, and hopefully little old ladies will have an easier time wheeling their cart to the curb than they would have carrying a garbage can. The issues with various alleys they won't be compatible with the new system will be ironed out one way or another. Bettendorf seems to be handling the system decently, but they don't have as big of a "5% group" as Davenport. Maybe we can use some of the VIPS to patrol alleys and ravines and take digital pictures of anyone illegally dumping.

I do find it interesting that despite registering http://pitch-in.org the City of Davenport has still not done a good enough job of educating people about the new system. Recently on SoLo people were insisting that the new fees were on top of the current garbage/recycling fee. (They aren't) Now today in the ask the QCTimes section people are asking the same thing. It shouldn't be up to bloggers and the mainstream media to explain to people how the fees will work. Maybe a new round of postcards is in order.

Monday Morning Open Thread

I've got a bit of the writer's block. What's on people's minds in the QC this week?

I get about 10 hits a day from people google searching for Davenport Lofts, seems like they should really have a website.

Automated garbage, new website... can't really think of a whole lot to say about either. Both should be good things, but we'll see. They went all out with the website over at http://pitch-in.org Check it out if you're still deciding which size can to pick.

Also, I feel like I don't put enough time into Illinois-side news. I either need to fix that or change the site to DavenportImages.

Pool Tournament Images

These were taken around 9pm tonight, and there were still tons of people down there. I think it goes until midnight. It was great to see something like this take advantage of the RiverCenter, and I hope to see them back every year.

A Couple New Urbanism Examples

This post was inspired by This Article on CNN.com about a development planned for the area around Salt Lake City that seems to follow new urbanist principles.

This part definitely sounds familiar:

Home builders were skeptical when the Salt Lake valley's biggest landowner laid out the plan for a 20-mile string of densely packed communities framing the rural west side of Salt Lake County. The communities would be laid out along a planned highway and light-rail lines connecting to Salt Lake City.

Mining executives pitched the idea to some 50 builders. "A lot of them rolled their eyes and walked away," said Keith L. Morey, manager for Kennecott's flagship Daybreak project, where just seven builders were chosen to help build the first town of 14,000 homes.

It will be interesting to see how that project works out. Hopefully it will go as well as the Stapleton Denver project that is currently converting the former Stapleton Airport in Denver to a 4700 acre new urbanist community. Here's an article about it from the NYTimes.

I first heard about the project when I saw that sign at the new Denver International Airport on my way home from Phoenix in January. Even 4700 acres doesn't begin to compare to the 144 square MILES that are owned by the Utah developer. That's over 92,000 acres of new urbanism-style development.

This pretty much defuses the argument that new urbanism only works in places where land is at a premium, forcing higher density. Denver has quite a bit of room to sprawl, and 144 acres could be a lot of typical curvy street, big yard, ugly house development instead of mixed-income, high density, alley-filled development.

I am hoping that Davenport's small trial of this concept in the Prairie Heights neighborhood will demonstrate how successful this can be.

And then there was one

Quad City Backstage is all the way gone. I hoped the Colonel would leave it up but just stop updating, but he went the Fly route and got rid of it all.

Considering Fly's barely-active status on his blog, and the Colonel's recent closure, I'm now the last active blogger from our former DDP trio. If you think putting out a blog on a daily basis isn't tough, just look at the attrition rate.

Where in the QC it was...

Congratulations to Anonymous at 11:37 PM last night who guessed the first "Where in the QC is this?" image. As he or she so precisely said, it is of north entrance of the USBank in downtown Davenport. Its one of the most ornate architectural features downtown, so check it out next time you're down there. Winding Hills also appeared to know the location, but was a little late on the buzzer. I'm pleased that people seemed to be into this feature, and it will be back next week. I'll try to make it a little harder next week so people don't get it the first night, and maybe require some hints.

Where in the QC is this?

Over on the Looper blog, which I've mentioned a few times, Devyn has a weekly feature where he shows an image of something within the Loop in Chicago, and his readers see if they can guess what or where the picture shows.

I'm not sure if a similar thing will work on QCI, but I'm going to try it. Every Thursday, or until I give up on doing this, I'll post an image from within the QC area. Whoever gets it first will win... the respect and admiration of the blog author. It could be interesting, but the tough part is picking mystery images that are difficult enough to not be guessed right away, but easy enough for people to guess it before the next week.

I'll shut up now and just show the image.

Adler/Mississippi Hotel Construction 2

It looks like they've torn off half of the top floor. I don't really see how this helps the stage expansion, unless they continue and tear off the back half of every floor, which they could be planning to do. I guess we'll have to watch and see.

Quad CIty Backstage ending

If any of you haven't seen Colonel Davenport's post that he's closing up shop over at QCBS, I figured I'd repeat it here. He had a grand vision for multiple bloggers with multiple specialties and interests, all putting together sort of a QC digest, covering many issues in addition to politics.

But, it didn't work out. Its a shame, but maybe the QC isn't ready for that sort of thing yet. I want to wish the Colonel, Liberal Lion, and Pioneer all good luck in the future blogging endeavors, and I'm going to miss the Colonel's Davenport insider information.

