City tries again on Prairie Heights commercial land

On November 2nd Davenport issued a Request for Proposals from potential developers of the commercial parcel that the city still owns on the south side of the Prairie Heights area. Many of you will recall that the city did one of these a few years ago and wasn't satisfied with the offers. At that time they chose to hold out for a better proposal.

Here's the page on the city website with the info, including a link to the actual RFP at the bottom. It seems a little less restrictive than the previous one, although not by too much. There are some restrictions that are made by an agreement with the nearby Grace Evangelical Free Church, and also this quote:

The City welcomes proposals that integrate office or residential uses into the proposed commercial development. Industrial uses, however, such as warehouses, automobile repair facilities, manufacturing or storage facilities are neither desired nor allowed within the Prairie Heights Neighborhood development.

So I'm guessing the carwash that riled up some folks over in Bettendorf a while back need not apply either. I wonder about tatoo parlors... Seriously though, this should really be prime land someday, so I do like that the city doesn't just want it to become a junky strip mall or gas station. That said, the spec building across 53rd from the site doesn't seem to be filling up all that fast. It will be interesting to see what kind of proposals come in this time.

So I've been a little busy this year...

In addition to the typical work, family, and social life type things that put a crimp in my blogging time, I had some extra stuff to work on this summer. There's now a Mrs. QCI!
As any of you who have been involved in a wedding will know, its a lot of work! We were married on October 9th, which happened to be the day that was a record-high 88º out. When planning an outdoor fall wedding in the Midwest, that was not really on our list of possible weather situations. Thanks to all of the great people who helped us on that day, everything went as smoothly as possible, and it was a great day.

After the wedding we were off to our honeymoon in Ireland. This was the first time in Europe for both of us, and while sitting on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road could be "exciting", it was definitely a fun trip and I highly recommend it. I could show off dozens of pictures at this point, but this blog is supposed to be about the QC, so I'll limit myself to 4 of them.



So there it is. The blog is not dead, and I hope to start posting more than once a week. That said, I doubt I will ever return to the daily posting that I did when I was living downtown and putting much of my free time into blogging. Although who knows... after a few years of unexciting (ie, professional) city councils, it appears we're gearing up for a casino battle again! The QCTimes got a month's worth of articles out of it, so I'm sure there will be more posts from me as well. I'd like to thank those of you that still check the blog, and hope we can get back to enthusiastic discussions again.

News good enough to return from the blog afterlife

Davenport to consider $75M casino plan -QCTimes

I've been busy this year, but I'll get to that in a later post. For today, we have great news on the front page of the QCTimes. Not only is someone coming in to rid us of the Isle of Capri's maltreatment, but the casino is staying downtown. I didn't expect this, considering how timid developers usually are about trying new things, but I think its great news. There are plenty of truck stop casinos in the Midwest, but not as many downtown casinos anymore. Dubuque's works, and I think ours can too. As far as the the sites mentioned, I like the WG Block location the best, although the others could work too. The Ground Transportation Center is a waste of real estate, but I'm not sure if I trust any casino to look good enough to have such a prime location.

Many of the people against this seem to be against gambling at all, but I'd say Tuesday's election has shown that Scott County residents still overwhelmingly support gambling. Its just another business folks! I know some people who are addicted to shopping at Kohls, but nobody worries about that. Fortunately, I think that much of the resistance to gambling as a legitimate form of entertainment is fading as younger generations grow up with casinos not having the same stigma they may have had for our grandparents.

I look forward to the day that Davenport's casino competes with Bettendorf and Rock Island's as an equal, rather than a forgotten stepchild.