New Oneida Landing news

I got an email today from JJ Condon, the developer of this condo project. The website, OneidaLanding.com, has been updated with some new renderings, site plan, and floor plans. He said that pricing should be up early next week. He also mentioned that he's looking at redeveloping the vacant One River Place at Oneida and River Drive.

Despite my misgivings about the location, something like this is a good thing for Davenport, and I think its a pretty great looking building. Check out the site for more views and such.

This stuff...

I would rather post about something else, but I know people are going to keep talking about this for a while longer. I just have a few things to say.

There are clearly people who feel wronged by Malin professionally, and post about how he is the worst thing since... well, the first ward Alderman. There are always going to be people who don't get along with their boss, etc, so I'd suspect there's some of that involved.

If Craig Malin is the extraordinarily skilled puppetmaster of corruption that he's portrayed as by some folks, why is he constantly getting "caught?" If he had these skills of deception and manipulation, don't you think he'd somehow avoid the constantly negative press and scandals? From what I've seen, he just doesn't care how things appear. This CAN be a good thing to an extent, as you don't want a public official to be constantly worrying about appearances and spin. He once said something to me along the lines that you can't spend your life worrying about that kind of thing. However... at some point he needs to see that "not worrying about how things look" becomes a problem, and starts to hurt the city.

There are 2 sides to every story, but we generally only get one when it comes to city hall scandals. It took a Freedom of Information Request to find out that the QCTimes call which supposedly caused Malin to confront Ms. Webb actually happened after she had left the building. Malin and company can't fight back the same way that people fighting against them can, because it would consist of making private information public.

This stuff does nothing but hurt Davenport. Even if Craig had been fired, there would have been no benefit. The city would have been out a half million bucks, and qualified candidates would think twice (more than they already will) about applying for Davenport positions. Then any CA we do hire will probably get hit with the same attacks that Malin's getting. So we are just continuing down the path of scandal, and Davenport's city hall being the laughingstock if the Midwest. If 5 Alderman and the Mayor want Malin to stay, then that's democracy at work, and the other 4 need to get over it.

In a whole other circus, hopefully the council gets their nerve up to kick out VanFossen if he's found guilty in his trial tomorrow.

Here are some things our council and the blogs SHOULD be talking about:

• The historic project to reshape our riverfront, WITH public input
• The ongoing study and suggestions to revitalize our older corridors
• Healthy debate over things like Prairie Heights, PEDCOR, and AT&T
• The ongoing wayfinding project that's being worked on by city staff
• A world-class art exhibit coming to Davenport in September
• Where Isle of Capri is going to go
• The circus to end all circuses that will be November '07

SoLo is back

Best news in blogging for a long time.

www.solodavenport.blogspot.com

Just Images and captions

For those of you wanting to discuss the pitiful circus we call City Hall, stick with the thread below. I'm beyond sick of all of this drama myself. Both "sides" of the council are spending too much time fooling around and not enough time helping Davenport.

I took a drive and a couple walks yesterday to check out a few things.
First I drove out to see if any construction has started on 65th east of Brady in regards to connecting it to Eastern. Nope.
My second stop, which could hardly have been farther away, was to check out the new Sunderbruch Park (formerly Southwest Park) on Telegraph Road. It definitely paints me as an East Sider, but I don't think I've been that far down Telegraph in my 24 years of living in Davenport. Aside from being distant, this is shaping up to be a great park. There's a paved bike/pedestrian trail that winds a ways into the park, and there are also dozens of dirt hiking or biking trails throughout the area. I'm definitely going to have to return with my bike and investigate Sunderbruch Park further once we get past this crazy Winter weather. Everyone who enjoys nature or lives in SW Davenport should check it out as well.I posted what is basically this same picture, although with more construction going on, last year around this same time. For some reason I just love this view of downtown Davenport.The reason I was in the RiverCenter to take that image both this year and last year was the ISPA State 8 and 9-ball Championships. Its quite an impressive operation to move in probably over 100 pool tables into both sides of the River Center, and then hang lights over each one. The schedule is as follows:
Wednesday, Singles 9-Ball
Thursday & Friday, 8-Ball Singles Event
Saturday & Sunday, All Team Events
I'm pretty sure its free to watch, and its a pretty cool event for downtown.

