Design - Business Record

The Elbert Files: Shaping the future
The Elbert Files: Des Moines’ Coliseum
The Elbert Files: Save our soil
The Elbert Files: Iowa shares fell 4% to 22%
The Elbert Files: Bad debt vs. good debt
The Elbert Files: Feed vs. food
The Elbert Files: Final caucus thoughts
The Elbert Files: Iowa’s civil rights hero
The Elbert Files: Caucus conundrum
The Elbert Files: A move that never happened
The Elbert Files: A history of lunch in D.M.
The Elbert Files: Use and misuse of words
The Elbert Files: U.S. Grant in Des Moines
The Elbert Files: Impeachment and the Dow
The Elbert Files: Skywalk stories
The Elbert Files: Iowa needs hemp

From half a block away I could tell something was bothering my friend K.C. The closer he came, the more animated he got.
The Elbert Files: Farming and insurance

Farming and insurance are at opposite ends of the risk-taking spectrum, which makes it interesting that Iowa’s status as an insurance capital is rooted in the state’s agricultural heritage.
The Elbert Files: Impeachment twists

The House impeachment hearings a week ago contained several unexpected twists, including the fact that three key witnesses were first-generation immigrants.
The Elbert Files: Bryson's 'Body' book
Elbert Files: Ethics and technology

It’s easy to see unethical behavior in the past, Stanford University’s Martin Hellman will argue next week when he delivers the Robert Stewart Distinguished Lecture at Iowa State University. Slavery was wrong, as was denying voting rights to women and minorities, he noted in an email.
The Elbert Files: Springfield vs. Des Moines

I’ve spent a good part of my career covering Des Moines’ transformation from a down-in-the-mouth community in the early 1970s into a 21st-century model of urban design.
The Elbert Files: Ames, a Hobby Shop Town

Mike Templeton, owner of the Hobby Shop, the second-oldest business on Main Street in Ames, knows a lot about model airplanes, cars and trains.
The Elbert Files: How merger affects Iowa

The pending merger of Gannett and GateHouse Media could be both a boon and a curse for newspaper readers in Ames, Burlington, Boone, Perry, Nevada, Adel and Hamburg.
Elbert Files: Tales of three cities

Here’s a bit of trivia: The population of Iowa’s capital city is larger than the combined populations of the capitals of New York and Illinois.
The Elbert Files: Skeptical editing

The recent situation involving the Des Moines Register and its controversial profile of Carson King has me recalling lessons learned during my time as an editor at the publication during an ethics scandal that occurred 20 years ago.
The Elbert Files: Trump is no Jackson

I was walking toward the Des Moines Art Center on a surprisingly cool day when my friend K.C. joined me. He didn’t say anything at first, which was unusual. He appeared to be deep in thought, which was understandable given all that had happened in recent days.
The Elbert Files: New role for caucuses

Climate change has me reconsidering my long-standing opposition to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.
The Elbert Files: Exploring on two wheels

Central Iowa’s High Trestle Trail reminded me recently how enjoyable biking can be.
The Elbert Files: A wobbly stock market

The Dow: September is historically a volatile month for investors, but it’s hard to imagine it being worse than August this year.
The Elbert Files: East Village history

A nomination that recently placed a four-block commercial area in the East Village on the National Register of Historic Places contains many interesting nuggets.
The Elbert Files: Putting lipstick on a pig

Gov. Kim Reynolds has created an interesting distraction from Iowa’s dirty water problem.
The Elbert Files: Trump’s ‘memory hole’

I was standing on the Grand Avenue bridge surveying the site of the future federal courthouse when my friend K.C. joined me.
The Elbert Files: Carnegie and Mom

My mother was born the day after Andrew Carnegie died, not that they had much in common beyond the fact that both were born at home in sparse surroundings.
The Elbert Files: A Lustron home story
The Elbert Files: Iowa’s tax windfall
The Elbert Files: The MLK bypass story

The next time you’re south of downtown on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, imagine what the area would look like if the road had been built as an elevated, six-lane expressway, like Interstate 235, instead of as a graceful boulevard.
The Elbert Files: Ike and the 1950s

“When people my age get nostalgic, the place we often go to is the 1950s.
The Elbert Files: How to defeat Joni Ernst
The Elbert Files: Ten years later
The Elbert Files: Snyder's Capitol stories
The Elbert Files: Caucus confusion 2020
The Elbert Files: City Hall steps up
The Elbert Files: O. Kay Henderson
The Elbert Files: An unusual mentor
The Elbert Files: Punishing the vulnerable
The Elbert Files: Brokered conventions
The Elbert Files: Finding the future
The Elbert Files: Brooklyn
The Elbert Files: The economy moves on
The Elbert Files: Creating links

The Iowa state Capitol is 1.6 miles from Meredith Corp.’s downtown campus. I measured the distance recently to get a feel for how Des Moines has changed in the three decades since the Des Moines Vision Plan was created.
The Elbert Files: Hoiberg, Ferentz trivia

My longtime colleague Dan Piller makes a tongue-in-cheek argument that he put the idea in Fred Hoiberg’s head of coaching basketball at the University of Nebraska. He could be right.
The Elbert Files: The next 578 days
The Elbert Files: 13 dangerous words
The Elbert Files: Iowa’s solar shame
The Elbert Files: Iowa's tax troubles
The Elbert Files: Heroes: Marshall, Story, Warren
The Elbert Files: Organic farming facts
The Elbert Files: Too many democrats
The Elbert Files: A school finance problem
Elbert: A good caucus question
The Elbert Files: It's time to break up Gannett
The Elbert Files: Electric vehicle conundrum
The Elbert Files: Karns, Cochran and Brown
The Elbert Files: What bankruptcies tell us
The Elbert Files: Tell-all Trump books
The Elbert Files: A formula for success
Elbert Files: Blowing up Iowa’s caucuses
Elbert Files: A great escape from reality
Elbert Files: Letter to a granddaughter
Elbert Files: Our game-changing economy
The Elbert Files: Krause building soars
The Elbert Files: Searching for 'better angels'
The Elbert Files: A brief history of footgolf