Quad City Images

31/08/2024

15/06/2024

Throwback Thursday - New Davenport Public Library
--
The corner of 4th and Main looks a little different these days! Enjoy this progress photo of the 1967 construction of the Main Library. Photo courtesy of Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center.

10/05/2024

What a beautiful and photogenic afternoon for the Canadian Pacific Final Spike steam train to visit Downtown Davenport, Iowa. We need something like this at least once a year. Maybe in collaboration with the new train restoration facility in Silvis. People love trains!

07/03/2024

Good thing the Davenport School District tore down the beautiful and historic Washington School to replace it with... *checks notes* a field. Would have been a great Creative Arts Academy building, or a new location for Junior Theater, or senior housing, or almost anything. But nope! Gotta keep that money flowing to architects and contractors...

19/01/2024

I've got a lot of thoughts about the Junior Theater/Annie Wittenmyer proposal, but here's a 12-minute back and forth with the Parks Advisory Board and Chad Dyson, Davenport Parks and Rec Director, about the potential redevelopment. Between this and all the information that Kyle Gripp Alderman At-Large recently posted, I'm trying to figure out if this could be a win/win/win for Davenport, or just another example of small thinking from City Administration. To be clear, I love the idea of Annie Wittenmyer becoming a thriving mixed-use property that maintains its historic character, but just worry about Junior Theater's future if it leaves its long-time home.

PARKS AND REC ADVISORY BOARD 01.18.2024

18/12/2023

I truly don't understand what Genesis's vision is of their neighborhood. Are they trying to build a sprawling suburban campus with fields and lakes surrounding their hospital, a la John Deere? Except right in the middle of Davenport surrounded by recently thriving neighborhoods?

There are so many downsides to whatever it is they are doing that involves tearing down every house they can get their hands on:

-Lower tax base for Davenport
-Healthy neighborhoods slowly being destroyed as houses are removed
-No houses for students to live in, means closing schools (see nearby demolished Washington Elementary)
-Creating a less walkable neighborhood from what was once a very walkable area
-Increased sprawl. Carving out the center of Davenport forces people to the outskirts and/or suburbs

Now let me list the positives for the community of Genesis (or other local institutions) tearing down houses to bank land for "future use:"

-
-
-...

10/12/2023

For all of the crazy stuff going on in Davenport, it's great to have a massive, without-debate win for downtown like The Last Picture House.

08/11/2023

2023 Davenport City/ School Board Election Results (First to post?)

Winning candidates listed first with asterisk

𝗠𝗮𝘆𝗼𝗿
*Mike Matson
-Ken Croken

𝗔𝘁-𝗟𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲
*Kyle Gripp
*Jazmin Newton
-La Canna Dixon

𝟮𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗱
*Tim Dunn
-Judith Lee

𝟯𝗿𝗱 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗱
*Marion Meginnis
-Paul Vasquez

𝟰𝘁𝗵 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗱
*Jade Burkholder
-Robby Ortiz

𝟳𝘁𝗵 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗱
*Mhisho Lynch
-Scott Ryder

𝟴𝘁𝗵 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗱
*Paul Reinartz Jr
-James Woods

𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗕𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱
*Kent Paustian
*Linda Hayes
*Karen Kline-Jerome
*Daniel Gosa
-Connie King
-Andrew Kaufman

Source: Scott County Auditor page,

[ 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 ]

08/11/2023

So.... in 2017, we had Scott County election results less than 20 minutes after the polls closed. It's now been 80+ minutes. Kinda miss our old Auditor.

07/11/2023

Just a reminder about the other race on the ballots today in Davenport...

07/11/2023

Today is election day.

In 2019, the decision was made at some level of Davenport's city administration to save money/time and only install one layer of HESCO flood barriers, and then later when waters rose, to save money/time by stacking a second set on top, against the manufacturers instructions, rather than putting 2 layers on the bottom and one on top. It was a bad decision. From all accounts, no one was held accountable for this mistake that cost the city and downtown $30M in flood damage, and badly damaged the public's trust in the city's until-then excellent flood protection plan.

In 2023, The Davenport collapsed, killing 3, and ruining countless lives. It still hasn't been determined exactly where all of the failures happened, but at the very least, buildings shouldn't collapse while occupied in our city. After the fact, communication from the city was terrible, leading to an even greater lack of public trust in the city of Davenport. As of yet, other than a fairly low-level resignation, no one has been held accountable for whatever mistakes were made that led to another catastrophe our community.