Bring on the conspiracy theories

Davenport may reorganize legal department -QCOnline

Davenport council to consider demoting attorney -QCTimes

Its got everything! It could tie in with the Malin pay scandal, the VanFossen everything scandals, the last time the council tried to take control of legal, potential nepotism, Alderman Meyer being left out, hundreds of thousands of dollars... I'm sure this will be a great topic for wild speculation and uninformed discussion. I always did find it funny that people took a break from hating on Mary Thee as soon as she went against Malin, since he's more hated by certain folks than she is. As I said on Cruiser's post about this, with some of the recent developments in the first ward, we're probably going to need more attorneys either way. Looking at the results over the last few years, new leadership in the legal department does seem like a decent idea though.

Let's see if some of you folks can work Lee Harvey Oswald into your theories.

Opening Day '07

Today was Opening Day for the Swing of the Quad Cities at John O'Donnell Stadium. One of the new owners was making the rounds, talking to people and meeting the fans. Obviously the weather wasn't good, but there were some school groups or something. The General Admission section had large blocks of kids, which probably helped push the attendance to 1500 for the day. Some of the new specials will be good for the team, such as the Tuesday $44 special. It consists of four box seat tickets, four slices of pizza, four sodas, and a Swing program. That seems like a reasonable price for a family of 4 to have a night out. If attendance starts coming up, the atmosphere will be more exciting and more people will be excited to go to games. The temperature ranged from 42 to 46 degrees, with occasional snow flurries. It was definitely the first time I'd seen those at John O'Donnell.
The hated-by-some sky blue uniforms are gone, replaced by darker blue and pinstripes. I don't foresee this increasing attendance, but I guess every little bit helps.


Here's a quick video of one of the Swing guys lining out. Next time I might try taking more videos and posting them online.

Easter Open Thread

Probably no new posts from me until Monday. Talk about whatever Easter or non-Easter topics your heart desires. This picture is from last year's Dwyer and Michaels Easter Egg hunt, because I forgot to make the trip to Iowa City for it yesterday.

Where in the QC is this? #14

Update at 11:50PM: We have a winner! hoganj300 successfully guessed the location of this image as a mural in Moline under the Arsenal bridge viaduct along the bike path. Here's the full mural, in all its wackiness.Update: Ok, here's another image to hopefully make things easier.
This one might be too easy, but we'll see. I'll post another image as a clue if no one gets it by the time I get up this afternoon.Where in the Quad Cities is this?

ebay, trailers, etc

• I know I'm late on the bandwagon, after the QCTimes and QCOnline articles about it, but here's the ebay auction for the Pierce School Mall. Eleven hours to go as of 7am, and no bids yet. Seems like just the existing tenants and investment potential would make it worth the third of a mil. Just don't try and open a Mexican dance club there.


• Keith Meyer presents another reason why I'll never be able to see eye-to-eye with my Alderman. In this QCTimes article about the council barely approving the contract to design the already-funded concession/restroom pavilion, it says that Alderman Meyer would like to have a concrete pad for a "concessions trailer." If there's one thing that says world-class riverfront to me, its definitely NOT "trailer." Maybe instead of spending $20 million on the new police station, we could have enlisted some of our homeless to help cobble it together out of pieces of plywood, twine, and corrugated metal. I think Davenport should behave like a city of 100,000, and some of the council thinks we should spend weeks arguing over a couple hundred thousand dollars for a logical project. I guess we'll just always have to agree to disagree.


• While going through my 4+ gigabytes of digital photos, I found a couple that I might be able to use for "Where in the QC is this?" threads, so I'd predict one of those in the next week or so. I was looking through the images looking for stuff to upload to my growing Flickr album.


• The Office finally makes it return tonight, if you're into that sort of thing.


• Speaking of making returns, the Swing of the Quad Cities will be playing their home opener next Monday, at noon. Its magnetic schedule day, so who can miss that? I urge many of you to turn out and show your support for the soon-to-be new owners. Hopefully they can make a night at the ballpark fun and affordable for families once again. I'm definitely planning on attending.


• No images for now; I'll give you dial-up folks a break.
  

Where'd the 150 people go?

Last night's LeClaire Park expansion meeting had maybe 20 citizens in attendance, which was a far cry from the 150 that went to the public kickoff meeting. It sounds like Saturday's meeting wasn't any better. From what I'm hearing, quite a few people are filling out the Online Survey located here, so at least the guys from the Design Center tasked with putting together a plan have something to work with. They have also been meeting with small focus groups, such as downtown businesses, the kids' session written about in the paper, etc.

