LST 325 Open Thread

I only took a few pictures during the excellent self-guided tour, so here are 3 of them. I was happy to see that 16,000 people took advantage of this great opportunity to visit a piece of WWII history right here in the QC.


Here's one of several 20mm deck guns, and a shot of the long line people were willing to wait in for a tour. Despite getting there at 9:05 Monday morning, my dad and I still waited in line for half an hour before we got onboard.

Other than the LST stuff, consider this an open thread.

LST 325 and Jumer's Casino

Today and tomorrow (Tuesday) are your last chances to see the LST 325 Memorial docked in Moline. I plan to tour it today. I was over there on Saturday, and the line stretched about 2 blocks long. I'd say the ship is being very well received in the Quad Cities, and hopefully they're raising a lot of money for its restoration and upkeep. If I get any good additional pictures during the tour I'll also post them.

LST (Landing Ship Tank) 325, ready to help invade Moline.


Also today, I have a few construction shots of Rock Island's new Jumer's Casino, submitted by a helpful reader. With gas prices being what they are, I don't make it all over the QC to take pictures anymore.

As far as I know, this casino still has a Styrofoam basement with water running underneath it, waterfilled bladders supporting the floor, or some similar trickery to be considered a "floating casino."

So although I posted images of 2 things that could technically considered boats, I don't think they could possibly be more different from each other.

And finally, happy Labor Day folks.

And God said, Let there be Parking

And a historic home was struck down, and parking flowed forth.
And God saw... that it wasn't good at all.


Effort to save the Deutsch House hits the bricks -QCTimes

Does anyone know if they even let Habitat ReStore in there to harvest any salvageable materials or architectural features? I wonder if they wanted to kind of sneak this up on people to avoid a public protest or something.

Monday's Good, Bad, and Indifferent

I kind of liked this format when I used it for the downtown comings and goings a while back, so I'm going to use it again.

The good:

The Blackhawk Hotel building getting $8.5 Million in tax credits. Check out Restoration St. Louis's website to see some of the things they've done with historic buildings. The $42 million renovation of the 15-story Coronado Hotel is particular applicable. Bonus good to the Forrest Block getting some state money as well. Hopefully it can get back on track.

The former Creative Tile building's reconstruction getting under way. This area at the foot of Oneida has a lot of potential, and hopefully something can be done with the site of the in-limbo Oneida Landing project.

What seems to have been a successful River Roots Life/Ribfest downtown on 2nd Street.

The new owners of the River Bandits. I never could have guessed that anyone could make as big of a positive impact on Davenport's baseball experience in only one year as they've made. I've seen several games listed with over 6,000 in attendance, which hadn't happened for years prior to this season. I'd much rather have 4,000 people pay $5 to watch a game than sit there with 2,000 people who paid $10 and have empty seats everywhere. And cheaper prices are only part of what these new guys are doing down there.

The bad:

John Lewis's problems. While people seem to take a disturbing amount of pleasure from the misfortune of the JLCS folks, and their clients, they may be missed in the community. The overextended themselves so much that this seems like it was bound to happen, but I don't think their failure is going to be a positive for downtown as suggested elsewhere.

Moline's Kone Centre project's continued troubles. Ten or twelve stories is nice, but hardly the massive impact that an 18 or 20 story building would have on the QC's skyline.

Taylor School not getting tax credits. While I put the Blackhawk at the top of the impact list for these tax credits, Taylor School is probably next. See below for who I don't think should have gotten them.

Me, for not posting enough lately. I'll try to remedy this one.

The indifferent:

The former Salvation Army building renovation (RiverWalk Lofts, Riverview Terrace Apartments?) getting tax credits in the same lottery as the Blackhawk and Forrest block. Section 42 housing isn't terrible, (people making less than $24,000 aren't what I'd call poor) concentrating people of one income level is not a good thing.
The perfect example is a comparison between the Crescent Lofts and the Mississippi Lofts. The Cresecent Macaroni, Waterloo Mills, and 4th Street buildings managed by Alexander Company are 2/3rds Section 42, 1/3rd market rate. There are very few problems. The Mississippi Lofts only have 4 market-rate apartments, and 42 income-limited Section 42 units. I hear the police called to the Mississippi Lofts on a weekly basis. Last night there was a stabbing there, along with the Shricker. Concentrating lower incomes together does not work. Also, management helps. I don't know much about the management at the Mississippi Lofts, but Lisa Stang, the property manager of the Crescent buildings, is excellent at tossing out people who cause trouble. When there are waiting lists for downtown apartments, there's no need to rent them to criminals.
Hopefully management of the building on River Drive can make up for the all income-limited units, but a better idea is to have some market rate units mixed in.

