Feb 02

A different kind of drive-thru

Posted on Wednesday, February 2, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Essex school district wants to buy a bank.

KMA reports that Essex and Bank Iowa are discussing a land swap that would put the bank building under the school’s control. Essex wants to develop its culinary arts program, the superintendent told KMA, and a student-run restaurant would be part of that.

The present bank downtown doesn’t have a drive-through, and Bank Iowa is interested in getting one. It’s also right next door to Johnson Locker, which seems like a ripe opportunity for a really local food movement. The story doesn’t specify where the school land to be swapped is.

Essex has one restaurant — Garrison’s Tavern and Grill downtown — unless you want to count the Casey’s across the street from the school. (According to my notes from 2009, it was the nicest I’d seen, so it must have been among the first in Iowa to get the design with the expanded footprint.)

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Jan 31

ESPN-minus

Posted on Monday, January 31, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

On the night of January 11, there was a top-15 men’s basketball matchup involving one of TV’s darlings. Iowa State-Kansas was banished to ESPN+. Half an hour before that tipoff, a top-25 women’s basketball game involving the same school started. Iowa State-Kansas State was banished to ESPN+.

At 1 PM on January 15, the Iowa State men and women played at the same time and AGAIN the games were only available on ESPN+.

On January 26, the ISU women AGAIN tipped off half an hour before the men and AGAIN the games were only available on ESPN+.

On January 29, the ISU women tipped half an hour before the men, and only on ESPN+. This time, though, the men’s game was on ESPNU as part of the Big 12/SEC challenge — but the announcers weren’t even in Hilton Coliseum, doing the game remotely instead.

When ISU men’s and women’s games overlap, the men’s game takes precedence on the Cyclone Radio Network. This means that when those games are streaming-only — which a significant portion of the Iowa State fanbase is unable to access at any reasonable price — there’s no radio option, either.

The syndicated Big 12 Network TV package actually offered more coverage of men’s games, at least in the Big 12 footprint. But since then, it’s increasingly hard to define what the Big 12 footprint is. Oh, for the days when the biggest out-of-market issue was the Whataburger trolling. (BTW, Whataburger is now getting into the Kansas City metro area in a big way.)

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Jan 28

Hamburg Reporter got new owner

Posted on Friday, January 28, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

This happened four months ago, but worth a note: The Hamburg Reporter, in the southwest corner of Iowa, changed ownership. It had been a GateHouse paper, then a Gannett paper following the former’s purchase of the latter (but taking the latter’s name).

Nearly two dozen small papers in the Midwest, including the Reporter and the Nebraska City News-Press across the river, were sold to CherryRoad Media. CherryRoad filled in with a new newspaper for International Falls, Minnesota, a month after that city’s 111-year-old paper shut down. (It owns a paper in Grand Marais, WAY up there in the Boundary Waters area and 2/3 of the way from Duluth to the Canada border.)

The Reporter was an outlier in the “new Gannett”. Many of its Iowa weeklies nearly form a ring around Des Moines.

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Jan 26

My book of 2021

Posted on Wednesday, January 26, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I’ve done a LOT of reading in the past year, but nearly all of it was on the Internet. I only got through two hard-copy books. One, The Story of the Titanic As Told By Its Survivors, arguably doesn’t count because it’s a re-read from 1997. It’s a compilation of four men’s work — second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley; Col. Archibald Gracie, who compiled a breakdown of who was in which lifeboat before he became the third survivor to die; Second Officer Charles Lightoller, excerpted from his autobiography; and wireless operator Harold Bride, in a long New York Times article.

That leaves one book, but one so good it made my favorites list after I plowed through it in a day. It’s called She Wouldn’t Change a Thing by Sarah Adlakha.

I’m a sucker for time travel in general, but also what-ifs, change-one-things, and knowing-then-what-I-know-nows. The Back to the Future trilogy is but one entry in this category; there’s also Frequency, “Quantum Leap,” multiple episodes in the “Star Trek” franchise, and the Apple TV+ series “For All Mankind”.

