This weekend show our first real accumulation of snow in downtown Des Moines. Today’s snow was light and wet. A few more photos were added to the Photo Gallery.

Everyday I walk by the Executive Forum Barber Shop in the skywalk. A few days ago they put up an excellent window display ad that I just had to share with you. I love creative ads like this and have found a few others from around the world that make me smile, as well as one more here in downtown that I captured a few weeks back.

The window display at Executive Forum Barber Shop features a caveman, as made popular in the GEICO Insurance television ads, with a sign that reads:

“So convenient, even a caveman can get a haircut”

I’m still laughing, I love it and hope it helps generate some more business for them. Remember when our locally owned downtown businesses succeed, we all reap the benefits of a better downtown.

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I’ve been hard at work organizing my downtown photos into some collections to share with you. There are several hundred up already and I promise to keep adding to them. I know that I’m no Herb Ritz, but I very much love digital photography. So check out the gallery at: http://www.livingdowntowndesmoines.com/downtownphotolibrary/

Des Moines’ Mayor Frank Cownie, joined 901 other United States Mayors, by signing the Climate Protection Agreement. Under the agreement, Des Moines, along with the other signing cities, pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels over the next four years; strive to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities; and to urge Congress to pass the bipartisan GHG reduction legislation.

The initiative was launched three years ago by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to advance the goals of the Kyoto Protocol through leadership and action by American cities. The signing comes as President-elect Barack Obama issued a major policy statement on global warming.

Here is a list of mayors who signed the agreement.

On CNN.com today, there was an article that caught my attention, “25 Best Cities to Find a Job“. I wanted to see if Des Moines was on the list, especially with all the recent layoffs at major companies around downtown and some of the smaller mom-n-pop businesses closing up.

According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job seekers are better off looking in such cities as Des Moines, as all of these cities registered the lowest unemployment rates in July 2008. With that date in mind, I think our statistics may not be so great for second half of 2008.

According to the BLS, here were Des Moines’ stats:

• Ranking 19th
• Unemployment rate: 3.5 percent
• Last year: 3.1 percent
• Job growth: 1.2 percent

We would love to hear from our community about their experiences of living in downtown Des Moines. Below are some questions that we invite you submit answers to. You could answer all of them or just some of them.

1. What were the reasons that you chose to live downtown Des Moines as opposed to one of the suburbs?

2. What do you think Des Moines would need to change about downtown to entice more people to make the move downtown?

3. What’s your favorite thing to do for fun downtown?

4. What’s your favorite hang out place downtown?

5. When you have out-of-town company visit, what’s one the itinerary when showing them around downtown?

Would you prefer to submit a post or article for publication here on Living Downtown Des Moines.com? If you have a passion for living in downtown Des Moines or just experiencing the many things to do when visiting downtown, we’d love to hear from you. Sharing your own experiences with others can be very rewarding. William Shakespeare said it best, “What is the city but the people.”

So, the rules to be a guest blogger are really simple, a few article guidelines are listed below as well as the five-step process to getting your post published.

Article Guidelines

• Your post may be anywhere between 150 and 1500 words in length.
• Author bio should be no more than 50 words or 250 characters in length.
• Affiliate links to your own blog are encouraged.

Submission Process

1. Register for an account, if you don’t already have one or log in.
2. Write your post, you can write it in multiple sessions, saved as a draft.
3. Edit your post to your liking.
4. Submit your post for review when ready.
5. Your post is queued for review and for publishing.

We look forward to hearing from you and to sharing your experiences about Downtown Des Moines with our readers.

Thursday evening, Jake Christensen of Nelson Development and a resident of 418 Liberty Condos met with residents to share some really great news. The current unoccupied floors of the Liberty Building, floors four through eight, would become the new home to Hyatt Place Hotel. This would create the first condotel in Iowa where a building is part hotel-part condominiums. Personally, having lived in Florida, condotels were quite common and always some of the most desirable places to live. The residents were extremely happy with the news.