Jeff Speck's ideas for downtown Davenport

Now that I'm slower than even the mainstream media, I guess I'd better post my reactions to Jeff Speck's presentation at the Figge last Thursday night.

For background, here's the QCTimes article about it, here's their editorial about it, and here's a blog post about it from Information Swimming.

Now, one of the things that didn't make it in the QCTimes articles was that Mr. Speck never expected every one of his suggestions to be utilized. His phrase was that he was throwing a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. The Design Center and I believe the Downtown Partnership will be working on more public input sessions about downtown improvement ideas.

Another misconception is that Jeff Speck suggested moving the Freight House Farmer's Market out of downtown. In fact, he suggested moving it farther INTO downtown, and onto second street. I understand where he's coming from in wanting to combine the popularity of the farmer's market with the success of the 2nd Street corridor, but I think the Freight House area could be the next success story and shouldn't be given up on. Second Street is great, but it doesn't have the river views or historic Freight House as a backdrop. The area of the Freight House was one of the few suggestions that I disagreed with.

One of the things I really liked were his suggestions of smaller buildings to fill in missing areas. One idea was to take out a couple of the drive-through lanes at the USBank on 2nd Street and replace them with a skinny building shielding the rest of the drive up from the Figge plaza. Plazas feel more like plazas when they're surrounded by buildings on 3 or 4 sides. As far as bank drive-up lanes, Mr. Speck correctly pointed out that you rarely see them full these days. The drive-up lanes near the Figge and the library on Main are both taking up land that could have better uses.

Another good infill idea was to build a narrow building along the east side of Iowa Street between 3rd and 4th street to connect the Crescent Warehouse District down to the 2nd Street corridor. Right now you have to walk between a demolished cement plant and a large parking lot, which doesn't provide a welcoming impression.

As you can see from the few things I've mentioned, a lot of the suggestions weren't for public improvements, but for areas ripe for private development. One of the problems that was mentioned at the presentation was that local banks are unwilling to finance condos downtown. Considering the extremely high occupancy rate of the apartments downtown, I have yet to understand why both banks and developers are so wary of trying condos and market-rate apartments. Something is going to have to change on this front for downtown to really take off like I feel its close to doing.

I'm going to stop there for today. Jeff had a lot of good ideas, but having visuals really helps. I'm hoping to be able to get a copy of the map that was shown at the presentation, and hopefully a video of the entire presentation will soon be available somewhere online.

Rough night for emergency workers

Last night was a busy one for police, medics, and firefighters.

There were shots fired near the Kwik Shop at Locust and Harrison, involving Phillip Bogan, who you may remember was charged in connection with the shooting on East 14th back in May. It sounded like he wasn't the shooter, but may have been the target. I think it really is about 1% of Davenport's population that both causes , and is victimized by, 90% of our violent crime. Nobody got shot, but I don't believe the shooter was caught either.

Then later this morning there was a car-motorcycle collision near Menards, which didn't sound too good for somebody. When the cops call out the accident investigation team right away, its never a good sign. Welcome Way was also closed for a while.

Less than an hour after that there was a head on collision in front of Sudlow on Locust, with at least 3 people injured. There were also some other medical calls around that time, so even though 4-5am is usually a quiet time for firefighters, I think quite a few of our companies were out on EMS calls. It will also be interesting to find out later if alcohol was a factor in either or both of these accidents.

Hopefully all the injured are ok, and thanks as always to our first responders.


Also: My Jeff Speck article is delayed again, but Pioneer98 has a post about it here.

Friday Morning Open Thread

Later today I hope to write a few things about last night's presentation by Jeff Speck, but for now I'll just put up an open thread.


In other news, there's a good write-up in the QCTimes about the HAPPEN program. Hopefully as houses are successfully renovated, more people will see this great program and take advantage of it.

Don't forget: Jeff Speck at the Figge tonight

Here's a quick article about it in the QCTimes.

Doors open and (I believe) appetizers at 5:30, with the actual presentation at 6.

I was able to spend some time with Jeff Tuesday night, and I'm interested to see what recommendations he can come up with for downtown Davenport. Like many outsiders, he seems to see that we have potential more than some of our residents can see. I also heard that the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan thought Davenport was a neat town. Now we just have to convince the vocal minority of Davenporters who hate their city.

