Winners

As we first reported in early March, Paul Rottenberg's Orchestrate Management (Centro, South Union Bread Cafè, Raccoon River and a handful of other ventures) seems poised to take the long-suffering Metro Market space and finally turn it into a real winner. Rottenberg's idea is a Dean & DeLuca-type gourmet market and cafè that would fill a much-wanted specialty grocery niche, while dealing with a sore thumb no one else can seem to make work despite being near two of the city's hottest and fastest-growing neighborhoods: Ingersoll and Sherman Hill. Rottenberg, no stranger to rising to the occasion and dreaming big, wants to close on the location at the end of the month. We can almost taste the foie gras.

Des Moines certainly wasn't alone in the sad fact that the Department of Parks and Recreation might as well have been renamed the Department of Pesticides and Degradation. But last week, after years of talking about taking a greener approach in its care of the metro's natural assets, the Des Moines Parks and Rec approved a new stewardship and conservation program that will incorporate organic pesticides, prescribed burns, native plantings and innovative measures to combat water pollution. Add to that the news of a potential greening of Nollen Plaza, turning the pavement patch into an authentic gathering place, and urban naturalists may have reason to look forward to that extra hour of daylight.

Losers

First of all, 41 hours is not three days. But even if he'd inexplicably held himself captive in the Windsor Height's Wal-Mart for three weeks, Drake sophomore Skyler Bartels' 15 minutes of fame as the crafty kid who defied Spring Break standards and cleverly camped out in the heart of American consumerism was as bloated and uninspired as the retail giant itself. Granted, if Bartels had marched in with a political agenda to expose the crushing effect the big box giant has on American culture and the U.S. economy, that might have been worth an interview on CNN or NPR. But, no, this kid was adamant that his only intent was to determine if he could "buy everything [he] needed at Wal-Mart," (an academic exercise that surely made Drake administrators proud to call him one of their own). And not only was his gutless experiment on par with a feel-good, third-grade field trip, but Bartels pussied out at the first sign of actual intrigue, calling his brother to whisk him away as soon as store administrators looked like they might be onto his game. So while two front-page stories in The Register heralded him as a quirky social renegade and a nauseating number of national media outlets segued to his allegedly unique story with pithy observations of "how one Iowa student didn't follow the crowd to Cancun or Padre Island," the sad truth is that Bartels' excursion had all the hallmarks of a classic, college Spring Break: it was both stupid and pointless. And, hell, he didn't even get laid.

Since the beginning, there has been a line in the newspaper business that even greedy publishers have refused to cross: No advertising on the front pages of their newspaper sections. It was an unwritten law, a code of ethics that would not be compromised in an industry once dominated by proud families. However, for $650,000 (the amount in sales so far), The Des Moines Register followed its shareholders-first way of thinking, truly earning its titles of "The Gannett Outlet Store" and "USA Today Light." A circulated e-mail from a sales manager at the daily states, "Beginning April 9, 2006 the front pages of each section of The Des Moines Register will have a 6 column x 1 inch ad at the bottom of it. This is the first time ever The Des Moines Register has had ad space available on front of section pages." The e-mail also notes that all front-page revenue needs to be "incremental, over and above regular spending" from its advertising customers before it will be accepted. CV

Comment on this story | Return to top