Davenport could receive $1 million to help establish ferry service below Lock & Dam 15 between Davenport and Rock Island, as a component of the city’s River Vision plan. The Scott County Affordable Housing Grant Pool & Revolving Loan Fund is also poised to receive a $300,000 grant to provide support to modest-income families to buy their own homes and to support multifamily housing. Both of these projects are part of a $5.1-million grant to support eastern Iowa transportation, economic revitalization, and housing initiatives that was included in the Fiscal Year 2007 Transportation, Treasury, Judiciary, Housing, & Urban Development appropriations measure recently passed by a Senate committee. Both the House and full Senate must approve the measure before it becomes law.
Filmmaking brothers Pupi and Antonio Avati will soon be casting The Hideout, their latest project to be filmed in the Quad Cities. Once again the Avatis have tagged Circa ’21 producer Denny Hitchcock to cast the U.S. roles in the movie. Hitchcock has cast each of the Avatis previous films shot in the Quad Cities. Casting for extras will be held at The Lodge, at Spruce Hills Drive and Utica Ridge Road in Bettendorf, on Thursday, July 27, at 6 p.m. Experience is not necessary to be an extra. The call for those with acting experience and who are interested in being considered for a speaking role will be Thursday, July 27, at 8 p.m. Everyone attending the call should bring a résumé and nonreturnable photograph. The Hideout will be a low-budget Screen Actors Guild film.
Susan McPeters, public affairs director for Quad Cities PBS station WQPT, and Paul Magnuson, production manager, took second-place honors in the Agribusiness Category at the Iowa Broadcast News Association Competition. The Life & Times story called “Illinois Wines” took a look at the resurgence of the wine industry in Illinois, with a profile of Lavender Crest in Colona as an example. Life & Times, which began production in November 1993, is the only locally produced prime-time magazine program in the Quad Cities. To view streaming video of Life & Times, visit (http://www.wqpt.org/video). WQPT is a broadcast service of Black Hawk College, located in Moline.
A musical by Clinton Area Showboat Theatre (CAST) Artistic Director Jay Berkow will be presented at the 2006 New York Music Theatre Festival. What a Glorious Feeling, which Berkow began developing last year, will be performed at the Sage Theatre, an off-Broadway venue located in Times Square, during the festival, which runs from September 10 to October 1. Berkow has 47 productions to his credit at CAST since 1997, his first season. In 2000, Jolson & Company – which he co-authored and directed – ran for six months off-Broadway. What a Glorious Feeling opened at the Mason Street Warehouse Theatre in Saugutuck, Michigan, last fall. To learn more about the Festival, visit (http://www.nymf.org).
New federal programs are providing additional financial aid to students who have taken challenging high-school coursework and want to go to college. The new programs will provide $790 million in college aid this fall to eligible students nationwide, and a total of $4.5 billion over the next five years. Students can receive complete details and an application by calling (800)433-3243 or visiting (http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/).
Iowa Health System (IHS) has been named one of the nation’s “Most Wired” hospitals and health systems, according to the 2006 Most Wired Survey & Benchmarking Study recently released by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine, the journal of the American Hospital Association. Trinity Regional Health System of the Quad Cities is a senior affiliate of IHS. Iowa Health System, headquartered in Des Moines, is a multi-hospital network and physician group that includes affiliated hospitals in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Fort Dodge, Sioux City, Waterloo, Dubuque, and the Quad Cities. The 2006 ranking marks the sixth consecutive year the health system has made the top 100 Most Wired list. In addition to being named “most wired“, Iowa Health has been named among the 25 “most wireless” for a second time, a designation to recognize the progress the system has made toward wireless technology. Iowa Health was one of only 18 health-care organizations in the U.S. to earn both the “most wired” and “most wireless” designations.