The Smashing Pumpkins at the Adler

Friday night the Smashing Pumpkins opened their tour with a great show at the Adler Theatre. They had been rehearsing for their tour at the Adler for much of the week, and several fans met or spotted various band members around town, including Billy Corgan. He was seen at the Woodfire Grill, Shogun, Greatest Grains, and some local antique stores.

Like last year's Wilco concert, this is another "big deal" for the Adler and really the whole Quad Cities. People traveled from many states to see this concert, and I would say it all went off without a hitch. There was infinitely more security present than the Wilco concert, and the crowd seemed very well-behaved anyway. Here's a link to a thread on a Smashing Pumpkins forum talking about the show. Beware, as it has plenty of ads and swearing.


The concert was more targeted at serious fans of Smashing Pumpkins rather than the ones, like me, who only knew a few of their more popular songs. One part I really liked was Billy Corgan doing a bit of Jimi Hendrix and blaring out a feedback-filled rendition of the Star Spangled Banner during their song United States. It was also a heck of a loud concert.


Here's a video I took of one of their most popular songs, Bullet With Butterfly Wings.

In a surprise move, to me at least, the encore consisted of the Pumpkins' song "We Only Come Out at Night", with kazoo solos, followed by a cover of Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime," also with kazoo solos. They appeared to be having a good time, but the spontaneous messing-around feel of it was diminished by the fact that they did the same encore at Saturday night's show.

The next show, by the way, cost nearly $100 compared to the Adler's $45-ish after fees. I also think its pretty interesting how the Adler can be beautiful to older generations who remember the art-deco heyday of big movie houses, and also loved by younger generations who dig the retro architecture.

Jeff Speck returns to speak at the Figge

From the city's website:

From pedestrian friendliness to attracting Millennials, New Urbanism expert Jeff Speck to speak on revitalizing downtown Davenport in free presentation at Figge

The public is invited to attend a free presentation, given by New Urbanism expert, Jeff Speck. This presentation will take place at Figge Art Museum auditorium at 225 West 2nd Street on Thursday, August 14, 2008. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. with the talk starting at 6 p.m. The presentation is hosted by Downtown Partnership and the City of Davenport. Mr. Speck is helping launch a new downtown planning process and providing the foundation for an updated Downtown Master Plan.

Last year, Mr. Speck presented in Davenport to an overflow crowd of 150, comprised of interested citizens, business owners and city government. During that talk he covered New Urbanism in general terms. This year's presentation will focus on specific recommendations for continued downtown Davenport revitalization.

Mr. Speck is very familiar with Davenport and visits the area often, as his wife is from the Quad Cities. He is also the co-author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (along with Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk).

Church Garage Sale Open Thread

I'm way too busy to post much of anything this week, but I did want to at least put up a general discussion thread. I did manage to make it to the fair tonight, and that was good food as always.

This morning I was driving past the old St. Joe's on Marquette, and I saw that there was a garage sale going on inside. I stopped and went inside, and didn't end up buying anything, but it was neat to look around the old church. On our way out, I talked to one of the members for 10 or 15 minutes, and I was quite impressed with what they've been able to accomplish with only about 30 members. New bathrooms have been built, and geothermal climate control was added. This is the church that former Alderman Meyer tried to prevent from removing the pews from, but despite the lack of historic seats, it is still a beautiful building, and using folding chairs instead of permanent pews allows them to hold other events in the church. Its worth stopping down, if not just to see the inside of the church. The sale runs from 8am to noon tomorrow.

Edit: I wrote this just after midnight on Friday night, so my references to "this morning" and "tomorrow" may have been confusing. The garage sale is from 8am-noon on Saturday.

A few Bix Pix

For the last 3 years, I've watched the Bix downtown. Watching the start from the Midamerican parking garage is one of the most exciting things, and it usually makes for good pictures as well. I also enjoy the sound system down there that updates you on the progress of the race, and the fact that a quick walk over to 3rd street will allow you to see the finish as well as the start. This year I decided we'd watch it from somewhere else. I couldn't decide between the top of Brady, or near the turnaround on McClellan, but as you can see below I ended up going with the turnaround. Here are a few images from that area.
Volunteers setting up hundreds of cups of water before the race. One thing I did like about where we sat was the view of the Mississippi in the background.