As I stated in a previous post, I don't really want either candidate running for the position to be our Mayor. We have the incumbent, essentially running on a campaign of "stay the course," despite the clear need for changes. And we have another candidate, who is running on "change everything" and a lot of national and state-level issues, without really explaining how major changes are going to come about.

But change IS needed, and I feel like a vote for "stay the course" sends a message that the voters of Davenport are ok with how things are going. The fact that some candidates are running unopposed may lead city leaders to incorrectly think the public is happy with those council members, rather than just the possibility that the current toxic circus at City Hall has scared off a lot of good challengers.

I'm voting against "stay the course," despite being a huge cheerleader of a lot of what Davenport is doing, because big changes are needed for Davenport to finally grow into our potential. That said, I think stay the course may well prevail today. If that happens, those of us that think changes need to be made must continue to push our council members in the right direction, with reasoned, logical input.

Davenport can be bigger and better than it is.

27/10/2023

This was suggested to another truck-eating bridge's FB page. I've been saying this for years for the Brady and Harrison bridges. You don't see semi trucks blowing through red lights all over town, so if there were traffic lights at the railroad overpass that only activated for over-height vehicles, it would prevent a lot of the trucks from hitting the bridges.

Paul sent in a good idea

12/10/2023

The sad demolition of the beautiful Washington Elementary School in Davenport continues. My October 6th post goes into more of why this is happening, but nobody saw that one for some reason...

10/10/2023

Well, I did my duty and voted for who I believe to be the least bad option between 4 people I don't want to be Mayor of Davenport.

Just for old time's sake, here are my predictions (not preferences) for who makes it past the primary:

Mayor: Matson and Croken (Any other result will be fairly shocking, in my opinion)

2nd Ward: Judith Lee, John Paustian (Maybe Dunn instead of Lee?)

3rd Ward: Marion Meginnis, Paul Vasquez (Could be anyone against Marion, as I assume the non-incumbants will split the vote)

4th Ward: Robby Ortiz, Caleb Shelbourn (Doesn't seem like a great year to run as a former Davenport code enforcement officer)

7th Ward: Derek Cornette, Scott Ryder (Even though I don't think he should have been removed, it would be great to see Cornette not make it past the primary)

06/10/2023

Demolition continues on the former Washington Elementary School in Davenport, Iowa. It was announced in December of 2022 that the school would close after the 2022-2023 school year, but there was no mention of demolishing it at that time. Then in June, the school board voted to demolish it in order to expand the nearby Sudlow Intermediate School. On September 11th, the School Board was presented with a new proposal to demolish Sudlow as well, and build an entirely new school to replace it. They board tabled this "to get community input," but only 2 weeks later voted to demolish Sudlow as well. Almost like this was all the plan all along.

Davenport Community Schools hadn't torn down a former school in decades, but the current administration and school board seems determined to make up for lost time.

Vote them all out this November.

03/10/2023

Between the disfunction at City Hall, and the even greater disfunction and conflicts of interest on the Davenport School Board/Administration, it's a tough time to be a fan of Davenport. I've got a few longer posts in the works, but for today, here are some images of Washington Elementary as demolition ramps up. They seem to be mostly salvaging metal and demolishing the inside walls first, but visible exterior demolition looks to begin very soon.

27/08/2023

We don't need a flood wall.

12/08/2023

Checking out the Quad Cities Balloon Festival. They didn't fly tonight, but maybe tomorrow.

26/07/2023

I volunteered last weekend and it's not only a great time, but so very appreciated by the RAGBRAI riders. There are a variety of tasks and shifts available as well.

We still need volunteers for RAGBRAI this weekend!
Can you spare a few hours? We need short-term parking and info-booth attendants, drivers, photo-takers, sign picker-uppers, and some folks to load bikes!

Please check out our open slots here: https://buff.ly/3N3zEuH

26/06/2023

What is it with the air show and storms? Anyway, despite Saturday night's storm, and Sunday's high winds, the Quad City Air Show was quite successful on Sunday afternoon. It was definitely the first time in all of the QC Air Shows I've been to that I've been chilly.

