Brilliant Sky Toys and Books   Kaleidoscope at the Hub; 699 Walnut Street Suite 233 Phone: 515-288-4689 Website: www.brilliantskytoys.com Current Hours: Monday – Friday 8am – 5pm Saturday 10am – 2pm Sunday Closed

Brilliant Sky Toys and Books just opened a couple of weeks ago on the skywalk level of the Kaleidscope Mall. The East Lansing, Michigan based company is all about values, focusing on providing the finest toys, games and books to enrich, enlighten, and entertain the families of our community. The store specializes in gifts for the 12 and under age and is affiliated with TreeHouse Toys & Books. The Des Moines franchised is owned by Hubbell Realty Company.

When I was there last Friday after the Obama Rally, the store seemed very busy with customers. I think this will be a great place for the downtown worker to grab a nice gift for son or daughter or niece or nephew without having to go a large shopping mall. Check them out on the skywalk during your next lunch break.

Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Business Spotlight | Skywalk

When I first moved to the Des Moines metro, I worked downtown and lived in West Des Moines and made the commute back-n-forth from the burbs to downtown five days a week. A few years ago, that changed and my offices were located in West Des Moines so the commute was short and sweet. Back in March of this year, I moved downtown and started the reverse-commute to my offices in West Des Moines. The reverse commute hasn’t been that bad, it’s only taken me about 15 to 20 minutes to get to work and home each day, this is significantly shorter than the nearly half hour to forty-minute commutes I had in South Florida. I found out this week that my department will be relocating in the upcoming weeks to our downtown offices. Talk about a short commute, I won’t even have to get my car out of the garage. It will be a walking commute for me. A hugh advantage to both working and living downtown.

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Commute | Liberty Condos | Skywalk | Walking

Which of these would you rather see?

A creative use of walls in the skywalk, like this picture of the skywalk through the Financial Center from Wells Fargo? or	Another bland white wall as recently done for the Des Moines Building skywalk?

As the cold weather season approaches more and more of us will be spending more time in the skywalks getting to and from work, shopping, dinging and running errands. For most of the three miles we have nothing interesting to engage us except for the few lighted billboards that are scattered here and there. So here’s my idea to the powers that be:

• Use the blank white walls as a showcase to display Des Moines centered art or art from local Des Moines area artists

Ideas of what could be put on the walls:

• Murals on the walls, that show case Des Moines History, Des Moines Skyline, or scenes from Iowa or local attractions.
• Display photography groupings, similar to what’s done for the Iowa State Fair photography exhibit.
• Display canvas or mixed media art done by local artist and make the skywalks like an art gallery.
• Local galleries could also sponsor a wall or an empty store front window to display art. There’s a lot of empty store fronts, especially in the Kaleidoscope, why not allow local galleries to hang items in those windows along with the “For Lease” signs, again more foot traffic equals greater opportunity for leasing space. A good example of this is the bottom floor of the Liberty Building, an artist from the Art Dive showcases work in an empty retail front.
• Learning walls, for example, allow local non-profits, like Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Iowa to display items promoting their organization, telling their story in words and pictures.

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Art | Skywalk

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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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Biking | Fitness | Liberty Condos | Skywalk | Walking

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.

Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Skywalk | Video | Walking

One of the best experiences that I have had since moving downtown is getting to know wonderful neighbors. In fact the three that live next door to me (Jessica, Tom and Wilson) are just awesome welcoming people. Last Monday night when they had me over for a wonderful dinner, I told them about this new blog that I started and got their permission to share their story that had been printed in the “Downtown Des Moines Newsletter”.

URBAN PIONEERS TOM TARBOX & JESSICA ROWE

“Why would anyone want to live downtown?” Jessica Rowe recently overheard that inquiry in a nearby conversation and couldn’t help but politely interrupt. To the contrary, Rowe asks, “Why would you not want to live downtown?” Jessica, a self-employed consultant, resides at 418 Liberty with her husband, attorney Tom Tarbox, and their two cats, Eloise and Oliver.