The leaders coming into view, and some people a bit farther back in the pack, along with the empty cup wreckage.

I took this one Friday night at the Brady Street Sprint, which is always exciting as well.

Downtown Morning Images

Here are a few of the images that should have gone with yesterday's posts (but they hadn't been taken yet) and a couple of others I took this morning.

The pavilion is really coming along next to the skatepark. There's also a heck of a lot of other landscaping and concrete work going on in that area, including sidewalks being added along River Drive.

The Bix Streetfest is ready for tonight.

The Freight House, with all 4 venues' signs visible, along with the newly painted boxcar.

LeClaire Park sadly has a long way to go, but it looks like the par nearest to the bandshell is being prepped for re-sodding. Maybe the Pops concert is still a possibility?


The RiverWalk Lofts/Riverview Terrace Apartments (the sign on the side of the building still says River Walk Lofts) from Ripley looking west. The sign also says Opening November 2008... I'll believe that when I see it.

Downtown Comings and Goings: Good, bad, and indifferent

I've been meaning to do a post about some of the businesses opening and closing downtown, and in a piece of good timing, the Downtown Davenport Partnership recently updated their website covering some of the same things. I had planned to get some pictures of a few of these things, but those will have to wait for a separate post. I've divided the comings and goings into what I personally consider to be good, bad, and indifferent events for downtown.

Good:

Azteca - Azteca is opening what I believe is their 4th location in what is currently ScatterKats. Finally some Mexican food downtown! ScatterKats really turned out to be a disapoinment compared to the "upscale" New Orleans-themed bar and restaurant it was originally opened as. I think I hear even more police calls to there than Shenanigans. They may not be closing the bar completely though, so we'll see how that works out.

Dillon Fountain - After being in disrepair for years, the Dillon fountain is back in action. Bill Wundram must be thrilled, as he's been complaining about it for years as well.

Riverview Terrace Apartments - Apparently the "RiverView Lofts" are now the Riverview Terrace Apartments. Despite being 100% medium-income, they should give a boost to that end of downtown. As always, it depends on the management.

Snap Fitness - The first piece of the redevelopment of the Putnam and Parker buildings is a 24/7 fitness center. I'm not sure if E Squared Fitness is still in the Executive Square building, but if it is, hopefully downtown can support two fitness places.

Skatepark Pavilion - The structure is together for the multipurpose building being erected next to the skatepark, and the surrounding area's earthworks are progressing as well. This can only help what is already the most popular amenity Davenport has built in years.

The Freight House - All 4 venues are now open, including the Ripley Street Grille. I have yet to check the place out, but from the pictures all the places look great.



Bad:

Starbucks - I don't drink coffee, and could care less about Starbucks closing their downtown location, but I did feel that it lent an air of corporate confidence in our downtown. That said, I think its closing says more about over-saturation of coffee shops downtown and their own business model than the health of downtown Davenport. I almost included this in "Indifferent."

LP Studios - The closing of the Living Passion Studio and Coffee Shop at 2nd and Iowa is a greater loss for downtown than Starbucks. It was a unique place where you could get a coffee and watch them work on the backdrops for their productions as well.

Still missing - A new Figge restaurant, a replacement for Savitris, and of course, casino progress.

Indifferent:

Sippi's - This has been discussed at length, but I'm leaving it in the indifferent category. I will say that the building looks better than I was afraid it was going to, but it was a fight to get it that far. The council passed design guidelines, so people shouldn't be surprised when they come into play.

Salon Luce - The "Mentality" hair salon in the Executive Square building was replaced by "Salon Luce." Ok.

Hilltop Hair Variety Shop & Neat Stuff - A couple junk shops move down the hill into downtown. I suppose having entrepreneurs selling a mixture of items is better than a vacant storefront. Seems like they could have changed the Hilltop name at least.


Check out the Downtown Partnership's page about current downtown projects.

Bad storm

I had planned to do a post this morning, but I don't have power and I don't feel like typing a whole post with my thumbs. I drove around a bit and this storm seems like one of the worst we've had in a while. The damage seems worst east of Brady and also in the southwest end. There are a lot of power lines down and trees and branches on houses and cars. I kept wondering when Davenport is going to catch a break this year! It seems like its been one natural disaster after another.

