I’ve always imagined it would be grand, as they used to say, to live in a hotel, that combination of residential and commercial real estate. Like Nick and Nora Charles of “The Thin Man” movies of the 1930s, we’d spend our evenings tossing about witty banter, and housekeeping could clean up in the mornings. Nora: [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — During a normal week, Dick Swanson, Dan Laird and their colleagues would be working in their air-conditioned Des Moines offices. This week, Swanson, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, and Laird, vice president of member services, are sweating with other bank employees in the heat [...]

Updated by Jim Malewitz 9:01 p.m. A McGregor brewery has announced plans to expand a 25,000-barrel-per-year operation in Coralville’s Iowa River Landing district, which would make it, by far, Iowa’s largest brewery. Backpocket Brewing will open the 15,000-square-foot facility featuring a large tap room and beer garden for the public in Coralville. Backpocket currently has [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS – Alliant Energy crews worked around the clock to get power back on in downtown Cedar Rapids. Crews shut off power to about 2,000 customers Monday night after one line failed and power surged downtown. By Tuesday morning, shops and stop lights were no longer dark, and everyone’s power was back on. For [...]

Funny what you remember about houses you knew well. My friend Corbett Reynolds, who owned an old Victorian home in Columbus, Ohio, was always unveiling new rooms that he’d claim he’d just discovered. He’d invite us over and reveal them, whoosh, as if by magic. Corbett had purchased the three-story brick house in 1970, and [...]

Plenty, and here is the story of why.   During yesterday’s World Food Prize Laureate announcement ceremony, held on the 8th floor, in the Diplomatic Reception room at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., the World Food Prize Foundation – and Iowa- once again took center stage on the international arena.   Over [...]

 Updated at 5:30 p.m. by Dave Franzman CEDAR RAPIDS- The board room at a downtown Cedar Rapids bank building hosted a meeting of a most unusual sort on Tuesday.  For about 20 years, U.S. Bank has provided a perch for a nest of peregrine falcons.  On Tuesday, members of the Macbride Raptor Project gathered up [...]