In She Wouldn’t Change a Thing, a 39-year-old woman wakes up as her 17-year-old self and must decide whether she will change one thing that would result in the life she knew never happening. The official synopsis describes it as “Sliding Doors meets Life After Life,” but I thought of it as sharing DNA with Peggy Sue Got Married, a chunk of the 1970 novel Time and Again, and a tiny dash of Cloud Atlas. The author was a psychiatry resident at the University of Iowa and a UI-based character makes an appearance. Regardless of what other works it brings to mind, it’s an engrossing book that plumbs the depths of love, choices, destiny, and metaphysical ethics.

My deep research into Iowa schools illustrates the fickleness of history: Careers, friendships, and entire family lines exist and do not exist based on the outcomes of school consolidation processes, especially between 1956 and 1965. One cannot marry one’s high school sweetheart if he/she went to high school 15 miles in the other direction and they never met. In both the time stream and a road trip, divergences can come at many points, often set in motion long before our protagonist meets the moment.

And that’s how branches in the multiverse are born. Right, Spider-Man?

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Jan 24

North Tama continues look at infrastructure

Posted on Monday, January 24, 2022, at 11:00 AM by Jeff

Earlier this month, the North Tama school board had another work session to discuss long-term plans for the school complex, reports the North Tama Telegraph. A “hefty packet” of information about construction possibilities and, more importantly, funding options was offered at the meeting but is not online at the time of this writing. The start of this process, or at least when I found out about it, is covered in this blog post. I’ll also be referring to a video from August.

Option A keeps the 1917 building and “expands” the elementary. If it’s the previous Option 2, it would involve closing Walnut Street. The overall plan would be a two-parter and require another bond issue no earlier than 2032. I still don’t like the idea of closing the street.

Option B razes the 1917 building and builds a new elementary across the street, but still closes the street, in fact putting the playground in that space. Option 4 from the August video showed a building going all the way west to the football field. That’s a long walk on little legs to the cafeteria.

This sentence seems ripe to scare people off: “Phase three could not begin until 2046 and would also require a bond referendum plus $6 million in cash reserves.” Why do I say that? Because for the past five and a half decades, North Tama’s record with tax increases and bond issues has been dismal. Like, usually not even a majority in favor dismal. The big win in 1996 came after back-to-back defeats in 1992 (the second attempt eked out 51.2% “yes”), and a five-year physical plant and equipment levy (PPEL) was approved in 2000. Construction in the past 20 years has relied on the one-cent sales tax and donations.

Option C would require three bond issues, with the second in 2029 and third in 2031, at the maximum property tax levy possible. Option 6 in August also razes the 1917 building but keeps Walnut Street.

Added to the plans after the December meeting, the article says, was “a two-station gym with construction costs of approximately $4.1 million.” My question: Where do you put it?? (Also, what is a “two-station gym”?)

Eventually the board has to settle on one plan, and then it’s time to sell it to the voters.

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Jan 21

I-80 Iowa County rest area expansion plan

Posted on Friday, January 21, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Iowa DOT’s plan to expand parking at the I-80 eastbound rest area between the Victor and Ladora exits is available online. Construction is planned for late next year. KCCI reported that a rebuilt westbound rest area opened just before Christmas, but that appears to be inaccurate based on both Google Street View and this government contract. This rest area used to include an oddity — an Amana Colonies “Welcome Center” in an octagonal building, about as far from a state line as you can get.

The plan (PDF) nearly doubles the number of spaces for semi parking and nearly halves the number of spaces for passenger vehicles. The expansion moves the exit and re-entrance points on I-80 farther apart, and the “truck inspection area” adds a lot more space on the east side.

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Jan 19

An I-380 sign overlay that never got placed

Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

On southbound I-380 in Cedar Rapids, at the 27th Avenue SW overpass, there’s an overhead sign with the distance for the next, and last, city exit: 33rd Avenue SW. The bracket is designed to hold a sign with two lines on it, and until around 2009, it did. However, the bottom line remained empty until the sign was replaced with one that listed only 33rd. What happened?

I forget who asked me about this a long time ago, but I found the answer in the DOT plan archive. It’s the contract for signs on the “Cedar Valley Freeway” between 3rd and 33rd avenues SW, let in October 1973 for a segment that opened at the end of 1975.