Missing Roof Open Thread

At this point I have no idea what they're doing in the conversion of the old Salvation Army building on River Drive into the Riverwalk Lofts. They've torn the roof off, and taken down the pillars that held the roof up. I can only guess that they're either getting rid of the 4th floor, and rebuilding it and maybe even adding another floor on top. Or maybe they're just going for the 1945 Berlin look... any readers know what they're up to?

There have been some closings downtown, and I'm also hearing about some planned openings, so I'll save that for another post. Aside from the casino stuff I've been dwelling on, what else is up in the QC area?

Some More Casino Stuff

I'll get to the Davenport vs Isle of Capri stuff in a minute, but first I wanted to mention that Friday night I visited Casino Rock Island for the first time. (The fact that I'd never been there before shows that I'm not a big time gambler, and the fact that I lost a total of $6 shows it even more.) I wanted to see it before the opening of the new casino opening snuck up on me, because I'd always heard that it was different than the 2 Iowa side boats. I like that it actually feels like a boat, probably because it actually is a boat, or several boats to be more accurate. I'm a bit too young to have ever been on the President, but I hear that you could tell that you were on a boat there as well. The other alternatives are essentially just casino buildings on barges.

I would have greatly enjoyed the smoke-free atmosphere at Casino Rock Island, but for some reason Friday it had a bit of a sewer/gas smell on the bottom floor of the southern boat. I assume it was something leftover from the flood. The rest of the place smelled fine though, and I didn't have to wash my clothes when I came home. In some ways, I feel like its a shame that this unique casino will soon be closing, but I also think the new park Rock Island is planning to replace it will be a great asset for the QC.


And now back to the regular topic, Davenport's Rhythm City Casino:

Davenport gaming license valued at $169M -QCTimes

So a Davenport casino could be worth $169 million to someone. As I've said before, we should be looking for that someone. Unlike Alderman Lynn's crazy suggestion last year, we should not even consider a casino operator that has another casino within 200 miles of here. Casinos are willing to pay $500 million just for a license in the Chicago area, so I think getting them to spend $60-90 million on a complex in Davenport, where they wouldn't have to buy the license, isn't out of line.

As I have posted many times, I would like to see this plan, involving a casino, hotel, and indoor water park. The Grand Harbor Hotel and Waterpark in Dubuque only cost $26 million, and IOC is supposedly spending around $40 million on their land-based casino in Bettendorf, so that puts the figure right at the low end of the $60-90 range. The study also said that a downtown casino wouldn't do that much worse than an interstate-side casino, so I think the benefits of a downtown casino outweigh the costs. The main reason would be the ability to use the casino investment as a match for state grants aimed at fixing the riverfront after the casino boat leaves. I also think a more urban location with a number of amenities within walking distance would be a unique attraction for a casino, and if people are willing to find the Riverside Casino, I think they could find downtown Davenport. You can argue that gamblers don't visit surrounding attractions, but I would argue that they have a better chance of visisting downtown attractions if they're visiting a downtown casino vs one along the interstate.

As a commenter on my previous post pointed out, Mary Ellen Chamberlin couldn't come out and say that the Isle $9 million offer is a pile of crap, as giving away your opinions like that isn't good for negotiating. However, the fact that she tried to put a positive spin on it with this "Its not a bad offer" stuff isn't a good sign. Its a terrible offer! If she's not on their side, how about a "no comment" or something? It appears she's worried whether anyone wants to come into this market and take the license, but somehow I think there are casino companies out there willing to gross $80-90 million a year.

Also, why would IOC spend $9 million on the current Davenport casino boat building-on-a-barge. When they spend all their millions to build a land-based casino in Bettendorf, couldn't they just float that building-on-a-barge down here? I don't want that, as it would possibly block even more of the river than the current boat, but I do wonder what their plans are for the current Isle of Capri boat.

Friday Assortment: 90 Degree Edition

Blackhawk Hotel: A wasted renovatoin -QCTimes Letter to the Editor

This one gets July's Worst Letter of the Month Award, I think. The letter writer clearly hasn't been following what's happening with the Blackhawk, the RiverCenter, or Restoration St. Louis. Why take the time to write a letter to the editor about a subject that you apparently know so little about?


Davenport population inches up -QCTimes

Its not the best news, but compared to the losses that Davenport took from 2000-2002 (almost 1000 people) gaining 94 isn't too bad. This figure is also an estimate, so who knows the real number. Apparently all the people who claim they're moving away because of thumbtacks, stormwater fees, floods, etc are being more than balanced out by new residents.