None of the meetings I've been at have shown a clear public consensus. Some people want all grass, some people want a ferris wheel, others want to leave it as parking. Some people like the idea of a restaurant to replace The Dock, others don't want any permanent structures south of River Drive. One interesting thing is I've been able to look at some of the plans from the 80's and 90's, some of which are quite dramatic. Some of the plans from back then really had the casino dominating the riverfront, similar to Bettendorf's current strategy. Of course none of these saw that light of day back when they were being proposed. Go transparency.

Hopefully when a preliminary plan is presented, people will be able to pick things that they are ok with, and others that most people don't like. I find it worrisome that so few people are involving themselves in this, even if you count the hundreds of surveys that have been filled out. If even 300 people help design the expanded LeClaire Park, are 97,000 others going to complain about what's decided?

Lazy Tuesday

Yesterday the most recent addition to QCI's Museum of Crescent Cracker and Macaroni factory memorabilia arrived in the mail. Here's the link to my previous post about my collection of this junk, I mean... valuable history. This one's a postcard postmarked 1917, and shows what the back of the card calls the "most modern, sanitary, and sun-light Cracker and Macaroni Factory in the world."I hope to possibly have another post this afternoon, although I don't know what it would be at this point. Tonight is the 2nd of the 2 meetings for people to have input about the LeClaire Park Expansion. The meeting is from 6:30-8:00PM, in the 2nd floor of the RME, or Redstone Building. Everyone who wasn't at Saturday's meeting should show up tonight.

Back from the weekend Open Thread

I was visiting a friend in Bloomington, and to my surprise the house he purchased last month is in a New Urban/Neo-traditional neighborhood. Despite being an "older" New Urbanism development (2001) the neighborhood is still too new for the mature trees that will really make it seem like a traditional neighborhood. It does have alleys, rear-loaded garages, sidewalks, front porches, narrow streets (parking only on one side) and a central park square within walking distance. Similarly to the pending Prairie Heights development, the retail element isn't mixed into the residential like it would be in what I understand as true New Urbanism. Still, you can definitely see the difference between the image above and a typical new subdivision with wide streets, big yards, and houses dominated by 2 and 3 car, front-loaded garages.

What'd I miss out on around the QCA this weekend? I see both newspapers have printed articles basically saying no one knows what's happening with the Rhythm City casino move. Also, on the way back from Bloomington I swung through downtown Peoria, so expect some images of a few of their downtown developments in the next week. How did the LeClaire Park expansion meeting go Saturday? Anyone who missed it, don't forget the other meeting tomorrow night.

Just when I hoped it was all blowing over...

The plot thickens greatly....
Unsurprisingly, it turns out there is more than one side to things.
I highly suggest reading this QCTimes article about the whole VanFossen/Webb thing. I even more highly recommend reading the private (nothing's private when you're a city employee) emails and correspondence about this. The documents, which the Times obtained through a FOI request, can be found on the QCTimes site under Multimedia. Of course everyone's favorite citizen, Susie Bell, plays her own part as well.

It turns out its all us bloggers' fault. By providing a place where anonymous people can say things, we are somehow the cause of all this. Or... maybe its a certain Alderman that can't seem to control himself. Nope, must be the inanimate blogs. Fortunately its the Colonel who people are after this time, so my not-so-anonymous self is relatively safe. Especially considering this quote from the QCTimes article:

Jan. 23, 2007 — Dolan, via e-mail, asks Malin whether he should look into the blog allegation. Malin responds and says, “I think Cindy may have grounds for legal action against the author and the blogmeister — she isn’t a public official and shouldn’t be subject to this kind of stuff.”

I'd like to post this piece of legal info for anyone who feels like coming after "blogmeisters."
Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code states:

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

That means that just because this is my blog, doesn't mean I'm responsible for everything some dingbat says on here. Its a good thing. (For more info, check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's bloggers rights section, whose banner has quietly resided on the link bar of this blog for over a year)

So... what now, besides a big giant mess that could have been avoided if the 1st Ward had gotten to know the person they were electing?

I think the number one priority should be to block anything ending in .blogspot.com from all city computers with the exception of the Library, Public Information folks, and possibly the council. This extreme measure was taken in the past for Fly's wildly popular blog. I don't really like this solution. I know a lot of city folks read the blog, and even sometimes provide information that helps citizens. If a city employee is trying to get information out there, a blog shouldn't necessarily be looked at as so different from any other form of communication. Unfortunately though, some people have spoiled it for everyone, as always seems to happen. The citizens of Davenport aren't paying our employees to sit around reading about political happenings, and CERTAINLY not sit around posting confidential, personal information or rumors.