Thanks for what you've done guys.

Wednesday Night Open Thread

Can't think of much to blog about today.

People seem to want this Iowa Workforce Development story to be talked about. It seems like more of a Des Moines scandal to me, but I don't know much about it.

Tomorrow I'm going to start a new weekly feature.

Also, I'm thinking about making a list of categories of my image posts so people who end up on the blog looking for images of various things can easily find the posts with the pictures they're looking for.

Spring is here

I took a walk around downtown this afternoon, and got some good images for some later posts, and the previous image of the pool tables in the RiverCenter. I think spring might be sticking around this time.I've always liked this view of downtown, from the Skywalk between the RiverCenter halves.

Pool, anyone?

Actually its too late to register, but it'd be fun to watch.From the RiverCenter website:
11th Annual 2006
ISPA State 8 & 9-Ball Championships
RiverCenter
April 5 - 9

Schedule:
Wednesday, Singles 9-Ball
Thursday & Friday, 8-Ball Singles Event
Saturday & Sunday, All Team Events

East Branch Library could get "bumped" for commercial use

At the bottom of this article in the QCTimes there's a section about the supposedly upcoming east side branch library. Apparently our fine alderman are reconsidering, but hopefully just the prime location. The article doesn't say anything about building the library in a different place, so I'm not sure what the plan is. It sounds like Lynn and others have decided that the current planned location for it is too valuable as commercial property to "waste" it on the library. I don't necessarily disagree, as there's no need for a library to be highly visible like a business. My only question, which the article doesn't answer, is where would they put it instead?

If Lynn is in favor of not building the east side branch that Davenport residents voted for, then between that and his landlord deal, he truly deserves to be sent packing next election.

Update: According to Alderman Frink, the proposed library is not in danger, and "the park, library, residential, are all still the works, however commercial is all that will be featured on the 53rd St. frontage. The remainder will be N of the new 54th St and W of Eastern."

Lying commentors epidemic

I'm really starting to have a problem with people who use outright lies on the blogs to start rumors and help their side of arguments. I figured it was more of a problem on the independent blogs, but the QCTimes.comments "blog" had a run-in with it today. I have also complained about people getting off topic in all the posts on here, but obviously that's a problem everywhere, as this article about firefighters turns into an argument about the skatepark.

Here's the QCTimes article, with the comments.

A person going by "Jerry" says the following in one of his comments:

"Has any council member bothered to ask Bettendorf what happened to their skatepark? Understand it wasn't utilized, became an eyesore and was closed. I would recommend letting the aldermen & mayor sign a personal quarantee that if the skatepark is not utilized and is torn down or money spent to convert it to something useful, then the city officials supporting such a stupid move will be personally liable and have to repay the city for the money spent both in the initial construction and any other costs associated with upkeep, lawsuits, etc. This would show just who is willing to put their money where their mouth is." (emphasis added)

The Bettendorf skatepark is still open, and heavily used, even though as another commentor says, its not a great skatepark.

What Jerry said is just a bold-faced lie. He probably knew that it was. Yet it has the potential to spread into a rumor, and then suddenly we'll have people refering to the "failed Bettendorf skatepark," on the blogs. Its no different than people around here referring to people getting paid $150,000 a year when they really get $80,000. Soon you get people quoting a lie. Things like this are making me think long and hard about my complete and open anonymous comments system. There are REAL problems that should be debated in local politics, and real issues, so there is no need to lie and make up things.

Kids using the Bettendorf skatepark today.

11 "Houses" for the price of 1

or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become a Slumlord.

Browsing for random property on ebay and came across this: 11 Houses on Wooded 4.4 Acres in Davenport Iowa

"Presently rental properties wih a gross rental income of $4375.00 monthly"

Jackpot...

Adler/Mississippi Hotel Construction

A small backhoe on the roof of a building isn't an everyday occurrence downtown. I guess that parapet is somehow interfering with the stage expansion. I wish the contractor or the city or someone would put up a "What we're up to this week on the Mississippi Hotel/Adler Theater project" webpage.

Excellent Freight House Article

For those of you who don't normally read the River Cities' Reader, check out the article on the Freight House controversy in this week's issue.

Its remarkably fair and unbiased, especially considering the Reader's editorial take on things down at City Hall. Mr. Ignatius has quotes from users of the current farmer's market, who don't yet understand that this won't be replacing the current market, just adding to it. I especially like how he tries to explain that the main goal is not the public market idea as much as the surrounding development that would be based on the public market.

As I've said before, its just a different kind of incentive. I've tried to explain that the Freight House itself is just something that housing developers can use to attract the the kind of people who drool over things like the City Market in Kansas City. When folks start moving in down there so they can walk across the street and buy art, crafts, bean sprouts or whatever, more buildings will be renovated into apartments. When more residents appear, more commerce follows. Pretty soon we have two emerging residential areas downtown instead of just the Crescent District. I just wish we could get some kind of guarantee of new surrounding development before spending money on the Freight House.