The Battle of Newark, starring Cory Booker -Esquire

This is a pretty interesting read. Newark has some similarities to Davenport, and if more people were as passionate about fixing Davenport's problems as Mayor Booker, we'd be gaining a lot more than 94 people a year. Instead a lot of people just complain, or tell everyone they know how bad they feel Davenport is instead of working to make it better. We need more Cory Bookers.


And then the casino stuff... (QCTimes article here)

I like Mary Ellen, but it seems like she's a little too ok with IOC's screwing of Davenport and the RDA. The RDA's job is to maximize revenue for the gaming license that they hold, and continuing this relationship with a casino operator that openly admits to using us as a secondary location doesn't do that. The only solution to Davenport's casino is a new operator. A company with no other operations in the area, who will compete with Casino Rock Island and the Isle instead of just remaining a halfway casino property.

Municipal Residency Requirements

As any of you who read the QCTimes know, they've been running a series on cities' residency requirements, how they affect their applicant pool, and some of the reasons behind the rules.

It seems like the common thread through the articles is a general dislike of the rules, which in some ways is understandable. I completely disagree that rules that allow employees to work for a different city/county in one state, but not a closer city/county across the river. The example was where a city's firefighters could legally live in Muscatine, but not Rock Island. I understand, and will explain below, requiring government employees to live in the jurisdiction of their particular city or county. However, if you're going to let employees live outside your city or county, there shouldn't be requirements by state either. A radius in miles from the city hall, police station, fire station, or public works building would make more sense to me. I know there were a couple jobs for Rock Island that I was intrigued by, but despite being able to see the city from my living room window, I couldn't have worked there without moving. However, someone that lived south of Milan would have been eligible. That makes little sense to me.

On the other hand, I completely agree with cities/counties requiring some (or all) of their employees to live in the particular municipality they work for. These government jobs are usually decent paying and have good benefits, so what's wrong with one more job requirement? There are already plenty of things that employers insist on in order to hire someone. If they're going to pay you well and give you good benefits, the least you can do is give them back some loyalty in the form of property taxes.

I especially feel this rule is justified for police, which apparently the new Chief does not. Forcing officers to live in the very same community they're responsible for protecting should give us all a sense that we're in this together. Someone can't say, "well, good enough for government work" and then drive home to a nearby suburb, unaffected by how well they did or did not do their job. If cops don't feel safe in their town, that should just give them more empathy for the rest of us depending on them. We're all in the same boat.

I know there are some strong feelings out there about Davenport city employees living elsewhere than Davenport, so lets hear it.

PHeights, Window Washing, and a big night downtown

A few assorted things today...

Here's the progress on the first house in Prairie Heights. Notice that it actually looks like a house instead of a garage! Whoever moves in will have the benefits of an attached garage, but the front yard and curb appeal of a traditional home. Why did we ever stop using alleys?

Driving downtown this morning to check out the July 4th preparations, I saw that even the Figge was getting cleaned up for the occasion. This job ranks right up there with wing-walker in the "not for me" category.


And speaking of July 4th, what a night July 3rd (tonight) is going to be for downtown Davenport. The Bix at 6, a River Bandits Game, the Blues Fest, and Red, White, and Boom. While I think the fest belongs on the riverfront, it should make for a neat urban atmosphere with River Drive and 2nd Street packed with folks tonight. Hopefully a lot of the Bix@6 crowd will hang around downtown for the rest of the evening. Also, props to the QCTimes for giving the appropriate kudos to Davenport's flood rebound. Now if we could just get CNN to stop by and take notice...

A new QC photo website, and cross-posting at QC

I thought I would pass on a bit of info about a new web page that has been created featuring Quad City-oriented photography. Its called QC Shots, and its located at qcshots.spaces.live.com. It is run by Davenport resident Josh Nash, an immigrant from Belgian who has lived in many places around the US before settling in this area in 2000. It takes bit to figure out the naviagation of the website, but you'll find he has a number of photo albums, and several videos. These images of the Walgreens being built at Brady and Locust were submitted to me from Josh. I may be featuring more of his photography in the future.


The left image was taken on May 12th, and the right on May 28th. Additional progress photos can be found on Josh's website.


In other news, my blog posts should be cross-posting now, both here at the same address as always, and over on the QCTimes' Quadsville. That blog, which may or may not allow comments (I haven't decided yet) will be located here. I kind of hate to get two different comment streams going about the same post, so I may just leave comments off on the mirror blog. That's the same reason I didn't just create a duplicate blog on Wordpress for those of you who have trouble with Blogspot.

