05 Sep 2025

Alternating Currents' Mural Festival Results

By Todd McGreevy

Culminating on the weekend of August 16 and 17, 2025, five artists from four different countries completed outdoor public art murals in Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois.

05 Jul 2025

Milan Bottoms Development in Rock Island Makes Good Sense

By Jeff Hughbanks
Nature's Treatment Illinois (NTI) Future Dispensary Development at Milan Bottoms in Rock Island, Ill

The City of Rock Island is set to experience significant economic growth with the anticipated Milan Bottoms development that includes a new Nature's Treatment of Illinois (NTI) cannabis dispensary, truck stop, car wash and franchise restaurant. The 10-acre development is at the northwest corner of Interstate 280 and Highway 92, across from Bally's Casino. The new businesses to be constructed at these four previously industrial and commercially developed and occupied parcels has spurred considerable recognition and new found stewardship for the adjacent, surrounding, city-owned 500-plus acres, including an easement prohibiting development in the to be designated wetlands.

05 Jul 2025

Rock Island City Council Can Do Better at Milan Bottoms

By Curtis Lundy

The Friends of Milan Bottoms (FMB) are a group of local individuals and organizations who are against locating a truck stop and cannabis dispensary on a specific 10-acre site adjacent to vital wetlands. We are not against Puffing and Pumping. However, locating those businesses there will cause extreme noise and lighting that will destroy the largest Bald Eagle winter night roosting area in the Lower 48 States and jeopardize the long-term health of our area’s only real touch of wilderness, as well as pose a potential drastic risk for oil/gas contamination over the decades.

03 Apr 2025

QC Environmentalists Seek to Modify Milan Bottoms Development In Rock Island

By Jonathan Turner

[The following is an update to the "Rock Island Addresses Concerns Over Development Plan Near Casino" article published March 21, 2025. In the above photo by Jonathan Turner, Jeff Hughbanks (right), who heads Rock Island-based Rymak Construction Group, talks about his $12-million plan to build a new cannabis dispensary and gas station in southwest Rock Island, at the March 21 press conference at city hall. Mike Thoms (left) will end his two terms as mayor having been defeated by 150 votes in the April 1st city wide election by Ashley Harris who won 51 to 49 percent.]

02 Apr 2025

Take a Chance on Me

By Anna-Louise Jackson, Cowboy State Daily
Braxton Mitchell (l) Robert Lester (r) Paddling in Film Columbia River Canoe Project

Butte, Montana Man Partners with Rock Island, Illinois Canoe Manufacturer for 1,300-Mile River Expedition and Award-Winning Documentary Screening April 9 and 16 in Davenport, Iowa

21 Mar 2025

Rock Island Addresses Concerns Over Development Plan Near Casino

By Jonathan Turner

Nature’s Treatment of Illinois (NTI) has done so well in Milan that it wants to fly the coop and a build a bigger nest in Rock Island. Local environmentalists are keeping an eagle eye on a $12-million-plus development plan next to Bally’s Quad Cities Casino & Hotel to ensure that wildlife and wetlands are protected.

14 Sep 2016

With Rock Island and Walmart, Blame the Farmer, Not the Snake

By Jeff Ignatius

Somebody should familiarize Rock Island Mayor Dennis Pauley with Aesop’s Fable “The Farmer & the Viper,” which famously ends with a snake biting a man who showed it kindness: “Did you not know that a serpent in the bosom, a mouse in a bag, and fire in a barn give their hosts an ill reward?” In other words, you knew I was a snake.

26 Mar 2009

A Question of Competitiveness: The Cases for and Against the Rock Island County Sales-Tax Referendum

By Jeff Ignatius

If you paid attention to the Davenport Promise proposal, the arguments in favor of a 1-percent sales tax for school construction in Rock Island County will sound familiar: This is the way we can be competitive with surrounding areas; this is the way to attract and retain residents; this is what we need for the future workforce.

There are three key differences, however: The Rock Island County proposal - which is on the April 7 ballot - is easy to explain and grasp; the vote will be held in a Democratic and union stronghold; and it involves a new tax, rather than shifting an existing one.

The first two factors should work in favor of the referendum, and it will almost certainly get more support than the Promise, which only garnered 39 percent of the vote on March 3.

But the sour economy hasn't put voters in a giving mood. The Illinois General Assembly in 2007 allowed counties to seek a sales-tax increase for school construction; eight of 10 referenda have failed.

The leaders of the Rock Island County Kids First organization - the primary force pushing for the sales-tax increase - said they are concerned about the Promise results, but they also highlighted the differences.

03 Mar 2009

Video: Atanasoff Documentary Filmed at Hunter's Club

By Todd McGreevy
John Vincent Atanasoff Book

 

March 2, 2009 Kirwan Cox and a crew from EyeSteel Films (www.eyesteelfilms.com) visited Hunter's Club in downtown Rock Island, Illinois. The Canadians were here to film a portion of a documentary they are producing for the Canadian version of History Channel about John Vincent Atanasoff. Atanasoff testified in the seminal 1970's Rand Sperry patent trial over the rights to the fundamental elements of modern computing. Atanasoff, a mathematician professor from Iowa State in Ames testified that he conceived of the four principles of the modern calculator as it was known at the time.

05 Nov 2008

Responses to Economic-Growth Questionnaire

By Administrator

Included here are the responses we received to our economic-growth questionnaire, which was sent to 20 representatives of local governments and economic-development organizations.

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