Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user Dan Schneider, also known as Teufel657 and is of downtown looking down Locust St from the Capitol.

Dan says “I like to photograph Des Moines because of the great buildings and architecture. There is always livly movement downtown, and great scenes that can be captured.”

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

We wanted to say thanks to the residents and sponsors of the First Annual Downtown Garage Sale. We had a huge success for our first sale, and from what people are saying, they can’t wait till the next one. We will definitely have one next summer and will start planning it February or March. This time we will be asking for a representative from each housing unit complex downtown to be on our planning and organizing committee. Residents that sold saw up to $300 a person in revenue from the sale Saturday morning.

A special thanks goes out to the Downtown Neighborhood Association who helped with our advertising budget and to Nelson Construction for providing the venue for the sale and to the residents of 418 Liberty Luxury Condos for organizing the event.

Here are some more photos from the event.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite things to do is get out and explore downtown Des Moines, especially with a focus on all the great architecture that can be found here. The Iowa Architectural Foundation each summer presents the Architecture @ Hand Walking Tours. This year marks the Foundations’s 20th year anniversary. In the past they’ve offered three different tour paths, this year they have four. I’ve already taken one this year and will probably end up taking several more. Check them out!

For the next installment of a business opportunity, is something that we used to have in Tampa, Florida when I lived in that area.

Opportunity: The Des Moines Dessert Room

Business Case: Have you ever wanted to take someone special out, not for a full dinner, but maybe just a real nice dessert? The Des Moines Dessert Room would be smaller-sized restaurant that only served incredibly delicious and gorgeous looking desserts and great martinis. The restaurant would be open three nights a week, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings from 7pm to 2am. Restaurant could be available for private parties on other days.

Décor would consist of upscale urban design, with most tables being a two toppers, and a few tables as four toppers; and eight toppers. After a short while, when the word gets out, on how great of place this is to take your significant other to or a few of your closest friends to for a special occasion, reservations would go from being suggested to being required. In Tampa, sometimes you had to reserve two-weeks in advance just to get a table.

Dessert selections would consist of: Tiramisu, Bananas Foster, Chocolate-Bourbon Cake, Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries, Bublanina (a Czechoslovakian dessert, is made with whatever fruit is most plentiful at the time), Chocolate-Espresso Tore with Raspberry Sauce, Thin French Apple Tart with Vanilla-Bean Ice Cream and Miniature-Size Wedding Cakes.

Suggested Location: To make this place even more special, I would love to see this on one of the upper-floors or top-floors of one of the downtown buildings so that diners would have spectacular nighttime views which would just add to the ambiance. If we couldn’t get that, maybe the East Village or Western Gateway Park area would make a great setting.

I saw this the other day, and thought if San Francisco is so hip to Twitter, and Twitter is free, why can’t the City of Des Moines do the same. Starting last week, the City of San of Francisco supports all 311 services via Twitter, with the help of Twitter CRM tool CoTweet.

Now citizens can send direct messages 24 hours a day to the sf311 Twitter account to report standard non-emergency city-related sightings (like pot holes), request street cleanings, and any other service already supported by the phone or website. This establishes San Francisco as the first major city to adopt a city-wide Twitter program of this magnitude.

City of Des Moines, let’s join the Twitter revolution!

Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user Heahter Hotz, also known as HRHOTZ78 and is of top of the Polk County Court House.

Heather says “Downtown Des Moines is like a breath of fresh air…beautiful, historical buildings intertwined with new construction and unique pieces of art. I have to say Des Moines has combined the past with the present with class and grace!”

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

One of my favorite pass-times is to go to Gray’s Lake. Gray’s Lake is a great place for a casual walk, a nice run, bike ride or just hanging out with friends or sun bathing. After last year’s devastating flood, the park is coming back to look even better than before.

My favorite thing to do is go for a walk on the 2-mile trail the encircles the lake, especially walking over the 1/4 mile long pedestrian bridge. It looks even better at night all light up with a rainbow of color lights.

Here’s some history about the lake from the City of Des Moines’ website:

Through the centuries, the area that is today’s Gray’s Lake Park was part of the ever-changing course of the Raccoon River. Left behind after one such change in the Raccoon was an oxbow that would become Gray’s Lake Park. Residents of Des Moines in the early 20th century remember this body of water as a small pond. The land was originally owned by T.E. Brown, who sold 79 acres on the eastern edge of the property to Gaylord E. Gray. With concrete just coming of age, Gaylord Gray had the idea of mining sand and gravel out of this lake. He started the business in 1917, and eventually his son, Gaylord E. Gray, Jr., took over the operation. This mining caused the oxbow to increase in size, eventually forming a 100-acre lake. The last large project of the mining operation was the concrete for the main runway at the Des Moines International Airport.

Over the next several years, various plans for city ownership were developed but never brought to fruition. About this time, aerial photographs were being made of the city and the large body of water needed to be named on the map. People had started referring to it as Gray’s Lake due to the partial ownership of the Gray family members.

The name Gray’s Lake was suggested and adopted. After the quarry operations ended, Des Moines Marine Company leased the eastern half to operate Marine Beach. Then, in 1959, a Holiday Inn Motel was built on the southwest corner, setting the stage for commercial development. Each time requests for more commercial development came forward, citizens spoke out against it, urging public recreation instead.

Read the rest of this entry »

I believe if this next business opportunity could be pulled off, there could a huge impact on other downtown retailers and restaurants.

Opportunity: Kaleidoscope Factory Outlet Mall

Business Case: We’ve all seen the endless vacancies of this “downtown mall” for the past several years. It’s a tough economy and people are looking for bargains. Here’s the solution I pose to turn not only this mall around but bring a ton of business to nearby restaurants, including the food courts and other retail shops. Hubbell should go after and try to attract some factory stores that you find in outlet centers such as Banana Republic Factory Store, Nike Factory Store, Gap Factory Outlet, Kenneth Cole, Coach Outlet, etc. These types of stores always draw a good business regardless of the economy due to their great prices.

Since moving here six years ago, I still don’t understand why a city the size of Des Moines doesn’t have an outlet mall, sure we have 4 regular malls, but no outlet mall. If someone wants to travel to an outlet mall they have to drive a good two hours for just a small outlet center, but Des Moines residents have been taking their local money and spending it out of town. My favorite outlet mall is Chicago Premium Outlets in Aurora.

These stores would be busy weekdays during the lunch hours while downtown workers shopped on their lunch breaks and people would come in during the evenings and weekends to shop. No longer would you hear the phrase I hate most “the skywalks killed retail sales” and from downtown residents and visitors “why is everything closed at 5pm weekdays and closed on the weekends?” Can you imagine the food court open at 8pm on Tuesday or 5pm on a Sunday? Wow!

Suggested Location: The Kaleidoscope Mall should be the hub of the outlet center, but I could see this spilling over to near by empty spaces such as the Bank of America retail space on the first floor and the 1st and 2nd floor retail space of the Younkers Building. Why not?

Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user Amanda, also known as a2thegeezus and is title Night Lights.

Amanda says “I was visiting Des Moines for a conference – and was actually haunted by shadows and lights of the city. So many of the buildings had an amazing texture – especially in contrast with the cold-front clouds that brought a “snowstorm” that Sunday morning! Beautiful city!”

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