MEMORANDUM DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Date: August 11, 2005 To: Mayor and City Council Levee Improvement Commission Davenport Riverfront Task Force From: Charles Heston Subject: Riverfront Organization After the July 26, 2005 joint meeting between the City Council and the Levee Improvement Commission, Tom Engelmann asked me to make a proposal.
• Iowa's congressional delegation has secured $2.36 billion for transportation projects throughout the state in the Highway Reauthorization Bill. Included is: $67.4 million for I-74 bridge replacement over the Mississippi River in Bettendorf and other I-74 improvements on both sides of the river; $5.
• The Rock Island Housing Authority (RIHA) recently purchased the Hickman Community Center located four blocks from the Martin Luther King Community Center. The Hickman Center will be restored and used as the primary RIHA maintenance distribution and warehouse facility.
(Editor's note: This is the first of a monthly series discussing various Quad Cities' marketing efforts.) There is a marketing axiom stating that marketing can't make you something you're not.

"The only red tape you'll find in Rock Island is the one you cut at your grand opening," says the new marketing campaign for the city. Some bar owners in The District of Rock Island view things a little differently.

Progress on a new Western Illinois University campus on the Moline riverfront is at a standstill until officials can obtain the funding needed to do the initial architectural and engineering design required before construction can begin.
As Development Director Margaret Babbitt led me up the Figge Art Museum's wide stairway to its second-floor galleries, I was momentarily stunned by Sol LeWitt's enormous drawing that occupies most of the north wall.
"We just unpacked Grand Wood's palette," a worker told Figge Art Museum Director Linda Downs on Monday, while she was giving me a tour. Such are the details that the museum's staff is attending to in the days leading up the Figge's grand opening on Saturday.
• A 40-foot colon replica with appropriately sized polyps is intended to amuse, educate, and ultimately save lives. The Colossal Colon, a crawl-through replica of a human colon, is the creation of Molly McMaster, a colon-cancer survivor who was diagnosed with the disease on her 23rd birthday.
If you're in a band, you might know that things are getting serious when business overtakes music as your primary concern. "Lately, it's been all business," said Tom Swanson, singer and guitarist for Jim the Mule.

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