Summer is almost over and I’m mad at myself for never finding the time to do the Architecture @ Hand Walking Tour. There’s only one more date left for this year, Thursday September 4th. I’m going try my best not to miss it. The Iowa Architectural Foundation offers these walking tours as a unique approach to getting to know downtown Des Moines by learning fun facts about both old and new downtown buildings.

The walking tours are led by local architects and there are three different tours to choose from: North, West and the East Village tour. The tours begin at 5:30pm and Nollen Plaza (corner of 3rd and Locust, across from the Civic Center). The tours are typical 90 minutes long and they recommend everyone to wear comfortable walking shoes. There is a $10 per person suggested donation to benefit the educational programs of the Iowa Architectural Foundation. The foundation’s goal is promote the awareness of the contribution of architecture and community design to the quality of life in Iowa since 1989.

In doing some research for this post, I found a link for some great old postcard shots of Des Moines.

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In the future can you imagine a light rail system running down Walnut Street from the Western Gateway Park area into the East Village? The City of Des Moines is trying to determine its feasibility. Reports show that a Nebraska firm, HDR or Omaha, has been hired to study the idea. The study will look at cost, type of light rail, routes, infrastructure needs, and time line. There report is due back by spring 2009.

This proposal is the first step of many to make improvements downtown based on a plan to improve Des Moines even more. The heart of the plan is to connect the major pieces of downtown, from the Iowa Events Center to Principal Park, and from the Meredith Corp. to the Capitol.

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Just because you live an urban downtown area doesn’t mean that some of the residents don’t want to still have a little garden or some grass. Urban gardeners find themselves with new challenges and limitations. Rooftop gardens, hydroponics, and container gardening are examples of how urban gardeners have adapted to these new conditions.

So here’s a couple of examples of how some of the residents at Liberty Condos overcame the urban garden challenges.

Tina Johnson and Bob Barry decided to set up some planter boxes on their balcony and plant some grass seed. Keeping it trimmed requires nothing more than some garden scissors.

Another resident, Julie Vande Hoef, organized a group of residents to help plant the garden area in our parking garage terrace with a variety to flowers and small vegetables. I’m lucky enough to have a view of the garden from my window across the street. It brings a really nice touch to the area.

If you have a balcony or garden area downtown, here are some tips on planning for your urban garden:

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A couple of weeks ago I posted about our new versions of this site for the iPhone and for other mobile browsers like the Black Berry. Since then I’ve added some even more accessibility options to the site. To start with there’s now a Listen Now button under each post title that will allow our visually impaired readers or anyone else for that matter to hear an individual post read to them.

In addition to the Listen Now button, readers can also choose to subscribe to our podcast and download all the posts for later playback on their iPods.

In addition to both of the listen options, there’s a email subscription service that will automatically mail you an email with the entire post in it each day that a new post is written. You can sign up via the right-side navigation bar.

If you use iGoogle as a home page, you can now have the most recent posts, you can choose the number, to show up as a iGadget for your iGoogle home page. This feature is also available via the right-side navigation bar.

And finally the About Us page has been updated to show the various widgets that you can get the code for and post on your own blogs to follow the Living Downtown Des Moines posts.

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Are you looking for something different to do this weekend or the next three weekends? 

Just outside of downtown, on the east-side we have this annual Des Moines Renaissance Faire and this Labor Day weekend kicks it off. For the next three weekends, you can join in a celebration of European history & culture with 10 stages of entertainment, a vast food court, beer garden, wine villa, hundreds of costumed characters, rides, games of skill and authentic equestrian jousting — all within a replica olde English castle town. This year there will be about 300 costumed characters, along with 50 artisan merchants and food vendors and more than 100 performances daily.

