Most of this construction is University connected as that institution fights for a piece of the student housing rip-off pie with a new dorm, having watched private developers growing fat servicing that segment (roughly half) of the local population. A great deal of this new stuff is to replace and reconstruct flood damaged buildings that should probably never have been built on so obvious a flood plain. Iowa City should have had the foresight to have discouraged development on any of that plain from one end to the other. Think of the concept of a City Park from one side of Iowa City to the other...when the water comes, no big deal, just re-seed. Maybe one bridge high enough to clear the high water might have been a good idea, as the hundred year floods come to vex us every ten years...like clockwork. Apparently there were no people "with vision" around Iowa City in the last century.
Some of this new construction is private and Iowa City has been graced by a sort of stubby little skyscraper, even if has a "look" that seems to fit the previous century, it looks pretty good on it's small footprint. Yes, it will do.
The area adjacent to it used to be called "Blackhawk Park". I'm not entirely clear if this is still the case. This is where the bums and panhandlers would gather in the sun to let their free breakfast digest and await their free lunch. The City has more or less run them off...after all you can't expect "rich jerks" to pay big bucks to live in a high rise and step into the street, only to be panhandled by chess players and bad poets (sort of like "Chauncey" stepping out in "Being There") . Anyway the free lunch has been moved a safe distance away and the sunlight isn't what it used to be, what with a giant sundial casting a shadow over the square. The wind whips up more in the vortex...
progress and sour grapes, I guess.
 |
| You might be able to "run the bums" but you can't do much about the drunken students that steam out of the bars every night at 2AM... -they are your bread and butter- |
 |
| This block of Dubuque Street (EIEIO bridge in background) is one of the blocks that are regularly shut down for one pathetic celebration after another all Summer long (Art, Blues, Jazz, Books, Fireworks, Sand sculpture) in attempt to keep Downtown Iowa City vibrant and relevant. The people do come in droves. They drink a beer, eat a gyros and listen to distorted music, only to find they can only buy a futon or a bong or beer, They then buy a T-shirt, get into their car and drive to Coralville where downtown Iowa City has long since moved...and spend their money. Too late, Iowa City...too late You are stuck with your three "dead" malls. One summer celebration you won't see soon in Iowa City is Ragbrai...most people I know believe that there is a unwritten and unspoken 1000 year moratorium on letting Ragbrai end up in Iowa City. The anal control freaks at City Hall always attempt to route them on convoluted tracks attempting to ride them past every remaining business in town using up the planets supply of yellow control freak tape....And what to do about all that public drinking? It is all for the best as the privileged snobs of Iowa City do not take well to inconvenience... unless it's football related. That is not what Ragbrai is all about. or Meatball for that matter _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Forty Years ago... I wished for three things I wished for an end to International Communism...that happened (now if we could only wipe it out in academia) I wished for a Republican Majority in Congress...that has happened a couple of times (and I don't even care much anymore) it may happen again soon The third thing I wished for was that McDonald's would go bankrupt and it's beginning to look like this will happen, as well (chapter 7 works for Me) Maybe I will have lived a "full" life and can expire...contented... fulfilled *some say the only thing that might save McDonald's from some form of reorganization is the pitiful school lunches that may drive teens to leave school and make a beeline for... the closest one. _________________________________________________________________ |