I know I haven't been posting much lately, but hopefully I'll get back into daily posting soon.

Open Thread

I've been busy this week, so not much in the way of posting. A know there are things going on out there other than flooding and the air show.

It sounds like the QC may be getting its first Panda Express soon. They've been running ads for hiring employees, but I don't know what location they're talking. Anyone know?
Edit: A visit to Northpark last night allowed me to see that Manchu Wok has bitten the dust, so I suspect that's where Panda Express will be going in.

Will Alderman Ambrose's homophobic comments and vote against the gay pride festival hurt his reelection chances? Its not like he's ever denied his feelings on the issue, making such odd statements over the years such as trying to connect pedophiles to the Rainbow District. Davenport's a decently liberal town, so I think this kind of thing may catch up with him one of these years. Lisa Lewis should already be planning to play this up for younger, more tolerant voters.

In a related note, yes, the Fairgrounds aren't the best place for motorcycle rallies or frequent festivals, but can't the neighbors put up with these things on the rare occasion that LeClaire Park is unusable? Where else should this stuff be held during floods?

2008 Quad City Air Show

Here are a few images from yesterday's air show. For a more complete set of images, check out my post on AbsoluteDSM.com's forum. It was a great day for the air show, and a great day for taking pictures. I would say that despite fuel prices, this year's show had some of the best displays I've seen in several years.

The United States Navy Blue Angels.


A wing walker, and the heritage flight involving a WWII P-51 Mustang and a modern F-16 Fighting Falcon.

I was impressed by this one. The helicopter in the back is a CH-53 Sea Stallion. This aircraft is frequently rumored to be attending the air show, but it almost never does. This year may be the first time I've seen it. The helicopter on the left is the familiar CH-47 Chinook, like the Iowa Air National Guard in Mt. Joy fly.

Solo & Quadsville Open Thread

A couple non-flood things:


In response to the questions about the SoLo blog floating around, I don't know much more than you folks. I need to email Ambrose Fulton and see if I can find out what's up. I know the blog shows up as locked to non-admins, but as I am an admin of SoLo I can tell you that there's nothing new up there. I suppose this is a way to essentially take the blog down, but without losing all the data, or allowing some cyber squatter to come in and take over the address. I'll let you folks know if I hear from Ambrose Fulton.


Also, today the QCTimes publicly revealed their new social networking website, Quadsville.com. If you have a QCTimes.comments user name, you're already signed up for it. The website is obviously not as in-depth as something like MySpace or FaceBook, but it certainly does fill some needs. Frequently you could tell that commenters on the QCTimes website wanted to chat amongst themselves, not necessarily about a particular newspaper article. Prior to Quadsville, there really wasn't a way to do this. There were no profiles associated with the user names, nowhere to give someone your email address without giving it to everyone on the internet, etc. Now not only can people private message back and forth, they can start groups, discussion threads, or blogs of their own. A group of folks called the Quadsville Council will try to moderate things and keep a handle on offensive material and such. It also allows you to post and share pictures and movies. I've already started a group called "People who actually like Davenport" to give people who may disagree with the flood of online negativity about our city. 14 members and counting! I suppose Jim Fisher and Keith need to start the opposite group: "People who seem to despise the Quad Cities and never say anything positive about them." That's a pretty long group name though.

The website's worth checking out, and it will be neat to see how it evolves as more of the thousands of QCTimes commenters get involved.

The Star Spangled Banner

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?

Modern Woodmen Park: Flood 2008

I didn't make it to last night's game, but I took a walk up the Centennial Bridge to get some pictures of Modern Woodmen Park surrounded by the Mississippi River.

I know its a bit dark, but I just built a new computer and don't have any photo editing software installed yet. Also, it was a bit dark.


Most of last night's heaviest rains appeared to miss the downtown area. I know at least some areas got hail.


The temporary bridge to MWP had to be extended and sandbagged in preparation for the game, but it seemed to be working fine.

The Skybridge continues to provide great flood views.

Also, I'd like to wish all fathers out there a happy Fathers Day.

Back to the Mississippi Flood

With the cleanup underway along Duck Creek after yesterday's flash floods, I took a drive along the Mississippi to get some images of the floodwaters down there.LeClaire Park, showing that the water level is already higher than it got back in April. Fortunately the river would have to rise another 16 feet or so to affect the Figge's art collection that Mr. Fisher was so concerned about last time.


