Planners may begin reimagining Moline riverfront next week

Moline is a step closer to inking a deal with design and architectural firm MKSK Studios after the Moline City Council on Tuesday night, Aug. 15, heard a Cliff’s Notes version of the presentation that earned the firm the support of Renew Moline and key city staffers. Council members are expected to formally vote Tuesday, […]

Moline is a step closer to inking a deal with design and architectural firm MKSK Studios after the Moline City Council on Tuesday night, Aug. 15, heard a Cliff’s Notes version of the presentation that earned the firm the support of Renew Moline and key city staffers. Council members are expected to formally vote Tuesday, Aug. 22, to sign the contract that will officially launch the master-planning effort by MKSK’s Chicago Studio for the mostly city-owned Mississippi Riverfront land opened up by demotion of the old Interstate 74 Bridge and construction of the new one. Planning for those newly created and significantly changed spaces was launched years before the old bridge came down and the new one was completed. For much of that time it has been led by Renew Moline President & CEO Alexandra Elias, who kicked off the city council’s Aug. 15 project roundtable.  Ms. Elias, who grew up in Davenport, returned to the Quad Cities five years ago after a successful career as an urban planner, and having just managed a major waterfront redevelopment that was happening in downtown San Diego. “I tell you that because this is the reason that I came back to the Quad Cities,” she told the council. “I believe in this opportunity,” she added. “I believe that it’s once-in-a-generation.”  So does Moline City Administrator Bob Vitas, who said he is working to finalize the contract with MKSK and its team of experts this week. The pact that is set to be voted on next week between the city and MKSK will include the detail and the scope of work based on the firm’s request for proposals (RFP) submission and a lengthy presentation that recently won the support of a panel of Moline and Renew Moline leaders, he said. “It’s really an outstanding scope of work,” added Mr. Vitas, who was a member of the committee of eight that considered all the RFPs submitted by 18 world-class firms. “I’m thrilled that they were the best and I hope the council will feel the same way.”  “If all goes well (MKSK) will launch in September we’ll be done by this time next year,” he added.    MKSK project leaders, who addressed the city council on Tuesday via Zoom, said they were ready to get started.

MKSK ready to go

“We’ve been so excited to be a part of it from the moment we got involved this past year,” said Brett Weidl, MKSK Chicago Studio leader, and a landscape architect principal with MKSK, which is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

She said the firm and the team of experts assembled by MKSK for the project have experience with riverfront development that will help to create an “impactful” plan that will help make the newly discovered corridor a magnet for people and development. She was also joined Tuesday by Donald Zellefrow, a Chicago-office-based landscape and urban designer and certified planner, who will be MKSK’s project manager on the Moline master plan. MKSK, Ms. Weidl said, is “a collective of planners, urban designers, landscape architects. We’re passionate about people and places.”  Collaboration and community outreach and engagement in all aspects of the planning are critical components of MSKS’ planning efforts. “We build on your local strengths,” she added. “Moline has so many amazing qualities to it. So we build on those. We build on the people that live there, that are from there, that visit places like Moline. We build for long-term value. This is something that’s going to be a fixture within the downtown for many years to come – hopefully generations.” The riverfront area being considered by MKSK is roughly bounded by 18th Street to the west, Seventh Avenue to the South and a secondary study area bounded by 25th Street on the east. “We realize the bridge runs through the site and that has changed a lot of the connectivity of downtown and a lot of the connections that were there have changed,” Ms. Weidl said.

“The riverfront is such an important aspect that ties it to the downtown and we really want to uncover how those assets can sort of develop and be catalysts for future growth and future development in the downtown.” The firm also shared a number of its best known riverfront and downtown redevelopment projects including the Washington, D.C., Potomac River District, where the firm led the transformation of a place “that was a lot of concrete and a lot of hardscape into and a place where people didn’t really visit into a livable community, where there are’ destinations and there are parks and where that riverfront is sort of spread between al these things and sort of knits it all together.” The same is true of the downtown Columbus, Ohio, riverfront. 

Spiegel part of planning

The firm also focuses on repurposing existing buildings such as the Spiegel Building and Bridgepointe, which Moline leaders have targeted for redevelopment.  “Existing buildings sometimes can be seen as a detriment,” Ms. Weidl told the council. “Sometimes these buildings are classic and they're beautiful in other ways and they can be repurposed.” The end goal for MKSK’s team, Ms. Weidl said, is to come out of the impending 11-month process “with final deliverables that can be really usable for the city. We want to deliver a master plan package that includes an implementable action plan (and) it would include strategies for how to go about creating this district and priorities for how to get there.” The firm also expects to create a financing plan and marketing plan “to really put that first project on the table and ready to get momentum behind that and get it moving.” Following the presentation, Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati thanked the firm for its efforts so far and lauded in particular MSKS planners’ emphasis on community involvement in the process.  “I have spoken with some alderpeople who have received ideas from folks,” the mayor said. “And I’ve gotten emails over the course of the last two years from people who have ideas for the space and it's very clear they need an outlet for that.” The process laid out by MSKS will help provide it, she said.