With the arrival of spring, downtown Bettendorf is buzzing with several exciting new developments. The City’s West Bridge project is underway and includes a facelift for Leach Park with plans for a 2,500-seat amphitheater and construction of a mixed-use residential and commercial space. Ryan Jantzi, Executive Director of the Downtown Bettendorf Organization says he hopes...
Doug Wier doesn’t pull any punches when he advises millennials about the need to plan for their retirement. Don’t let Wier’s Hawaiian shirt fool you. The owner of Bettendorf Financial Group, which marked its 25th anniversary in July, is direct. And he knows his business. He has decades worth of satisfied clients to attest to...
It’s a win for businesses in the three downtowns involved – Bettendorf, Davenport and Rock Island – as the brightly painted windows in a variety of holiday motifs bring people out to vote for their favorite design, and in the process, discover new shops and restaurants. It’s a win for the artists, who are compensated...
The owner of one of the oldest Bettendorf businesses says he’s seeing a lot of his hopes coming true. Don Keller has a front row seat to downtown’s growth explosion. The store his parents founded, K & K Hardware, more than 80 years ago serves as a vital anchor to the area’s burgeoning home improvement...
In some ways Verde—a new upscale Mexican restaurant in Bettendorf—mirrors the transformation happening downtown. Bright, bold colors grace the quaint interior and complement a menu not afraid to try something different. “We wanted to bring something new and unique to the area,” Verde’s manager Bri Choitz said. The same can be said of an area...
Four Downtown Bettendorf businesses will share in more than $30,000 awarded through the new Façade Improvement and Commercial Interior Improvement grants by the Downtown Bettendorf Organization (DBO). DBO announced these grant recipients and projects: Façade Improvement Grants Tango Salon, 836 State St.; Leeann Themas, business and property owner; new façade work including milling headers, filling...
While construction of the new Interstate 74 bridge in the Quad Cities is drawing a lot of attention these days, a new urban destination is quietly rising just beyond the span. Downtown Bettendorf is in the middle of a major transition, and the Downtown Bettendorf Organization (DBO) is on a mission to make the downtown...
Downtowns deliver significant economic and community impacts across a region, despite being a relatively small share of a city’s overall geography. At its annual conference last week in Baltimore the International Downtown Association (IDA) launched the IDA Vitality Index, a new online tool for benchmarking the vitality of downtowns across the U.S. through measuring three...