The temporary berm protecting a few blocks of eastern downtown is being raised to protect against up to a 25 foot river crest. This area has some of the largest pumps around busy keeping the water on the wet side of the levee.

Modern Woodmen Park, which hosted nearly 5000 fans last night, has even offered its field to the Iowa Cubs, whose park is flooded. See Pioneer's post about last night's game here. I'm considering going to tonight's game. It would definitely be a unique experience.

2008 Duck Creek Flood

While most of us were worrying about the Mississippi, 3-5 inches of rain has caused Duck Creek to sneak up behind us.

In my opinion, this is the worst the creek has flooded since the terrible 1990 floods brought national media attention to Davenport. In some ways I guess we were getting off too light compared to other cities around Iowa. Between the fire downtown and the creek and street flooding, I'd say we've had our share now.

As of 8am, Brady was open only in one lane, with public works employees letting one car through at a time to cross through 8 or 10 inches of water. Everyone I talked to said the water levels were dropping fast however, so it may well be below that level now.

Here are some images from the area around Brady:


Here's a video of cars driving through the water on Brady:

River Bandits have a great night

The River Bandits had quite a night last night, including a record-setting crowd of 6,822. This is the most people that have attended a game since the stadium's renovation several years ago. At one point the line to simply get into the stadium was out to River Drive, and I parked farther away than I have any other time except the AllStar game. The new owners are making a difference like I never would have imagined possible. If attendance keeps going up the way it has been, they may need to add some more seats!No, its not the air show yet, just a Tuesday night baseball game in Davenport. There were also fireworks and a 2-plane formation flyover. I've literally seen less ceremony and excitement at some Major League Baseball games.

The box seats and club seats were sold out, and the berm and bleacher seating was packed. We'll see if the city has to build the bridge to the ballpark again this week, and if the Midwest League allows us to host games with the stadium surrounded by water. I hope they do.

More Brady/Harrison/Welcome Way Stuff

Davenport aldermen want improvements in Brady and Harrison corridors -QCTimes

I attended the council work session on the Brady, Harrison, and Welcome Way corridor study, which was held last night at the Design Center. Most of the council attended (I don't recall seeing Lynn or Gilmour, but they could have been there) and a probably a dozen or so community members, with another dozen or more of city staff. The Mayor and some Aldermen seemed to be disadvantaged by the fact that this process began before they were even elected to the council. It always disappoints me when elected officials ask questions that even I know the answer to.

Edit: Wow, where was my brain this morning? Gilmour wasn't there, nor is he an alderman, but Jeff Justin was there and is the actual 6th Ward Alderman. Alderman Lynn had a prior engagement.

Here's a link to the study, in .pdf format.

As many of the Aldermen complained about, we've been hearing about this for years, so much of the stuff in the plan isn't anything we haven't heard. I do like the ideas of concentrating on 3 areas to start with, and also getting moving on some of the projects yet this year. The idea to connecting 32nd street to Brady behind Sanchos is one of the better ones in the whole study. Its pretty silly the amount of traffic that cuts through the Wayne Montgomery lot right now.

I was also surprised at the lack of outrage at the idea of decreasing the number of lanes in order to make for a better pedestrian experience. A couple of people worried about rush hour traffic fitting into 3 lanes, and also what happens when the beer trucks block off yet another lane. The answer to that is easy; stop allowing beer trucks to block a lane of traffic! Anyone who has walked along the sidewalk on Harrison between 12th and Locust knows that wider sidewalks and slower traffic would make for a less terrifying experience. It will be interesting to see how much of this gets implemented before we're right back into election time and a new council having to re-learn all about the proposals and studies.

Prairie Heights and the Brady/Harrison Corridor

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.

Open Thread -Back from Sioux Falls

Since I just got back into town from a trip to our neighbor to the West, South Dakota, I'm just sticking up an open thread for now.

This wasn't my first trip to Sioux Falls, but I definitely have to recommend it to anyone in that area. Falls Park is a good example of what Davenport and Rock Island's riverfronts could be someday. While we don't have falls, we could make some natural-looking rock fountains somewhere, and we do have a little thing called the Mississippi to look at. From what I've heard, the area near the falls in Sioux City had a pretty bad reputation 20 or 30 years ago, so its also a good example of how a city can turn around a blighted area with a plan and some money.