LeClaire extending main drag to draw business

With federal funding secured, the project will reconstruct N. Cody Road from Ewing to Chestnut Streets, adding storm sewer, a new water main, sidewalks, and an off-road riverfront trail. It is the main drag through LeClaire's business district.

The signature trees, crosswalks, and other amenities characteristic of a 2000s-era reconstruction of downtown LeClaire is to extend about six blocks north.

The hope is that an infusion of investment in the area will help draw additional development, especially for the unused lots and empty storefronts to the north.

"It's something the community has been waiting on for a long time," said City Administrator Dennis Bockenstedt.

About three-quarters of the $5 million project will be covered by a federal Surface Transportation Block Grant. 

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, LeClaire is holding a public meeting at City Hall with its consultants to get feedback on preliminary designs.

The consultant team of Rock Island-based Veenstra & Kimm and the Smith Group, of Madison, Wis., will present on the project and take feedback on its designs from business owners and residents. 

"This is going to be the first presentation of their preliminary design work as far as what the streets are going to look like, parking along the route and what it's going to look like," Bockenstedt said."From landscaping to street lighting, they want to make sure they are laying it out and they want people to be satisfied with it or gather feedback on anything that may need to be tweaked or changed, because once they go into the final design work, it'll be harder to make changes."

The city is expecting to bid for the project in late fall or winter this year and begin construction during the 2024 season. 

LeClaire completed its first round of streetscaping — a $3.5 million project — in November 2007.

City and economic development leaders in the city credit the streetscaping to a boom in businesses opening along that stretch of downtown LeClaire.

The following July, the city played final host to the 2008 Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI and in 2010, the cable TV show American Pickers and their Antique Archaeology store put down roots in LeClaire.

Bockenstedt said the downtown construction coincides with a Fill the Storefront Initiative, which offers grants to businesses rehabilitating long-time vacant storefronts. 

In 2022, the city submitted for a federal Department of Transportation RAISE grant to add amenities like a trail and fishing pier at the riverfront. The city did not win the grant, and Bockenstedt said it would "put a pause" on seeking that grant as it sought other federal and state funds to complete a multi-purpose trail in LeClaire. 

The long-term goal, Bockenstedt said, is to connect LeClaire to a riverfront, multi-use trail that spans the Iowa Quad-Cities and connects to a path on the I-80 bridge, once a new one is constructed. 

But that'll take many years and cooperation between the City of Princeton, Scott County, and the Iowa and Illinois state departments of transportation, he said. 

For now, the city will get about a half mile of off-road riverfront trail, the first section in LeClaire, out of this construction project.