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Downtown Davenport booming with growth

The city of Davenport is moving forward with plans to bring in even more new business and people to the area. You can see changes in downtown Davenport. On the ...

The city of Davenport is moving forward with plans to bring in even more new business and people to the area.

You can see changes in downtown Davenport. On the corner of Main and West Third, a building that once sat vacant is now full of life. The last business to go in is expected to open next month.

"Particular first floor retail vacancies are very few at this point which is a great problem," said Kyle Carter, Executive Director for Downtown Partnership.

Over the last couple of years, downtown has seen 20 new businesses and more residential options.

"Our occupancy is in the 98 percentile so it`s basically full and we`ve got several hundred more apartments in the planning stages and a number of them are already under construction," said Carter.

2016 is expected to be full of new projects too, starting with the city square. It's a $60 million project to redevelop buildings in the core of downtown. Work continues to transform the Parker building to office space and luxury apartments.

"They`ll begin work on the rest of the block and head toward the Putnam building to create the new hotel down the street second and main work on that will begin later this year," said Carter.

Also a new bar called Raw is being proposed right next door to Bowls Urband Eats. The city council hasn't voted on the idea yet, but it's just one example of a growing trend.

"Our job is to make sure we keep our foot on the gas and take full advantage of that momentum," said Carter.

The Parker building is expected to be done this spring and the new bar being proposed will be discussed at city council's next meeting on the 17th.

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