Moline city and economic development leaders say they were thrilled to receive 18 responses to the call for experienced planners to create a “world-class” Moline Riverfront Master Plan befitting a “world-class” city. So were leaders of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) advisory panel who back in April 2019 were invited to help kickstart the city […]
Already a subscriber? Log in
Want to Read More?
Get immediate, unlimited access to all subscriber content and much more.
Learn more in our subscriber FAQ.
- Unparalleled business coverage of the Iowa City / Cedar Rapids corridor.
- Immediate access to subscriber-only content on our website.
- 52 issues per year delivered digitally, in print or both.
- Support locally owned and operated journalism.
Moline city and economic development leaders say they were thrilled to receive 18 responses to the call for experienced planners to create a “world-class” Moline Riverfront Master Plan befitting a “world-class” city.
So were leaders of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) advisory panel who back in April 2019 were invited to help kickstart the city and Renew Moline’s current efforts to create an ambitious riverfront plan.
Leaders with ULI were in town on Wednesday and Thursday, March 1-2, to view the work that Moline has done since the ULI issued its own ambitious downtown riverfront report in 2021. The trip also coincided with the March 1 deadline for expressions of interest in helping create the city’s riverfront plan.
Those leaders – Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor and a senior advisor with ULI since 2006, and Rick Dischnica, chair of the ULI Moline advisory panel – called the response “incredible” and said it was “beyond normal” to attract so many of “the best and brightest around doing land planning.”
Mr. Dishnica added: “Sometimes you’re lucky to get half a dozen.”
Moline City Administrator Bob Vitas said the 18 responses were “really a shock” and will open the project “to a wider berth of companies and individuals with the specific talents we are looking for. We’re really thrilled to have that.”
Currently, Moline and Renew Moline are combing through the proposals and refining the list of potential development planners to assemble the most qualified team possible, Mr. Vitas said.
“This is a world-class city with a world-class industry located within it and we want whatever we’re doing now to withstand the test of time,” he added.
Moline public and private sector partners have done something similar in the past, he told members of the Quad Cities media gathered last week at the Renew’s River Drive offices which boast views of that earlier development: the now Vibrant Arena at The Mark and the John Deere Commons.
“As you look up and down on River Drive,” Mr. Vitas said, “you can see what that collaboration did many, many years ago and we’re standing in that same spot today.”
Once a new master plan is accepted, he said, the next step will be to “assemble the team that we’re looking forward to dealing with over the next 12 to 15 months and vetting those ideas and those concepts, and drilling down to what the actual cost is for all of that.”
The bottom line is getting results. “I’ve been at this for a long time, so my thought was, ‘Yeah, this is great.’ I love plans, but I also like performance,” Mr. Vitas said. For example, a key component is determining the vertical infrastructure required to support any future plans.
“Then when we start to sit down with developers they will understand we’ve done our homework, we know what we need to bring to the table to induce you to come here to invest your money to make our dream and our vision come true,” he said.
Alexandra Elias, Renew’s president and CEO, has made riverfront redevelopment her mission. Ms. Elias, who invited ULI to bring its real estate and planning experts to Moline, said public input is and will be essential in the process which should be about what makes the residents of Moline happy.
“I know that pounds pretty pie in the sky but I think that’s what creates what I like to call beloved places,” she said. Those are places where lasting lifetime memories are made and shared across generations.
For ULI’s Mr. Murphy, the 37.5-acre riverfront development area that Moline created by acquiring the downtown land, is an opportunity to transform the world’s view of this city of its more than 40,000 residents. And he and Mr. Dischnica were effusive in their praise for city and economic development leaders who took the plunge.
“What you build will say volumes about who you are,” Mr. Murphy said. “When you think about this site, literally millions of people a year are going to come across that bridge and see this site and it will say loud and clear: “Welcome to Moline, we’re a spectacular city’ or ‘Welcome to Moline, we’re a mediocre city.’”
There’s already been commendable progress toward the spectacular, he said, pointing to the large acquisition of acres of land around the old Interstate 74 Bridge and the new one and the plan to progress toward building a skatepark in the shadow of the new bridge. New Line SkateParks has been hired to draft plans for the amenity under the new bridge.
