05 Feb What’s Up Downtown with Jack Cullen: Winter 2025
What’s Up Downtown is a quarterly update on all things downtown Rock Island from Jack Cullen, Executive Director of the Rock Island Downtown Alliance.
Downtown Rock Island is on the move. A vibrant holiday season marked the end of 2024, paving the way for continued progress in 2025. Positive activity, including improved public spaces, new & expanding businesses and community events, continue to bubble up throughout the 65-block commercial district. All of this and more is covered in this edition of What’s Up Downtown, a quarterly update on all things downtown Rock Island from Jack Cullen, Executive Director of the Rock Island Downtown Alliance.
Watch the video below to learn more about “What’s Up Downtown.” For a deeper dive on the renovation and programming of Arts Alley, which recently earned an award from the Development Association of Rock Island, read the recap below, “Rendering a new reality.”
Rendering a new reality
This image of Rock Island’s renovated Arts Alley captures a scene of revitalization and holiday magic that took more than three years to make.
City leaders working on behalf of a community-driven master plan prioritized the public outdoor space for improvements in the spring of 2021. They also wanted to see a new downtown management entity and funding model established to maintain, program and improve the neighborhood in a sustainable fashion.
Photo: Katelyn Metzger, Quad-City Times
A strong team of downtown stakeholders, community partners and elected officials banded together to accomplish both goals and then some. We secured a first State of Illinois grant to add new tourist attractions to Arts Alley, such as large-scale murals and retail vendor stalls for seasonal pop-up shop programs. The team then secured City funding and a second State grant to update more of the downtown’s infrastructure and identity, from new underground utilities to street-level signage, lighting, greenspace and more.
Many of the same downtown stakeholders involved in the public planning and fundraising process simultaneously led the creation of the City’s Downtown Special Service Area and Rock Island Downtown Alliance in 2022-23.
Proud locals engaged in public input sessions, and in the spring of 2024, crews broke ground on the City’s $9M Rebuild Downtown Rock Island Project to enhance public spaces, encourage private investment and improve quality of life. Meantime, the Downtown Alliance and City are dedicated partners working together with the private sector for the betterment of downtown.
Fast forward to Nov. 20, the community showed out for the opening of Arts Alley and holiday tree lighting. Visitors enjoyed refreshments from downtown businesses, shopped in the heated vendor stalls and sang along with Rock Island High School carolers. It was exactly the type of social gathering Arts Alley was designed for, and as the season’s first snow fell, Mayor Mike Thoms said it perfectly that it felt like a scene from a Hallmark movie.
The Arts Alley Holiday Market presented by Valley Construction gave the community additional opportunities each weekend Nov. 29-Dec. 22 to experience the space, shop local and participate in downtown’s transformation. While our work is just getting started, and construction will continue until summer, it feels right to pause, reflect and celebrate the fruits of our downtown’s collective labor, three-and-a-half years and counting.
Shoutout to the Downtown Alliance Board of Directors, all our engaged neighborhood businesses and residents, supporters and the following partners for bringing the vision to life and activating downtown:
• City of Rock Island
• Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
• Illinois Office of Tourism
• Valley Construction Co.
• Veenstra & Kimm, Inc.
• Streamline Architects
• Crawford Company
• Quad City Arts
• Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce
• Visit Quad Cities
• Quad Cities Cultural Trust