Here are some schedule highlights:

• August 30, 31 & September 1 (Labor Day) - Pirates, Heroes & Daring Duels (1st Weekend)
  The good folke of the Des Moines Renaissance Faire invite you to walk the plank August 30 and 31st as well as September 1st! Rub shoulders with the scurviest dogs you’ve ever met this side of the high seas. Or toss back a tankard with the prettiest and liveliest wenches in all of Christendom. Aaargh, mateys!
• September 6 & 7 - Highlanders, Celts & Lucky Lasses (2nd Weekend)
  Honor is not dead at the Des Moines Renaissance Faire! Partake in the pageantry of noble knights vying for fair damsels. Compete in games of skill and chance and show off your prowess. Collect tokens of esteem and be dubbed “the most chivalrous man or woman” by Queen Catherine. Proudly sport your clan’s tartan colors and proclaim your heritage September 6th and 7th! All hail the Queen!
• September 13 & 14 - Romance, Wine & Royal Revelry (3rd Weekend)September 13th and 14th can be also called the “weekend of wine, women, and song”—for these are the days to celebrate the best in grape-stomping, romantic-nuzzling, and nuptial ceremonies. Come, join in the authentic English court dances, savor fine wines and ales, and steal kisses from the one you love! Yonder comes my lover!

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Staying fit downtown has to be one of the best advantages to living downtown because it’s so easy. For one thing you can walk most everywhere you need, either outside or through the skywalk and if you prefer to bike, we now even have bike rentals downtown. With the Principal Riverwalk coming, walking or biking downtown will be even better.

For downtown gyms we have basically two places, the Downtown YMCA and Gym F/X Fitness & Tanning. I belong to Gym F/X, it’s on the first and second floor of my building, the Liberty Building. I’m happy to say that since joining the gym and moving downtown where I’m way more active, I’ve lost 10 pounds and 8 percent body fat in the last six months.

When joining the gym, I signed up for their LivFit 10 Week Training Program. It’s basically a 5 component system that covers: food intake, cardiovascular training, taking supplements to eliminate nutritional deficiencies, resistance training and application of programming. With this program I was signed up for the BodyBugg and had a personal trainer, Jeff Zelenovich, to assist me through the program. I had done so well on the 10 week program, I’ve continued on using BodyBugg program for another year.

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This morning I decided to take a 10 minute stroll through the skywalk. I took my camera along and filmed my walk. Afterwards, I spent about 20 minutes to process the video with iMovie, and voilà I had a finished YouTube video. Please keep in mind, I’m walking so the camera is a little shaky, but you’ve got good music to listen to for 10 minutes, so take a look.

This morning I saw a great article in the Des Moines Register about how developers are trying to get more creative due to the downturn in the housing market due to the current subprime credit mess and our current poor economy.

In the last two years over 1,000 new condo units have been built with only about 700 of them being occupied. So how do the get the other 300+ occupied? Sales have been slow recently.

The new tactic is offering lease-to-own programs, at least that’s what the developer is going to offer at 111 City Lofts according to the article. It seems that rental market downtown is pretty hot. Apartments at the Hubbell Tower at 904 Walnut St. and the East Village Square at East Fourth and Grand were rented quickly.

This has even affected the building I purchased in. The Liberty Condo project had planned to convert eight to 10 stories of the 12-story Liberty Building into 46 residential condominium units. Now, it is keeping two-thirds of the building as office space for lease. Currently there are only 7 units sold out of the 17 that have been finished, only floors 9, 10 and 11.

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ArtStop is a two-day celebration of the performing and visual arts in the Des Moines area. This will be the first-ever annual event connecting the Des Moines metro’s many cultural centers’ galleries, museums, performing arts centers and artists’ studios. This year’s event will take place on Friday, September 5th from 5pm to 9pm and again on Saturday, September 6th, from 11am to 7pm.

Participating galleries, businesses, restaurants, non-profit arts and performing centers and artists studios plan and host coordinating performances, exhibits, demonstrations or entertainment during the 2-day event. All you have to do is grab your friends and hop on the free ArtStop bus. The bus will take you around downtown to the events. Be sure to check out the bus schedule to find your best route. There are stops n the East Village, Valley Junction, Roosevelt Cultural District, Gateway West, Ingersoll Avenue and the Heritage Art Gallery.

Check out the ArtStop website for more details.

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A factor in a lot of people’s decision to move somewhere is the crime rate. So I thought I would set out and try to do some research and find out what’s Des Moines’ crime rate compared to some other mid-western cities and what crimes are happening here in the local area.

