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No one seems to have noticed, but B.J. Furgerson
was reappointed the other day to a three-year
term on the board of Iowa Public Television.
That should have been news. For Furgerson, now
85 years old, has been on the board since 1980,
and her 32-year run is one of the longest —
if not the longest — anyone has ever served
on a state board. From 1980 to 1989, she was
an appointee of the governor to the nine-person
board, and since 1989 she’s been the representative
of the Board of Regents. She was president of
the IPTV board for 23 years, from 1986 to 2009.
“What I’ve learned [from her] could fill volumes,”
Dan Miller, who runs IPTV, told Cityview. “Her
wise counsel has helped shape nearly every significant
development here, and her enthusiasm and energy
bring spark and light to any discussion....I
don’t know if I’ve ever met a more selfless
public servant. She stands taller than all.”
Furgerson was born in Waterloo, where her father
was a doctor and her mother the first black
person to teach in the Waterloo schools. She
graduated from UNI and was for many years the
director of the Waterloo Human Rights Commission.
She served on the Board of Regents from 1989
to 1995, and in 1990 she was named to the Iowa
Women’s Hall of Fame. She is as tough and tireless
as she is kind and thoughtful.
In 2006, Furgerson received a national public-television
award for “exemplary leadership.” “She was nominated
for that award by Sen. Tom Harkin and former
Congressman Jim Nussle — who didn’t agree on
much, of course, but did agree on the importance
of B.J. to this enterprise, locally and nationally,”
Miller said. ...
Meredith Corp. has bought that square block
between Grand and Ingersoll and 16th and 17th
streets, further good news for the west end
of downtown. The block, cleared except for the
onetime Iowa Paint store at 17th and Ingersoll,
is an eyesore for those driving west on the
rejuvenated Grand past the stunning sculpture
garden, the new Wellmark building and the Meredith
building. It has been owned by Nautilus Properties,
which is owned by Tom Goldman, whose family
owned Iowa Paint.
Meredith paid $1.2 million for the block and
probably will resell it eventually. The company
“has an interest in the property and how it
looks and what goes there,” according to Art
Slusark, the Meredith vice president and chief
communications officer. Meredith “is looking
for an owner who would develop it in line with
the master plan for the western gateway and
the current character of the neighborhood.”
Translation: Lots of people at that end of downtown
are still pissed that Rich Eychaner leased a
building across from the sculpture garden to
Subway, with its big yellow sign staring down
at those million-dollar sculptures, and they
don’t want to see a repeat of that.
The block, which is assessed at $1,248,000,
has an interesting history. Until the 1930s,
it was lined with homes along Grand Avenue.
By 1930, two gas stations and a tombstone company
were there — the monument company stayed for
decades — and by 1950 there were a couple of
restaurants and an auto-repair shop on the block
as well. (And for a while, a Mrs. W. Grace had
a poultry store there.) For a brief time, it
was home to a Rolls-Royce dealer, though no
one can remember many Rolls-Royces driving around
town. For 20 year or so, until the 1990s, it
was the site of the Betts Cadillac used-car
lot. The Goldmans sold Iowa Paint to PPG Industries
in 2006, and PPG then closed the downtown site.
Meredith already is doing some grading on the
lot and plans to pretty it up while the company
awaits a proper buyer. ...
Meantime, the old Casson’s Meat Market — later
a post office — across the street at 15th and
Grand is being sold to Scott Buchanan, who owns
the adjacent Scotty’s Body Shop, Cityview hears.
The half-acre plot and the one-story, 9,065-square-foot
building are assessed at $1,090,000 and are
owned by the children of Babe Bisignano, the
restaurateur who also owned the meat market
at one time. No sale has been recorded yet,
and Buchanan didn’t respond to a Cityview inquiry
by press time. Presumably, he plans to put up
something appropriate to the neighborhood.
[An aside: Bisignano was convicted of contempt
of court and sentenced to six months in jail
in the mid 1940s after he got into a physical
confrontation with Judge Harry Grund at the
YMCA about a liquor raid at Babe’s restaurant
on Sixth Avenue. As part of his sentence, he
sometimes worked raking and mowing the lawn
at the Christ Child Home, an orphanage on Grand
Avenue that now is the law office of Alfredo
Parrish.
[Once, as Babe told Skinny 40 years ago, the
Casson’s Meat Market truck was making a delivery
to the orphanage. Babe thought the driver was
driving too fast up the driveway and went over
and told him to slow down because there were
children around. “Who’s a prisoner to tell me
to slow down?” the driver said. “Listen,” Babe
said, “I own this meat market.” “Yeah, sure,”
the guy said, and drove away.
[When the driver got back to the market, he
told the story about “this crazy prisoner guy.”
Told that the crazy prisoner guy did in fact
own the market, “the driver quit and I’ve never
seen him since,” Babe said. “I still owe him
a week’s pay.”]
Other real-estate news: The Hubbell interests,
which have been building heavily downtown, plan
to put townhouses on Seventh Street, a half-block
or so south of Martin Luther King Parkway. Rich
Eychaner and John Shors, who control the large
block between Third and Fifth streets, just
south of Martin Luther King, are talking with
city officials about putting several apartment
buildings on the site. One holdup: Do they restore
or demolish the old brewery building there?
And look for a big announcement this year that
Altoona has bested Kearney, Neb., for that $1
billion computer data center the two communities
were competing for. It’s unclear what the company
is, though the Kearney newspaper has speculated
it is Facebook. An announcement was expected
in late spring, but it has been repeatedly delayed.
On the home front, the Kruidenier home at 3409
Southern Hills Drive has been sold for $570,000
to Walter E. Lauridsen. The 4,000-square-foot
house, which is on 3.5 acres, was built in 1960
by the late publisher of The Des Moines Register
and was occupied by his widow, Des Moines lawyer
Elizabeth Kruidenier, until her death last October.
Lauridsen currently lives in the Brown-Camp
lofts. ...
No more free Sunday Register newspapers for
those filling up their tanks with at least $20
of gasoline at Kum and Go shops. Beginning last
weekend, folks had to pay 99 cents for the paper,
a guy tells Skinny. Publisher Laura Hollingsworth
confirms it. ...
Finally, from the mailbag:
“Dear Civic Skinny:
“I think we have been overwhelmed by the number
of Latham for Congress advertisements that have
appeared recently on television.
“I was quite intrigued to see that [they] were
sponsored by the American Chemistry Council.
While this appears to be a large trade association,
I don’t believe they have the same presence
in Iowa, that say, a corn growers group, or
cattleman’s association might have. So it made
me curious as to why they would be running so
many ads here. Then, I discovered that one of
their employees is Marcus Branstad. Gee.
“Sincerely,
“X
“A Moderate Friend.”
Indeed, Marcus Branstad, one of the governor’s
sons, is an Iowa-based manager at the American
Chemistry Council, where he has worked for nearly
three years. The Washington-based council is
made up of scores of chemical companies and
recently ran three weeks of ads praising Republican
Latham — who is opposing fellow incumbent Leonard
Boswell — and encouraging “constituents to contact
Congressman Latham’s office and tell him to
keep up the good work,” according to a council
news release. …
“There’s a line in a poem that I can’t remember
exactly, but it’s about forgetting and how long
forgetting takes. So maybe that is where the
test lies...in the forgetting.” — Nancy Sebring.
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