Downtown Dubuque, Iowa, Oct 2008.
Dubuque has been high on my list for a return visit lately and here is one reason, (see below) mentioned by Lynn Hicks in the DMRegister yesterday. Last I heard, there wasn’t much in the Millwork District yet but that can and will change – certainly if Des Moines’ East Village is any indication. Dubuque has long been one of my favorite Iowa cities to visit – as I noted in my latest travel story on Iowa…for Delta Sky magazine, in which I recommended: the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium; Fenelon Place Elevator, a funicular built by a banker in 1882 to travel from his office downtown to his house atop a bluff; The Redstone Inn, among several inns located in elegant Victorian mansions; the 170-year-old Hotel Julien Dubuque, now a boutique hotel after a $30 million renovation; contemporary Main Street restaurants like L. May Eatery; and the old school beer-and-burger joint, Paul’s Tavern, where stuffed Big Game animal heads are mounted on the wall.
Here’s Lynn’s blurb:
Is Dubuque hipster heaven? MSN.com has named the city’s historic Millwork District one of 10 industrial neighborhoods that are becoming “hip hangouts.”
Other neighborhoods mentioned included the Warehouse District in Cleveland, Brooklyn’s Red Hook area, Manhattan’s Meatpacking District and Dogpatch in San Francisco.
MSN.com called the Millwork District “a work in progress.” The area was once the nation’s largest manufacturing district for windows and doors, the website said. It now has about a million square feet of vacant warehouse space. City leaders have tapped into federal and state money to develop a sustainable neighborhood, creating bicycle and pedestrian-friendly streets and attracting housing, art galleries and venues and community gardens.
One of the projects under way in the district is a $29 million rehabilitation of the CARADCO building, a 186,000-square-foot millwork factory that will contain 72 residential units, commercial and retail space and room for nonprofits and arts and culture initiatives.
TakeBetsywithyou 