Construction on the new hotel would begin sometime this coming spring, with construction targeted for completion by the end of 2009. With just under 100 new hotel rooms for the downtown market, this would be Hyatt’s first entrance into the downtown Des Moines market and a first for Hyatt Place in Iowa. The hotel would feature a separate entrance than the current resident’s entrance, a first floor lobby, with small bar and food area. Condo residents would enjoy most of the amenities a hotel brings such as morning newspaper delivery, 24-hour concierge service and even a brand new swimming pool in the basement of the building.

Nelson Development would remain the owner of the building and hotel. Nelson currently owns other hotels, residential and commercial buildings both here in Iowa and other cities in the mid-west.

Here are some pictures of what a typical Hyatt Place looks like.

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Ok so I live in a condo building, what did you expect? Coca-Cola is offering a free tool to decorate the top of your building or house up for the Holiday Season. Check it out at: http://xmas.coke.com/lights/en_GB/?latitude=37.422451911974&longitude=-122.08492219448&zoom=20 I decorated up the Liberty Building as you can see.

The Downtown Farmers’ Market has extended the season with two additional markets called the Downtown Farmers’ Market – Winter Season.

The markets will be held the Saturdays before Thanksgiving and Christmas on Nov. 22 and Dec. 20, from 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. and will be located inside Capital Square and outdoors at Nollen Plaza. More than 120 vendors will be present.

New this year will be a Friday lunch hour preview. On Friday, Nov. 21 and Dec. 19, the Downtown Farmers’ Market – Winter Season will be open to the public from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. The lunch hour preview will offer a sneak peak of the market with lots of food and shopping. Prepared Market favorites will also be available for the lunch crowd.

For more information, check out DowntownDesMoines.com.

Tomorrow, our own downtown ice skating rink will be opening for the season. Brenton Skating Plaza is located officially at 520 Robert D. Ray Drive along the Principal Riverwalk.

For more information, visit http://www.brentonplaza.com. Below are some more awesome pictures of Brenton Skating Plaza from RDG, the company that was in charge of designing the skating rink.

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Google has just added image archives from LIFE Magazine, the storied American photo journal, to its image search. Google Images has launched a special page for the collection, allowing you to browse photos by specific topic like Marilyn Monroe or Winter Olympics, or places like Des Moines. You can also now append “source:life” to any Google Images search to see photos from the magazine.

Most of the photos actually didn’t appear in LIFE, but rather, were gathered from “dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints.”

According to Google, there are roughly 10 million photos in total, about 2 million of which have been put online so far. Time Inc, which owns the rights to the LIFE Magazine content, also plans to launch Life.com next year.

Here’s the link to go straight to the Des Moines archive: http://images.google.com/images?q=des+moines&q=source%3Alife.

The photo that appears here is from the TIME Magazine cover for August 28th, 1995 on the 20th Century Blues. Detail of painting “Automat” (1927) by Edward Hopper; from the Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collection.

Here are a few other pictures from that collection that I liked.

The Plaza

300 Walnut Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50309
Neighborhood: Downtown Core
Website: www.theplazadsm.com

Pricing: $99,500+

Units in Project: 192
Floors in Building: 25

Property Features:
• Built in 1984/1985
• Association dues are based on square footage
• 24-hour gym
• On-site tennis and basketball courts
• On-site sauna, jacuzzi, and tanning 
• Heated roof-top pool
• Community party-room
• Underground parking

The Plaza was one of the first downtown condo offerings and offers the ultimate urban lifestyle conveniently located in the heart of downtown with premier skywalk access. Balconies on most units offer supreme city skyline views, Nollen Plaza Park and its beautiful mature trees, the river, Wells Fargo Arena & much more. The Plaza offers a convenient living style with all the amenities.

The reason this property is being featured right now, is because so far this year, it’s been one of the most sought after downtown condo buildings, just look at the sales results below.

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Nathan Wright of Lava Row from Ignite Des Moines shares 20 Things Des Moines Needs Right Now, from a better airport to graffiti artists to a bike garage.