There was a good mix of planes performing, and the Thunderbirds and F-22 were definitely crowd favorites. It did seem like there were fewer planes displayed on the ground, and fewer vendors, although some of that was due to the storms. Hopefully the good crowds provide an incentive to bring the show back more often than every 3-4 years again in the future. I certainly have a long wishlist of planes I'd love to see.

22/06/2023

Yesterday I posted the top image as a "Where in the QC is this?" puzzle. John Harris guessed correctly that it is on Credit Island. My kids and I hiked around the trail on the south half of the island last week, and I was surprised to come across this area of dead trees. While the island is currently full of dead trees from the 2019 flood, these trees have their tops torn off, and are actually visible on Google Maps. Does anyone know what happened here? Tornado, derecho, or microburst? Tree-climbing beavers? Some tree disease?

21/06/2023

I figured after all of the posts about beautiful buildings being torn down, this Spring's flooding (remember that?), and the building collapse, we could use a lighter post. So here are some dead trees. Actually this is one of my occasional "Where in the QC is this?" posts. There's no prize, and the only clue I'll give to start is that the photo was taken somewhere in the boundaries created by I-80 and I-280 circling the QC.

So where in the QC is this?

03/06/2023

This is a post I made on the Quad City Images blog, back in 2007, after attending The Davenport's 100th anniversary celebration. I was quite impressed with the place at the time, and even took a photo from a west-facing apartment that may no longer exist. It's kind of amazing how far the thing declined in 15 years.

I got a chance to walk through The Davenport apartment building downtown today, on its 100th anniversary. She's definitely looking great for...

01/06/2023

The video link here is almost certainly providing misinformation.

This is exactly why Davenport can't afford to only have 1 or 2 press conferences or press releases per day. Yesterday, as more and more national news arrived on the scene, they didn't even have a press conference the whole day. This is just getting ridiculous at this point.

This TikTok, which has 165,000 views, 15k likes, and almost 1000 comments (basically all disparaging Davenport), is suggesting that a green tape X in the window of The Davenport was put their by a trapped resident to signal that they're inside. I'm 99% sure that this X was put their by search and rescue teams, like how they spraypaint doors, but rather than just come out and respond to these accusations, it's radio silence from Davenport. They can't just let this stuff go viral with no response. I hate how bad Davenport is looking nationally right now, and how badly the city administration is handling it.

POSSIBLE TRYING TO GET HELP?!?! Rescue REFUSES to investigate and calls on CITIZENS to go in instead!

30/05/2023

Warning: Long, long post ahead.

I was at a family event in Sioux Falls this weekend, and after arriving back at the hotel Sunday evening I was quite horrified to see that a section of The Davenport had collapsed, potentially with fatalities. As a news ju**ie, I followed every bit of information that I could from afar to monitor the disaster. That included listening on the scanner app as firefighters radioed back and forth about which apartments had been checked, and which doors not to open because they led directly into the collapsed zone.

From the first hours, misinformation has been rampant on social media. Early on, it was people stating the wrong name of the building, the wrong owners of the building, the wrong numbers of dead or missing people, and practically everything else. Rather than the pre-internet method of scheduling occasional press conferences to release information, the city needs to move at the same speed on social media as the rumors and misinformation. If you let misinformation stand unchallenged, it becomes accepted fact, and then any future attempts to correct it are that much harder.

The 8th person, who was extricated with a field amputation from somewhere in the rubble late Sunday night, was the wife of the woman who had seen her go down with the collapse, who was featured in multiple media stories. The city has never confirmed this, so even 24 hours later I saw people still wondering what happened to that lady's wife. When you don't get the facts out as quickly as possible, misinformation fills the holes.

The first night, there should have been a publicly visible poster or whiteboard on a wall downtown with all 84 units on it, and if and when each unit had been searched, whether the lease-holder had been contacted, and whether everyone who had been inside at the time of the collapse had been located. This would have avoided the situation that eventually occurred, where the city stated in a press conference that they didn't know of anyone still inside, and didn't have any credible information about missing people, despite 3 different families saying at the same time that they were missing family members. Nothing loses trust faster than ignoring obvious discrepancies like that.