I hate to say it, but ban us Craig.

Brady/Harrison/Welcome Way Corridor Meeting 2

Strangely enough, there were fewer people at last night's Brady/Harrison/Welcome Way corridor meeting than there were at the one a few weeks ago, despite it being considerably more interesting. RDG Planning and Design present some of their preliminary ideas for revitalizing the main North/South artery through Davenport. Apparently much of this will be on the web (somewhere) within a week or so, so I'll keep my comments brief until I can link to the study.

A few things that were presenting that jumped out at me:

• Keep the streets one way, because there isn't room for a 5th lane for a center turn lane, and 2 lanes each way without a center turn lane would be a disaster
• Instead of changing to 2-way traffic, change to 3 lane 1-ways in each direction, and add bike lanes on both Brady and Harrison, along with wider sidewalks set farther back from the curb.
• Work to help the Hilltop district be more of a Campustown type district for both St. Ambrose and Palmer (I got emails after my last corridor study post suggesting this, so I was glad to see it in the presentation)
  
• Possibly change the intersection of 12th and Harrison, dead-ending 12th at Ripley (connect the tennis courts) and creating a T-intersection at 12th and Harrison, potentially with 12th being an eastbound one-way from Harrison to Main (Apparently something the school district likes)
• Orient the rumored CVS or mystery pharmacy at Brady and Locust so the parking is away from the intersection, instead of having the building separated from the intersection by a parking lot.
• Connect St. Ambrose with Vander Veer by adding a "scramble cycle" to the light at Lombard, which gives all traffic red lights and allows diagonal intersection crossing by pedestrians
  
• Make Dubuque Street more of a circulator street to get traffic from Harrison into the rear of the businesses along Brady.
• Extend 32nd East to connect to George Washington Blvd and then on to Brady to provide a connection from Harrison, instead of having people drive through the Wayne Montgomery parking lot (QCI says: excellent idea)
  
• Add a bike bridge aligned with Fair that helps allow bikes to get to Northpark
• Add a bike path to the west of Welcome Way out toward Goose Creek Park
• Install more signs or other ways to let interstate traffic know that there's more than what they can see immediately after getting off the highway, especially since they may get to industrial and abandoned buildings and turn around instead of making it to the top of the hill and the Northpark/Kimberly retail area.
• Add various landscaping along the entire corridor
• The RDG guys seemed to feel that Northpark is a very successful mall, and should be emphasized
• Redevelop the old cinema/hotel site near 65th (Doesn't take a consultant to figure that one out)
  
• Change the frontage roads north of 53rd to 2-way on each side, and move the east frontage road farther away from Brady to allow retail in between the frontage road and Brady, with less retail-oriented uses behind
• Different strategies are required for different segments of the corridor, as Brady SoLo has little in common with Brady north of Kimberly
  

Lots more good stuff, but I'll hold off on more until the link is up. Also, I may have misconstrued or misinterpreted RDG's suggestions, so consider this only my recollection of their presentation.

Typos, the symphony, graffiti and boulders

4 glaring typos in the QCTimes in the last 2 days:
"UFC owners by rival" I suspect they mean "buy"
"2,000 jobs at a meat processing plant." Isn't it only 1,000 jobs?
"Monday’s warmth went to an official 79 degrees, just 4 degrees short of the record of 84 degrees set in 1991." Isn't 84-79... 5 degrees difference?
"Oylmpic Steel ready to expand" Olympic, anyone? They got it right in the rest of the article.

So yeah, sometimes I have issues with the QCTimes. Hopefully its just the online edition, but still, its a professional newspaper. Maybe they could pay me $5 per typo I find while reading the news on my cell phone at work.

On the other hand, I've been really enjoying this series on nonprofits in the QC area that they're currently doing. I especially like today's article about the QC Symphony Orchestra. Its neat to think about the Quad Cities having one of the 20 oldest symphonies in the country, as the article points out. I'm sure if we tried to start one now, the negative commenters around the internet would mock it as a waste of money.

