Over the last serveral weeks, sculptures have been appearing every days as installation begins for the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden in the Western Gateway Park. I scoured the internet to find everything I could about this park to bring it all together in one place. Here’s what I found:

In February 2007 Des Moines Art Center Director Jeff  Fleming announced that Des Moines philanthropists John and Mary Pappajohn plan to give the Art Center a minimum of 16 major sculptures by internationally acclaimed contemporary artists. The Pappajohns are known worldwide and ARTnews magazine listed them as one of the top 200 art collectors in the world.

The collection of sculptures by artists Louise Bourgeois, Scott Burton, Deborah Butterfield, Anthony Caro, Tony Cragg, Willem deKooning, Mark di Suvero, Barry Flanagan, Ellsworth Kelly, Martin Puryear, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Judith Shea, Tony Smith, and William Tucker will be the most significant donation of artwork to the Art Center in a single gift in the museum’s history.  According to art critics, the Pappajohns’ donation will likely bring Iowa renown as having one of the best public sculpture gardens in the world. In a new partnership formed with the city of Des Moines, the sculptures will be installed in the city’s Western Gateway Park in a permanent feature to be named The John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

Here are some of the works that have all ready been installed as of today (May 29th, 2009):

Spider, 1997 – Louise Bourgeois – American, born France, 1911 – Bronze – 94 x 94 x 84 inches

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The 2009 Alice Rodine Volunteer Recognition Awards were announced recently. Each year, neighborhoods are asked to nominate one business, one city staff person, and community volunteer that has demonstrated outstanding leadership in their neighborhood. Every nominee is recognized for all their hard work and dedication to the community. I received one the for Citizen Volunteer for Downtown. Alice Rodine was a well-known neighborhood activist that died in 2000, but the awards are held to remember her tireless works over the years. Here is a list of this year’s winners.

Overall Citizen- Bob & Nelda Mickle
Overall City Employee- Skip Moore

City Employee

Ed Leedom- North of Grand
Tom Vlassis- Cheatom Park
Mary Neiderbach- Sherman Hill
David Dunn- Merle Hay, Riverbend
Greg Cloe- Meredith, Mondamin Presidential
Sgt. Larry Davey- Beaverdale
Skip Moore- Waterbury
Sgt. Laura Pascuzzi- FCCI
Donald Tripp- Gray’s Lake
Sgt. Brent Harris- Capitol East
Sgt. Brian Harris- South Park

Business Award

The Community Housing Development Corporation- King Irving
Bauder’s Pharmacy- North of Grand
John R. Grubb YMCA- Riverbend
Owen Crist- Cheatom Park
Union Park Health Services- Union Park
Glen Echo Christian Church- Lower Beaver
Southside Church of the Nazarene- Magnolia Park
MLK Jr. Parkway Hy-Vee- Meredith
14th Street McDonalds- Capitol East
First American Bank- Beaverdale
14th STreet Mendards- South Park
Iowa State Bank-FCCI
Stone Printing- Sherman Hill
The Cornerstone Credit Union- Waterbury

Citizen

Duane Koethe- North of Grand
Tayla Obumseli- Cheatom Park
“Kids with a Kause”- Waveland Park
Nelda Mickle- Sherman Hill
Steve Addy- Riverbend
Dawn Jorgensen- FCCI
Elizabeth Rush- Magnolia Park
Doug Wheeler- Meredith
Bill Miller- Beaverdale
Larry Bradshaw- Downtown
C.J. Stephens- Waterbury
Whyline Gardner- Gray’s Lake
Jean Schooley- Capitol East
Andy & Janet Clark- South Park
Robin Hamel- Mondamin Presidential
Don Mayberry- King Irving

The next business opportunity we will be discussing is a retail establishment to serve the large young male population that works downtown, as well as downtown and metro residents.

Opportunity:XY – Urban Male Essentials

Business Case: With over 75,000 people working downtown, and guestimating that 1/2 of them are male, and 90% are between the ages of 21 and 40, there’s a huge audience that could be served with a downtown store that caters to the young urban male.

The retail store would be more than a typical clothing store, it would focus on its demographic by offering them a great selection of hip clothing and accessories. For example, if you want to buy, say a pair of Diesel jeans, the only place you have to shop in the area is Von Maur, but try to find clothing by Andrew Christian, 7 for All Men, Armani, Citzens of Humanity, Rock & Republic, etc. You just can’t find that here, since we don’t even have a Bloomingdales or Macy’s.

In addition to demin, XY would carry a variety of men’s polo shirts and t-shirts. Also the store would carry a huge selection of men’s underwear from brands like: Just Us Boys, Papi, C-N2, Baskit, and Ginch Gonch. In the accessories department the store would have a good selection of belt buckles, belts, watches, bracelets, necklaces and rings. Shoppers would find men’s casual shoes such as Creative Reaction, D&G, Ed Hardley, Puma Sport, Steve Madden and Lacoste.

Other urban male essentials would include a collection of leather and canvas messenger bags and an assortment of DJ Mix and Circuit Party CDs.

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City of Des Moines residents received the cities annual report this past weekend in the mail. The 58 page report contained a lot of information, some of it I wanted to highlight for our readers.

