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It appears that works put down some sod this week at the east end of the park. Things are beginning to show a wrapping up and a countdown to completion. I can’t wait, this is a huge amenity for us downtown dwellers to go walking through every evening.
One of my favorite summer events is the annual downtown Des Moines Arts Festival. Here are some highlights about this year’s event, for more details check out their website at: http://www.desmoinesartsfestival.org
DATES: June 26 – 28, 2009
TIMES: Friday, June 26 – 4 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Saturday, June 27 – 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. (Fireworks at 10 p.m.)
Sunday, June 28 – 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
WHERE: Western Gateway Park, Downtown Des Moines, Iowa
WHAT: Des Moines Arts Festival
– 175+ Premier Professional Visual Artists sponsored by Aviva USA
– 24 Emerging Iowa Artists sponsored by Principal Financial Group®
– 24 Non-profit Organizations sponsored by Prairie Meadows showcasing services and activities
– GuideOne Insurance Interactive Mural presented by the Des Moines Art Center
– Non-stop live music on the U.S. Cellular Stage
– Gavin DeGraw and Collective Soul on Friday night proudly presented by
Hy-Vee in celebration of the Hy-Vee Triathlon and sponsored by Budweiser
– New Jazz & Wine Pavilion presented by Meredith Corporation
– Performing Arts Stage featuring dance, music and theatre
– Live Street Theatre
– 30 Interactive Arts Activities
– 376 students from 96 Schools in the Des Moines Art Center’s Nurturing a Student’s Vision Program
sponsored by Hubbell Homes
– Interrobang Film Festival presented by Nationwide
– 24 Eclectic Food Booths sponsored by Hy-Vee
– Sculpture Garden
ADMISSION: FREE
Continuing our series on Des Moines Downtown Neighborhoods, today we will take a look at the Western Gateway Neighborhood. Des Moines is currently made up of to six diverse and distinctive urban neighborhoods. Each of the neighborhood’s rough boundaries appear on this map below.
1719 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50309
Phone: 515-280-1962
Property Manager: Tina Braafhart
Website: www.gatewayloftsdm.com
Open House: Mon.-Fri. 9am-5pm; Sat. 10am-2pm;
Sundays & Evenings by Appointment
Pricing: starts at $950 a month
Units in Project: 80
Floors in Building: 3
Property Features:
• one bath loft flats with 850 to 1,311 square feet, starts at $950
• two bath lofts flats with mezzanine, 1,212 to 1,960 square feet, starts at $1,250
• true urban lofts with large windows and spacious open floor plans, and concrete flooring
• indoor first floor climate controlled parking and outdoor parking available for guests
• stainless steel appliances, gas ranges and microwaves
• true urban style concrete kitchen and bathroom countertops
• brazilian black slate tub/shower surrounds with true overhead rainfall-style showerheads
• in-unit washer and dryer
• limited, controlled access for your safety
For the city of our size, Des Moines has an awesome collection of downtown green spaces. Within just a few blocks of most downtown office buildings or residential units you will be within footsteps of one of the following green spaces:
An just outside the main downtown area, is Gray’s Lake and Waterworks Park. The City of Des Moines’ Parks and Recreation Department is responsible for 72 parks with over 3,000 acres of green space and more than 30 miles of walking and biking trails.
I believe that urban green spaces, like those that we have in downtown, are an essential component in transforming and enriching our city. If Des Moines wants to continue and attract more people to move to and live in downtown, this amenity is an important factor for a lot of people. History has shown that parks play a pivotal role in shaping the success of urban areas. Take a look at Central Park in New York City, this is considered one of the first formal “parks,” and was created to be passive and beautiful, in contrast to the density of urban life. Central Park has become a destination, not only to it’s residents and workers, but to the tourist who come to New York City, and would consider a visit to Central Park as a “must-see” on their itinerary.
Two of our public green spaces are on the verge of some wonderful changes. Western Gateway Park will be turning into a world-class sculpture garden and Nollen Plaza has some plans to completely update and transform it into an awesome destination in the heart of the Downtown Core Neighborhood. Proposed inclusions in the Nollen Plaza update include a civic gate that acts as a waterfall in the warmer months and a frozen wall during the winter. Newly created public restorms would be incased inside of a large video media cube.
This past weekend I was in Chicago visiting some friends. We were driving down McCormick Blvd while traveling to the burbs and I noticed along the side of the road, for about a two-mile stretch, a collection of awesome looking outdoor sculptures. I found out that this area is called the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park. This park runs East of McCormick Blvd., between Dempster Street and Touhy Avenue, and spans a two mile stretch along the Chicago River and includes 72 sculptures. This got me even more anticipating our own sculpture park here in downtown Des Moines. Last week the bulldozers were tearing up the current grassy area in preparation for what’s to come by next spring.
