Rodney Blackwell insists that he did not make the difference.

"It wasn't me, I'm telling you," he said last month.

We are discussing Kone Centre, the planned 18- to 20-story building with approximately 130,000 square feet that will change Moline's skyline, ensures that 375 Kone employees will remain in the Quad Cities for 15 years, and completes - with an exclamation point - the major components of the Bass Street Landing initiative that was supposed to be finished in 2003.

Moline's Centre Station, located across from the i wireless Center in downtown Moline, has been recommended as the Quad Cities Amtrak Station. Based on this recommendation - part of a recently completed Metropolitan Rail Study - the proposed Amtrak route would start at Centre Station and end at Chicago's Union Station. The City of Moline will move forward in developing plans for the station. The Quad Cities Passenger Rail Coalition is advocating on behalf of the region for restored passenger-rail service. Amtrak service from Chicago to the Quad Cities is the linchpin for an extended route being planned to Iowa City and Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska. More information about the Quad Cities Passenger Rail Coalition is available at QCRail.com.

Now that the Davenport City Council has approved a March 3 referendum on the Davenport Promise proposal, one can be certain that the coalition that has been built over the past year-plus is being mobilized to demonstrate broad community support.

It will not be technically affiliated with any major community player, but it will include a lot of familiar names and faces behind the scenes. It will undoubtedly feature "real," everyday citizens, so voters won't feel like they're getting bullied by the heavy hitters. And the campaign will basically argue that there's no sensible reason to vote against the Promise, that there's no way the program could fail, and that the risk of voting the proposal down is too great.

That style of PR push was the successful approach of backers of River Renaissance in 2001. And the work in 2007 and 2008 of a Promise exploratory committee and a Promise task force has looked less like objective analysis than propaganda.

But don't mistake the marketing for unanimity.

On November 13, the Community Vitality Task Force released the second-annual Community Vitality Snapshot Report. The snapshot is an annual quality-of-life report used to highlight the Quad Cities' strengths and weaknesses, and it focuses on seven areas: economy and employment; health and society; environment and resources; education and learning; arts, culture, and recreation; neighborhoods, housing, and safety; and belonging and leadership. The report provides statistics for issues that are considered critical to the growth and success of the Quad Cities, such as the annual average unemployment rate, the percentage of people without health insurance, and the crime rate. The snapshot can be downloaded at GenesisHealth.com/pdf/qchi_2008_snapshot.pdf. - Ashley Allen