This morning I stopped by the New Pioneer Coop in Iowa City, Iowa to buy myself a flower for the new vase my daughter bought for me recently and a New York Times as a special treat. I literally almost ran into the artist painting the mural on the southside wall of the store as I walked out the door.
"Are you the artist who's painting the new mural?" I asked the shy, apologetic young man who was rushing into the store as I was walking out. He was.
I had to put my paper and flower down and get my camera out of my fanny pack. He was okay with a quick photo and a short interview after I explained who I was and what I was doing. I gave him my card, and he wrote down his name and a little bit about himself in my new little leather-bound journal.
He was born in Kentucky and came to Iowa via Cincinnati and Indiana. He got a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Indiana in Bloomington.
His hair is jet black and straight, sticking out in short tufts around his baseball cap. He's tall and athletic, and jumped up to his scaffolding to continue working on the wall as I left.
It's comforting to know that New Pioneer Coop is working to beautify its Iowa City store as it plans to expand to a third store in Cedar Rapids. I still love the Iowa City store, however much it may be threatened by floodwaters once in a while. All of New Pi's property in Iowa City is in a flood plain, so it's difficult for them to expand here.
I deeply regret that the City of Iowa City Council was too unwise to give away public property at the corner of Gilbert and College Streets to a builder who would offer New Pi a new home in a multi-story building. Seven of the eight builders said they'd offer New Pi, which has nearly 100 employees, a new home. At least several said they'd also offer a home to the bicycle library, a lending library of bicycles to those seeking to reduce their carbon footprint.
Did Iowa City pick one of those builders? No. Instead, they offered millions of dollars more to a favorite son, Marc Moen, a millionaire who already casts a broad shadow downtown. He plans to build an extremely energy inefficient skyscraper in a transitional neighborhood between downtown and residential neighborhoods that would clearly violate the city's own plan for transitional areas.
Moen's new dominant phallic symbol will house a bowling alley and a theater, not the New Pioneer Coop, which needs a business location above the flood plain, and not the bicycle library.
Iowa City incumbent councilors want Iowa City to be bigger, uglier, richer, and more like Coralville! To hell with being unique, beautiful like City Park and the North Dubuque Street entrance to Iowa City. To hell with being well designed, aesthetic, quaint, and protective of sensitive environmental features.
Given their heads, incumbent councilors would create more entrances to Iowa City like the south entrance, where Billion Autos lights up the farmsteads of elderly farmers like daylight at midnight and awakens them to the horror of what Iowa City has become.
There are, however, small pockets of what Iowa City could be and still is, in the small, special places like Thomas Agran's mural near the creek at Van Buren and Washington Streets.