• City plans for 2009 include a “Walk Downtown” initiative with walking paths, points of interest and mileage. The complete re-design of Nollen Plaza will be finished…The expected completion of the Pappajohn Sculpture Park has the potential to bring millions of visitors downtown, and the City will continue to work with the downtown business community to “re-occupy” the downtown office buildings..and the completion of the Center Street pedestrian bridge.
• The total value of downtown properties has increased markedly since 2003. 2008 brought an increase of $74 million–the largest increase in the last six years.
• Residents continue to feel safe downtown. In 2008, 66% of those surveyed stated that they fell safe or very safe in downtown Des Moines, that is an increase of 10% from 2007.
• Housing units in the downtown area increased by 237 to a total of 4,400.
• Roughly one million people used Gray’s Lake and the trails systems.
• Local events’ attendance increased by 6.82% over 2007.
• 64% indicated satisfaction with the City’s entertainment destinations. Nine percent felt this was the area that should receive the most emphasis over the next two years.
• The City continues to look for ways to improve communication with citizens…the website is being redesigned (organized by topic) and more services will be available online.

Though the new report has not yet been placed online (as of the date of this posting), it will probably be located at: http://www.dmgov.org/performance/.

Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user Jacob Boyd, also known as jaker83 and is of one of the Principal Building (also known as 801 Grand) in HDR (High Dynamic Range).

Jake says “I enjoy taking photos in Des Moines because I feel like there’s always somewhere new to go. Whether it’s photographing buildings downtown or a coffee shop, it seems like there’s opportunities everywhere.”

Check out previous pictures in of our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week.

The next business opportunity we will be discussing is something is more in line with a retail business than the previous two restaurant opportunities. The proposal is a large design center. From my experience these tend to become destination spots and bring with them a lot of traffic and some tourism.

Opportunity: Des Moines Metro Design Center

Business Case: If you’ve ever wanted to find some real contemporary hardware for your new condo or home; maybe some interesting lighting choices and apartment size furniture. You currently either have to drive out of town to either Chicago or Minneapolis or order online. Order online is fine, but you can’t really touch and feel or see how the item would look in its environment. We have a few lighting places in the metro but they don’t offer a huge selection of contemporary lighting. If you are looking for cabinet/door hardware you are limited to the big box stores and their limited choices. And I could go on. If we had a design center, this would not be the case.

Let me try and explain my vision on this one (and it’s not as easy to explain as I see it in my head). You would have one location that would be divided up into spaces and each space would feature a huge selection of contemporary items in their respective categories. There would also be modularized mini-showrooms that would be set up that would show a finished room using some of these items (such as a kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, etc.). Then finally there would be designers and vendors that had a presence (i.e. small office) in the design center. More about that in a moment.

The design center would include: a lighting showroom; a hardware showroom; a bathroom fixture showroom; a kitchen cabinets and fixture showroom; and a furniture showroom featuring contemporary pieces in smaller footprints, perfect for a downtown condo or loft.

In addition to these showrooms mentioned above local vendors would build small modular rooms on site displaying their tile work, carpeting, hardware, etc. in completed room vignettes. For example depending on space, you could have 3 to 5 contemporary kitchens set up, 3 to 5 contemporary bathrooms etc. With the vignettes being built on mobile platforms, they could be rotated in and out of a joining warehouse space.

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This week’s Wall Street Journal had an article on cities it described as “youth magnets.” Des Moines was one of the cities listed. According to the graph that they published, only 19 cities in the US have had more net migration of educated adults over the age of 25 (between 05-07).

“The worst recession in a generation is disrupting migration patterns and overturning lives across the country. Yet, cities like Portland, along with Austin, Texas, Seattle and others, continue to be draws for the young, educated workers that communities and employers covet. What these cities share is a hard-to-quantify blend of climate, natural beauty, universities and — more than anything else — a reputation as a cool place to live. For now, an excess of young workers is adding to the ranks of the unemployed. But holding on to these people through the downturn will help cities turn around once the economy recovers.”

The author of the Census report on these “youth magnet” cities, Rachel Franklin, says a critical mass of young professionals means a city has a “sustained attractiveness” for other young people looking for a place to settle down.

You can read the full text of the article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB124242099361525009.html

Some local residents at 418 Liberty Luxury Condos recently got together to help plan, organize and host the first ever downtown garage sale. Any resident that lives in any of the downtown complexes and come register and come to the 418 Liberty Parking Garage on Saturday morning, June 13th to set up their own space and sell whatever items that they may have.

There should be a lot of traffic from the Farmer’s Market a few blocks away and it should be good time for all. If you live downtown and would like to register for your free space to sell that morning, go to: www.downtowngaragesale.com and sign up. LivingDowntownDesMoines.com is one of the many sponsors of the event.

Even for the size of our population, our own Des Moines Register still is consider the 74th most widely circulated daily newspaper in the country according to Good Magazine.

Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user Carl Wycoff, also known as cwwycoff1 and is of one of the downtown pedestrian bridges.

Carl has been featured before on this site, and he says “I love to shoot in the downtown area and I love to shoot at night using available light as I am probably more comfortable with that since I work nights and see things in that way.

Des Moines has such a beautiful downtown area that I never get tired of driving through it and photographing what catches my eye to share with others.”

Check out previous pictures in of our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week.