Then last night they ordered the demolition of the building. This comes with families still insisting that their loved ones were still inside. With the knowledge that in similar collapses around the world, rescue efforts went on for much longer, this obviously didn't look good coming from a city that had already lost a lot of people's trust. As a historic preservation guy, it was also painful to hear that Davenport would be completely losing such a large and historic structure. I still wonder if more could be done with temporary shoring, cribbing, and I-beams to stabilize areas enough to do more rescue efforts, and maybe even open up the potential to save at least parts of the building. Obviously that would be incredibly difficult and expensive, but I hope that thinking outside the box was at least considered, rather than just the usual cost-benefit analysis that says it's easier to tear it down.

Then last night, one of the missing people was seen in a window, and pulled from the building by firefighters. Again, after the city said the building was going to be demolished in the morning, and that they had no indication anyone was inside. So instantly, all of the rumor and conspiracy theory-spreaders gain credibility. No one knows what happened. Some believe that she re-entered the building, and some believe that she hid from the search and rescue teams due to some outstanding warrants. Either of those situations reflects poorly on the rescue effort, as she was either missed by the search teams, or the city was unable to keep a 52-year-old woman from sneaking back into a building after its final search. All people know is that a survivor was pulled from the building 12 hours before demolition was scheduled.

Now they're backtracking on that as well, saying, "Demolition is a multi-phase process that includes permitting and staging of equipment that will begin today. The timing of the physical demolition of the property is still be(ing) evaluated.” They're essentially saying they weren't actually going to demolish it this morning, but if that was the case, why pay people to come in after hours on a holiday to take down the traffic lights in preparation for demolition? The Mayor flat out denied that demolition was going to happen this morning multiple times. Then the Assistant Fire Chief basically admitted during the press conference that pulling a woman out of the building last night changed their plans as far as demolition. Reporters could clearly pick up on this issue, as they asked about it several times, to the Mayor's annoyance.

In the press conference that just occurred, they stated that 5 people are unaccounted for, including 2 that they believe are still in the building. Where do they think that the other 3 unaccounted-for people are that aren't in there? From what I've heard from various sources, the city doesn't think that the 2 still inside are alive, but they didn't say that during the conference. Then they brought out a family member of one of the missing people who basically said that the city told her it's unlikely he's alive. Why not just come out and admit that they think there are 2 fatalities? Literally just "We think that the 2 men still inside are dead." Why does everything have to be vague and secretive? The press release sent out at 11pm last night that ignored the woman having just been pulled from the building is another example of just terrible PR work. Read the room, folks.

Refusing to use plain language to directly answer what's currently happening breeds distrust. If the city had any idea that there were people unaccounted for, they should have admitted that and opened discussed the likelihood that people were dead under the rubble. If they worried less about saving face and making careful statements due to future court battles, they would come across as more trustworthy, and we probably wouldn't have ended up with rows of police with batons standing in between angry protestors and a disaster site.

13/05/2023

The floodwaters have receded fairly quickly, and after a good hose-off, Davenport's Mississippi riverfront will be back to being one of the best in the country, unmarried by massive walls or piles of rock. I look forward to hearing the final cost of this top 10 flood, because I'd imagine it was under a million dollars. As I keep saying, I don't know why we'd do it any other way.

27/04/2023

Some drone photos of the flood and flood preparations immediately west of Downtown Davenport, including Centennial and Veteran's Memorial Park. Video coming shortly.

26/04/2023

I took the drone out today to get some flood-preparation images, and for all of the loud "build a floodwall" talk that has sprung back up after being strangely silent for 2 years, I have no idea why we'd do anything different than what we've been doing. Yes, mistakes were made in 2019, but we've learned from them, and hopefully won't make them again. Doesn't it just make more sense to put up a temporary floodwall for the 5% of the time that we need one, rather than build an expensive, view-blocking wall that sits there dry 95% of the time?

What is flooded right now? A bunch of grass and concrete, and an abandoned bathroom and hotdog stand. Isn't empty space the perfect place to store floodwaters? If there was more park land along the river that was allowed to flood and fewer floodwalls, we'd have smaller floods.

And no, I'm not saying our system is perfect. There's always room for improvement, like protecting more small businesses west of the downtown core. But it doesn't require a $100M permanent floodwall.

06/03/2023

Rock Island sure is good at tearing stuff down. Not sure they can demolish their way to prosperity, but they seem determined to try. Maybe all of their success is what inspired the Davenport Schools to try their strategy. What do you folks think is the best way to keep DCSD from tearing down Washington and Monroe?