Don't forget, tonight is the Hilltop Campus Village's Fall Music Festival, featuring the Tons 'O Fun Band. Its free, fun, and a great opportunity to see the progress in the Hilltop. The festival is from 5-10PM at 15th and Harrison, across from the new Harrison Lofts.

Big things are coming

How are we getting beaten by Sioux City?

As our city council and RDA bumble and fumble along towards a crappy casino somewhere along the interstate, Sioux City of all places is enjoying 3 developers fighting over the chance to build a casino in their downtown. The decision should be coming this week.

The company behind one of the proposals, Penn Gaming, is currently operating Sioux City's riverboat casino. They're doing such a terrible job of it (sound familiar?) that the city has gone out to find a better option. Penn clearly doesn't get it, as they've submitted something along the lines of the truck stop casino our city "leaders" want to settle for.

The other 2 proposals are worth of Davenport's jealousy, and should make us wonder what the RDA and City of Davenport are doing wrong. Sioux City and its metro area are a fraction of the size of the Quad Cities, and have a far lower population within 100 miles than we do. They also have other casinos fairly close by, although not 3 in the immediate metro area like us. To be fair, the other difference is that their interstate is IN their downtown, so they can kind of have it both ways. That said, I don't see why we can't get something a little closer to these:

One is a Hard Rock Casino and Hotel, utilizing a mixture of new construction and reuse, in downtown Sioux City. It is essentially an addition to the historic Battery Building, as seen on the left. This brings the legitimacy of a national hotel and casino brand while also helping out a historic building.

The final proposal, and one that I would say is the best, utilizes one of downtown Sioux City's largest, and currently underused buildings, the former Warrior Hotel. It also would renovate an additional building next door.

The companies competing for the chance at this casino are publicly campaigning in a way that we barely saw with our casino competition. Some of them have even opened storefronts to push their plan, and have created videos like this one about the Warrior.


Of course, you could argue that we DID have a proposal that was as good as these, from Restoration St Louis, and you'd be right. So we have of course rejected that option, because heaven forbid that Davenport do the right thing lately.

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.

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.

Pro-downtown Casino Commercial

Davenport Casino from Jarred Gastreich on Vimeo.