The sign diagram (in glorious Futura font!) shows the sign did have two lines: “33rd Ave S W ¼ / U S 30 1¼”. However, because I-380 south of 33rd did not open until June 1976, the bottom line is marked “Future Legend to be Furnished with Contract.” The space never got filled in. US 30 was already there, in a two-lane that opened in 1953 and ended just west of I-380 at 6th Street SW. The section east of Bowling Street to IA 13 — the interchange was already there — was upgraded to four lanes in 1975, and then between Bowling and 6th the next year. (A detour for work on the latter, publicized in the Cedar Rapids Gazette on September 10, 1975, used Bowling, 50th Avenue SW, J Street SW, and 33rd to get to 6th.)

So, even though it was only a matter of months between when 380’s first cars went under 27th Avenue and over US 30, the “future legend” became a myth. The sign bracket remains, so perhaps the replacement for the Clearview sign could have a second line that shows “[30 shield] 1¼” or “Airport 5½”.

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Jan 17

South Tama bond issue vote March 1

Posted on Monday, January 17, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

There will be a vote on a $26.8 million middle school bond referendum in South Tama on March 1, reports the Tama-Toledo News-Chronicle.

The proposal the school board decided on was renovations at the Iowa Juvenile Home site. If the plan is approved, it would resume a history of education of some form at the site since Western College relocated there in 1881. Classes probably wouldn’t be moved there until 2024.

The present middle school, originally Toledo High School, opened in April 1915 at a cost of $75,000. “The structure in all details has been erected with designs for the best building for the present day and to meet to needs of the community in future periods,” the Toledo Chronicle bragged.

Gov. Terry Branstad ordered closure of the Iowa Juvenile Home in 2014. The News-Chronicle reported that the HVAC and electrical systems have been running automatically without human operation since, and the manufacturer no longer makes the master control. “This also may answer the question some community members may have asked as they passed by the IJH facility in the evening, wondering why building lights were turned on and off at random with no apparent regularity.”

Or it’s haunted. Whichever.

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Jan 14

Old schools in Miles, Preston gone

Posted on Friday, January 14, 2022, at 10:10 AM by Jeff


June 14, 2011: The 192X Preston school — exact year unknown because the cornerstone is cut off by the 1950 building to its right — and the capstone for Miles school.

The Easton Valley school district, the easternmost in Iowa, has been busy with construction in the past couple of years.

In the middle of the 2018-19 school year, the three-story Miles school was closed and elementary students temporarily moved to Preston, reported the Maquoketa Sentinel-Press. Based on aerial photos, only the oldest part of the complex was torn down and the rest preserved for a new school to be built in the middle.

A clip from the Preston Times website, link unavailable, says demolition of the original Preston school took place in April 2021 “after a year of no use and taking up a huge amount of space.” The site is now a parking lot for Easton Valley High School across the street.

I photographed the exteriors of both schools in both 2011 and 2018 before they slipped into history.

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Jan 12

Waverly-Janesville road will be upgraded

Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The 1914 map above shows the Red Ball Route north of Janesville shifting to the section line, once the railroad gets out of the way, in the southwest corner of Section 23. This kink, approximately 1/8 mile, was turned into a small angle in 1928, and a much longer slope in 1976. When US 218 was four-laned, it kept the existing line.

Now, as part of changing US 218 to fully controlled access between Waverly and Janesville, a new alignment will take out the slope and whoosh right through the fill pond. The interchange (PDF) with 260th Street will take up the entire space of the once-horizontal segment, and have roundabouts at each ramp junction (ewww).

The project also closes the intersection of old 218 with present 218 on the north side of Janesville. Janesville’s mayor was unhappy with this in 2015 (Waterloo Courier), when the first plan came out, and I first mentioned the plan that May. Maple Street (old 218) will instead take a turn west onto a new paved road and then parallel the railroad up to the cross street at the interchange. Another paved frontage road will go north from 260th to 250th for homes on Eagle Avenue.

This is the second time Janesville has lost a fight with the state over the highway. Paving through town, expected in 1928, was held up for two years as the city tried to keep the original alignment of IA 40 on Main Street and Barrick Road. Instead, the “bypass” with the sweeping curves was built in 1930 and used until 1995. The truss bridge over the Cedar River in that project is still there!

This project, along with the previous completion of interchanges at C50 and C57, will eliminate all at-grade intersections on US 218 from near downtown Waterloo to the northwest corner of the Waverly bypass.

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