Note: This post was originally published on August 22, 2008.

Since moving downtown, I find myself walking 300% more than I ever walked living in the burbs. I walk for my health, pleasure, shopping, eating out, grabbing a drink and running miscellaneous errands. With rising gas prices, walking all helps on the budget.

I noticed that cities are starting to be ranked and graded on their “walkability”. A site called Walk Score, gives downtown 50309 a score of 89 out of 100 possible points. Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking.
Here are general guidelines for interpreting a score:

• 90–100 = Walkers’ Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.
• 70–89 = Very Walkable: It’s possible to get by without owning a car.
• 50–69 = Somewhat Walkable: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.
• 25–49 = Car-Dependent: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.
• 0–24 = Car-Dependent (Driving Only): Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

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.

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As you may know, Earth Day is being celebrated on Wednesday, April 22nd and Des Moines like countless other cities around the world is taking part. Here are some of the events happening downtown:

On Wednesday downtown corporations and organizations will team up for the 2nd Annual Earth Day Trash Bash – a spring clean-up event organized by Operation Downtown, Des Moines Parks and Recreation, and Downtown Community Alliance. Volunteer teams will work from 2 – 4:30 p.m. to clear away litter that has accumulated on our streetscapes and trails over the winter months. After a thorough sweep of their assigned territories, teams will gather at Nollen Plaza for refreshments, music and awards.

Also in celebration of Earth Day, the Des Moines Botanical Center at 909 Robert D. Ray Drive, is offering free admission on Wednesday from 10am to 5pm.

And the Iowa DNR is unveiling a new trash sculpture. The sculpture will be unveiled between 11am to 2pm in the main lobby atrium of the Wallace State Office Building, 502 East 9th Street, in Des Moines. The artist David Williamson and DNR staff will be available to greet visitors, answer questions, and most importantly, gather public input to complete the project, only 60% of the trash sculpture is now complete. The sculpture is made of trash dredged from the Winnebago, Shell Rock and Cedar rivers last August by hundreds of volunteers on the DNR’s annual Project AWARE river cleanup event.

The Vegetarian Community of Iowa is hosting a celebration at Ritual Cafe. There will be sample of vegetarian food as well as the full Ritual Cafe menu available from 4pm to 7pm.

If you don’t have a chance to participate in one of these community events, you could always go for a walk and pick up trash you find downtown to help keep dow

If you happen to work or live in the downtown core, you probably walk right by our downtown bus stops on Walnut Street every day and never take a second look. Why you ask? Because our bus stops appear to be strictly utilitarian, with no use of creativity whatsoever.

Simple structures such as bus stops could be just the vehicle we need to add some more interest and appeal to our downtown streets, similar to the cool bike racks that have helped provide more character to the East Village. If marketed correctly, the cost of changing our our existing bus stops for something more creative could be paid for by advertising dollars.

I spent a few minutes and searched the internet to see if I could find some cool examples of interesting and creative bus stops. The images in the slide show below are bus stops located both in the United States and abroad. I hope you enjoy these.

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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So this evening I finally made it to one of the Architecture @ Hand Walking Tours. I did the North tour and had a great time learning about some of the buildings that I walk by everyday. The architectural details that my guide pointed out are things I have totally missed, but now will notice again and again on my walks through downtown. I never knew so many famous architects have designed buildings in our downtown and that we had so many different styles of architecture for a city our size. Now, I can’t wait till next summer when I can do the West, East and the new South tour. I would highly recommend these tours to anyone, it will help you experience downtown in a new and different way.

One of my favorite buildings, the Ruan Building, was completed in 1975, and stands 460 feet tall with 36 floors. It’s the second tallest building in Iowa. The outside is made out of Cor-Ten steel, which is an alloy designed to withstand the weather and require no maintenance (cleaning or painting). The building was supposed to weather to a rich red-brown color, but due to the cleaner atmosphere here, never quite made it to that color. I learned that the streaking on the building came from the window caulking that was used melting and running down the side of the building. A lot of people here thought the building was a big rust bucket, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I love the look of it.

From the Iowa Public Television site, I found this list of the 50 most significant Iowa Buildings
of the 20th Century as selected by the AIA-Iowa Chapter. The majority of these buildings are in downtown Des Moines. Dates listed here are completion dates.
* Designates building of the decade.
** Designates building of the century (which is also building of its decade.)

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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:

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Summer is almost over and I’m mad at myself for never finding the time to do the Architecture @ Hand Walking Tour. There’s only one more date left for this year, Thursday September 4th. I’m going try my best not to miss it. The Iowa Architectural Foundation offers these walking tours as a unique approach to getting to know downtown Des Moines by learning fun facts about both old and new downtown buildings.

The walking tours are led by local architects and there are three different tours to choose from: North, West and the East Village tour. The tours begin at 5:30pm and Nollen Plaza (corner of 3rd and Locust, across from the Civic Center). The tours are typical 90 minutes long and they recommend everyone to wear comfortable walking shoes. There is a $10 per person suggested donation to benefit the educational programs of the Iowa Architectural Foundation. The foundation’s goal is promote the awareness of the contribution of architecture and community design to the quality of life in Iowa since 1989.

In doing some research for this post, I found a link for some great old postcard shots of Des Moines.

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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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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.