Their teenage son, Wilson, also lives in the downtown condo during breaks from the school he attends in Virginia. With Wilson gone to school most of the year, Tom and Jessica decided to make the move to downtown in order to streamline their lives and focus more on their careers and less on their backyard garden. While Tom says he enjoyed the hours spent working in his garden, he had become somewhat of a ‘yard slave’ and was ready to give it up and embrace the urban lifestyle downtown Des Moines offers.

Tom and Jessica studied the downtown market for more than a year before deciding on 418 Liberty. Since they purchased their condo early in the development process, they were able to work with the developers to make modifications befitting their lifestyle. “Nelson Construction was great and they worked with us on the modifications we wanted,” says Tom. It’s a wonderful perk of investing in downtown in the early development stage of any condo or loft building. The family moved into their condo in August 2006 and immediately fell in love with their ninth-floor view which features spectacular sunrises and many Des Moines landmarks such as the nearby Traveler’s Insurance umbrella. They were pleasantly surprised at how close they were to the incredible fireworks display on the 4th of July.

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Liberty Condos | Neighbors | Skywalk

As I’ve previous written about, the skywalk system was a major factor in me purchasing at the Liberty Building, so I have a real interest in how the skywalk system looks. When I first traveled to Des Moines in early 2003, I stayed at the downtown Marriott since it was near the Wells Fargo Financial building where my interview was to be conducted. I had to navigate the skywalk system from the Marriott to Wells Fargo Financial, it was a little confusing, but I made it there. I think the hardest part was getting my bearings or knowing which was north, south, east or west. I feel it’s similar to coming up out of a subway tunnel, sometimes its hard to know which way you are facing to know which way you want to go.

So after accepting my new position at Wells Fargo Financial, I moved to Des Moines, we’ll technically West Des Moines, and began working downtown at 800 Walnut Street. At lunch, I eagerly walked the skywalk system in every way I could to explore my surroundings and get familiar with the maze of turns. After a few weeks, I believed I had mastered the skywalk system and took it most everywhere when it was rainy or too cold to go outside (seems like we get a lot of that here in the mid-west). After a couple of years of working downtown, my office was transferred to other locations out west, so I no longer had the chance to walk the skywalk system that often. Since moving downtown to live in March of this year, I have re-acquainted myself with the skywalk system and use it now on almost a daily basis.

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Skywalk | Walking

In January, my current relationship at the time ended and I was in the need to find a new place to live as soon as possible. I had the choice of buying a new place in the suburbs or buying a place downtown. Having lived in the burbs since I moved to Iowain 2003, first in a townhome in Glen Oaks and then later to a large home in Clive, I knew I wanted to try something different. Over the past few years, I, like many others, would go on open house tours around the area and my favorites were always the downtown lofts.

So the next question decision was which lofts to choose from and budget was a main consideration since downtown living tended to be a lot more expensive than buying a townhome out west. Since I had toured most of the locations downtown previously and only had a couple of weeks to make a decision and get the closing process started, I narrowed my choices down to the following:

• Whiteline Lofts
• Liberty Condos
• 111 City Lofts
• Brown Camp Lofts

 Big factors for me where:

• Cost
• Square Footage
• Parking
• HOA dues & Utilities
• Tax Abatement
• Location / View

I drug my friend Todd along with me as we set out on my search for where I would call home for the foreseeable future. Our first visit was to the Whiteline Lofts. This was a cool looking new trendy building near the Science Center. Within my price range, I could get a unit on the 6^th floor with a southern view. The space was a little small for me on the square footage size, but in my head I figured I could do it, just sell a lot of my existing furniture and buy new small sized stuff. I didn’t really care for the southern view that much and it over looked the parking lot. Oh, the parking lot, I would have to park outside and I wasn’t really keen on that with dealing with the snow and stuff. This was a huge drawback for me, so we ventured on but not before falling in love with their rooftop patio. How great it would be to bring my friends up there!

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Posted under Moving Downtown
Tags: 111 City Lofts | Browncamp Lofts | Condos | Liberty Condos | Lofts | Skywalk | Whitelines Lofts