Here's something else I found interesting:
Park trends: fake boulders for climbers -QCOnline
Despite the cost, which seems high at first for simulated boulders, I think this is a great idea. I know as a kid I always loved to climb on rocks at places like Wildcat Den, or Maquoketa Caves. None of those rocks had relatively soft mulch underneath them either. I could definitely seem something like this in the "new" LeClaire Park. They look like they're just boulders, so it would be a playground without having the look of a playground. I can just imagine how popular they'd be during the Riverfront Pops concert.

Also, I visited the skatepark yesterday, and yes there is some graffiti. It didn't appear to be gang graffiti, or offensive, but its still vandalism. I have previously mentioned that I could see allowing non-obscene, non-gang graffiti inside the skatepark bowl, but it would definitely send mixed messages to allow it some places and keep it illegal everywhere else. That said, I don't know what the solution is. I suppose when (or if) they build the bathroom/concession pavilion, they will add security cameras. Hopefully that will stop the problem.

Downtown Panorama

(Click to enlarge)
Update: Click here for the full size, 300KB image.

I was downtown getting some images, and this is my new favorite panoramic shot. I'll probably be posting some more images either here or on Flickr from my day's wanderings.

LeClaire Park Expansion Public Kickoff

Well over 100 people turned out to learn how they can help shape the potential expansion of LeClaire Park. This meeting was just the public kickoff, but hopefully all of these people and more will be back this Saturday and next Tuesday for the first 2 actual input meetings. I'll be out of town Saturday, but I'm definitely going to be there Tuesday evening.

Here's the QCTimes article about last night's kickoff,
and here's the QCOnline article. They're both good.

Personally I don't have a ton of great ideas for LeClaire Park, although I'm definitely in favor of a more obvious place to rent bikes, and possibly even a small bike shop. I'd also like to see some sort of waterfront restaurant down there, although I don't know if I can see it attached to the Skybridge as some have mentioned. I generally lean away from the idea of an extravagantly designed pier, because I think it will kind of clash or visually compete with the Skybridge. The Levee Inn also needs to be resurrected. None of these are original ideas, so I'm hoping to come up with something of my own before Tuesday's meeting. There are a lot of other things I'd like to see on our riverfront, but maybe not in this stretch of it, such as kayak/boat rental, an observation tower, or maybe a fancy pier other than on Main Street.

Any of you blog readers have the perfect recipe for LeClaire Park?
If so, post it here, but also submit it on the city's site here.

Where in the QC is this? #13

I've got a case of blogger's block today (all weekend really) so I'm putting up this picture that I took a while back. Its probably too easy, but oh well.

Keep the open thread type stuff relegated to the Open Thread below this, and we'll see how fast someone gets this "Where in the QC?"

Also, I must remind everyone once again to come to the LeClaire Park expansion planning process public kickoff meeting at the Redstone Room tonight at 6:30. If you don't help decide what goes down there, you can't complain about what the rest of us decide.

Open Thread

I'm going to be unusually busy today, so this might be all you get until sometime Saturday.

Hopefully I'll write up a little something about Alderman Frink's ward meeting, especially the DPD's statement that they will work with the Guardian Angels in a limited manner. It sounds like they're willing to put on a civilian academy for them, although it would still be open to the public as well. Or maybe this is just the usual civilian academy, and Captain Murphy was just saying that the GAs could attend that.

In (rare for this blog) Illinois news, there will be some new development in East Moline's "The Quarter" that I had mentioned in my post a few weeks ago. It will be good to see some changes, since it has consisted of only 2 buildings for a number of years.
Here's the QCOnline article about it. (QCOnline is down as of 6:30, but I'm sure it'll be back up soon)

2 Reminders

Don't forget:

Tonight's all-wards meeting with Alderman Frink
From ianfrink.com:

Ian Frink, ald. at large, will host an all-wards meeting from 6:30-8:30 pm, Thur. March 22nd, at the Roosevelt Community Center (1220 Minnie) in the first ward. The meeting is open to citizens from throughout the community and will focus on current issues before the council and items citizens wish to discuss.

A representative from the Davenport Police Department will participate. Frink will also provide a short overview of Sunderbruch Park, the city's new park scheduled to open in the first ward this spring.

And especially don't forget the kickoff meeting for the LeClaire Park design process. Here's a page about it on the city site. Check out the video that's linked to on that page. (I've got a cameo) This meeting is Monday at 6:30PM in the Redstone Room at the RME. If you don't show up to some of these planning meetings, you don't have a right later to complain about whatever is done with LeClaire Park.