Just to give you a little background on the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park, this park was founded in 1988 by a group of private citizens to establish and maintain a sculpture park in a two-mile-long, park setting just north of the city of Chicago. The park has been designed and formally landscaped to include bicycle paths, walkways, and seating areas, surrounded by over 70 large-scale contemporary sculptures created by noted regional, national, and international artists.
Approximately 25% of the sculptures on display make up the parks permanent collection, including works by Testa, Wareham, Gall, Ihara, Johnson, and Peart. The remainder are on loan for various periods of time from sculptors or collectors such as Zimmerman, Katz, Baur, Parker, Gallucci, Blik, Anderson, Agard, Gall and Heinrich.
The park showcases sculpture in a wide variety of styles and materials, encouraging viewers to think about and evaluate the creative process of sculpture. Since the Sculptures in the park are available for purchase, maybe these could be some of the ones that Des Moines buys for our park or set up a traveling trade agreement between the parks.
Take a look at some of the great sculpture in the park:
I think one of the coolest looking buildings downtown right now is the Des Moines Public Library building located on the eastern edge of the Western Gateway Park at 1000 Grand Avenue. This building is gorgeous both during the day when the bright sun is shining on it and fascinating to look at during the evening hours when it’s all lit from inside.
For a mere $32 million, the City of Des Moines, had a famous British architect, David Chipperfield design and build us a 140,000 square feet structure. The building also sports green roof construction, a first of its kind for the City of Des Moines. The function of the Green Roof Infrastructure provides many benefits to the building and the surrounding community as well as the beauty it brings.
The building appears windowless but turns out to have a plethora of full-height glazed surfaces. Triple glazing with an integrated copper mesh enables this optical illusion to occur. During the day, the façade seems opaque and glows with a warm, coppery colour. At night, when interior lights are on, the façade becomes transparent. This transparency allows the people on the inside of the library feel as if they are actually outside in a park.
If you look at the library from above, it resembles an airplane with the wings of the building meeting each other at broad angles. Reports show that the idea behind this shape was for the building to embrace its green surroundings and to create sheltered areas or ‘pocket parks’ between the wings.
It looks like over the last few weeks construction has really started up on the new Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield company headquarters building. As a downtown resident this brings hope and anticipation with new construction that continues to bring vitalization to our downtown, but the same time begs the question what’s going to happen to all the current leased spaces that these companies occupied? With Wellmark moving out of the Ruan and Davis Brown Law Firm moving out of the Financial Center, who will move to occupy those large spaces?
Wellmark’s new five-story, 550,000 square feet building, on 6.5 acres will be a huge addition to downtown. The building beautiful architecture will look awesome sitting across from Western Gateway Park the new Pappajohn Sculpture Garden. Here’s a video that shows off the beautiful architecture of the building:
Did someone steal the the 4-ton 25-foot tall Nomeade sculpture from Western Gateway Park? No, but if you drive down Locust Street right now, you won’t see it. That’s because it has been temporarily moved to the Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Arrangements for loan of the art were made prior to purchase of the piece. Prior to being in Des Moines, it was in Miami, Florida at Miami Beach’s Lummus Park.I used to walk in that park all the time, when I lived in south Florida. It’s will be back this coming spring as part of the Pappajohn Sculpture Park that is currently being developed between 13th and 15th Streets and Locust Street and Grand Avenue.
The Nomade was purchased in December 2007 by John and Mary Pappajohn and placed in a temporary location in Western Gateway Park. This piece and 16 additional sculptures by world-renowned artists are being donated to the Des Moines Art Center. John and Mary Pappajohn, local Des Moines philanthropists, are donating a collection of outdoor sculpture valued at between $20 million and $30 million for Des Moines’ Western Gateway Park. This donation is believed to be the largest single public gift in Des Moines’ history.
The Pappajohns’ sculpture donations include:
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.
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.
Another year for the Des Moines Art Festival has come to a close. This year’s attendance was over 210,000 for the three-day festival. Living downtown for the first time this year, I made several visits down to the Des Moines Art Festival this weekend with my friends, Rob, Rob and Todd. I even made a purchase of a piece of art that I thought was very unique from an artist by the name of Beau Tudzarov.
This year’s event took place again in Western Gateway Park. Based on guest and participant surveys from last year’s Des Moines Arts Festival, there was even a “green” theme present to emphasize recycling.
Art was featured from 175 visual artists from across the nation and Canada. Art was judged in 14 categories: 2-D mixed media, 3-D mixed media, ceramics, digital, drawing/pastels, fiber, glass, graphics/printmaking, jewelry, metalworks, painting, photography, sculpture and wood.
I really had a great time looking at art, listening to live music, seeing some live theatre performances and just mingling and socializing with friends and acquaintances. I’m already looking forward to next year’s event. I’m marking my calendar for June 26-28, 2009.