I moved to the Des Moines area from Fort Lauderdale, Florida back in May of 2003. Based on feelings alone I think Des Moines has a pretty low crime rate, I mean you hear about a shooting now and then on TV, but those almost always come from the East Side or South Side of Des Moines. At least that’s my perception. Currently, Des Moines has about 360 police officers on the force.

A recent report on WHO-TV though says that ’s been a violent year so far in the Des Moines metro area. Accordingly, the metro area has seen more homicides in the first seven months of 2008 than it did overall in 2007. Last year, eight people were murdered in Des Moines. So far this year, nine people have been the victims of homicide. The Des Moines Police Department has stated that since 2005, every one of Des Moines’ murder cases has been solved and that the vast majority of murder cases are not random acts. Officials say overall, from burglaries to graffiti, it’s been a busy summer.

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Brenton Skating Plaza is now offering bike rentals. Explore Des Moines’ scenic trails and experience Downtown in a whole new way! Mountain, Road, and Hybrid bikes available for rental (one hour, 1/2 day, full day, or 7 day rentals) starting as low as $12 per hour.

I’m very excited to see that we can now rent bikes downtown for two reasons:

1. I don’t own a bike, but sometimes get the inkling to want to go for a bike ride.
2. I just got back from Provincetown last Saturday and had rented a bike there for the week and had a great time riding it and exploring the Cape.

According to local news reports Des Moines’ first bicycle rental facility opened this week at Brenton Skate Plaza. Brenton has teamed up with Bike World to rent out bikes during the ice skating rink’s off season and in an effort to draw more people downtown, specifically to the downtown trails and views along the Principal Riverwalk.

Rentals are available seven days a week, weather permitting, until the ice skating rink opens back up in November. They are hoping the bike rental season to run annually from April to November.

Now that you’ve got your bike, there are some great bike mapping trails from BikeIowa. Just click on the this image for a printable PDF from BikeIowa’s website.

You can find more biking and walking trail maps on our Downtown Maps page.

Also have you heard about the Des Moines Bike Collective?
The Collective is part bike library, part bike co-op, and part bike school.

Here’s some details about the Des Moines Bike Collective from the BikeIowa website:

Bike Collective’s Purpose: To put more bikes under more people.

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Here’s a new video from the “Des Moines. Do More.” campaign.

One of the biggest incentives for people to move downtown are the tax abatements that the City of Des Moines is offering to lure people down here. I know it was a huge factor in my decision! I would be saving about $465 a month and that’s almost the size of car payment. The building I picked to live in, the Liberty Building, touted 10 year tax abatement on their brochures as well as a number of other condo projects that I looked at. No property taxes for 10 years, what an awesome deal, for me over the course of 10 years that’s a savings of almost $56,000. I was so tickled that I didn’t dig into what a 10 year tax abatement truly mean for me. So I hope this post may help future downtown buyers avoid the shock that I received the day I went to file for my tax abatement.

I went downtown to the City of Des Moines Permit & Development Center to file for the tax abatement, and started talking with the clerk. (Here’s where the surprise came.) I closed on my condo on March 3rd, 2008 but the deadline for tax year is February 1st, so even though I was filing now nothing would even be processed until sometime next February 2009 and I would see no tax abatement until September 1st 2009, a whole 18 months of taxes later. So to get the 10 years worth of abatement for myself, I would have to live there for 11 years and 8 months. I will have to pay almost $10,000 until then.

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 So take a look at what the City Council adopted last night as the new official city logo. Wow what a difference, I actually like this one, but everyone probably liked the old one when it first came out. The old logo was long over due for a makeover. The old logo was made to mimic the downtown bridges that cross over the Des Moines River on Locust Street and Walnut Street as wells as a giant D and M.

The new logo sports a smooth blue gradient on the arch that is meant to mimic our pedestrian bridges that span I-235 and you can see our city skyline is silhouetted beneath the arch. The new logo should show up on city owned buildings, websites and transportation vehicles sometime in the next few weeks.

A big city tradition comes to Des Moines this week. You can get a great meal this week for the low price of $20.08. Participating restaurants will be offering fixed-price menus where $20.08 will buy dinner for one or lunch for two. The special is running August 16th through the 24th and is being presented by: Des Moines Business Record; DSM Magazine; and the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau. 
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