Creating Great Places (CGP)  was founded by members of the previous ad hoc Great Places committee. As explained by volunteer Doug Carpenter, “After scrambling around since 2005 trying to funnel the money we were raising through various organizations, the Great Place group realized that establishing a separate non-profit organization would be the way to go. Our own organization would allow us to more easily carry out projects, such as art, that might fall outside the specific mandates of the City, Whiterock Conservancy, the Coon Rapids Development Group and other area organizations. We also needed an office to hold our growing paper files and our new staff hires.”

 
CGP has two main elements to its mission: to provide area public and non-profit organizations with technical assistance, particularly in the areas of planning, fundraising and communications; and to enhance rural vitality through carrying out its own projects in the areas of rural arts, the environment, outdoor recreation, diversity and historic preservation.

 

The first part of the CGP mission is to share its fundraising and communications expertise with other organizations. In this vein, over the last two years CGP has raised more than $754,000 for other groups.

·           In 2008-2009, CGP channeled $22,073 in planning dollars to the cities of Bayard and Breda, and to Guthrie County Tourism.

·           In 2009, CGP landed $355,000 in federal funding for Whiterock Conservancy to build a 22 mile internal trail system for mountain bikers and equestrians.

·           In 2008 and 2009, CGP channeled more than $10,000 in state and private funds to support the downtown survey conducted by the Coon Rapids Historic Preservation Commission.

·           In August 2009, CGP secured a $2,000 donation from Case New Holland for a CR-B School Community Foundation booth held during the Agricultural Progress celebration.

·           In Jan 2010, thanks to a grant written by CGP, Guthrie County was awarded a $365,000 State Transportation Enhancement Grant to begin to secure right of way for the trail to Herndon.

 
Additionally, this Coon Rapids’ based inter-institutional effort has raised more than $6.5 million for projects that include a City-owned Assisted Living Facility, a seven-mile Whiterock trail loop, a City shelterhouse, a Whiterock visitor center, a County RV park bathroom, a county canoe launch, a major public art piece for the new Coon Rapids entry way street-scaping, a Spanish language and cultural assistant for the school, and an annual art fair. 
 

In 2009, CGP started to take its skills beyond the immediate Coon Rapids area, first with communications consulting for the Bosques Pico Bonito rainforest project in La Ceiba Honduras, then with its leadership of the statewide “Khrushchev in Iowa” 50th Anniversary Commemoration. 

 
Currently, we are providing planning and fundraising support to Guthrie County for a 17-mile bike trail to tie the existing Raccoon River Valley Trail system out of Des Moines, to the major Coon Rapids-Whiterock rural tourism destination area. This segment will represent an important link on the cross-country American Discovery Trail.

 

Other upcoming projects include promotion of the original theatre production “Peace Through Corn,” development of a “Railroad Park” along the Coon Rapids entryway, diversity promotion and dark sky education.
 

Over the next year, CGP plans to increase its educational outreach efforts about these two issues. “We also are participating in the Iowa Water and Land Legacy (IWILL) campaign.” says Garst, “This statewide effort aims to get out the vote this November for a constitutional amendment to increase natural resources funding in Iowa. This is an important campaign to help increase funding for the issues we care about most.”

 

News & Press Releases
• The 2010 Iowa Star Party public viewing night will be held Friday, September 3 at Whiterock Conservancy.
 
• Go to our Recreation page to read a recent Op Ed by Douglas Burns that was published in the Carroll Daily Times Herald supporting the Trail to Herndon.
 
• Visit Western Iowa Tourism at http://www.visitwesterniowa.com/ to learn more about the great tourism opportunities in Western Iowa!
  

• CGP Executive Director Rachel Garst published an Op Ed in the Des Moines Register about banning lead from gun ammo. Read her article at http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20104210343. To find out more about Bald Eagle lead poisoning, visit http://www.soarraptors.org/.

 

• Garst was the featured speaker at the Iowa Bike Summit. To learn more about what was included in her talk, see our Recreation page.

 

• COON TAIL FASHION is all the rage! Check it out at http://coontailfashion.weebly.com/.

 

• CGP is offering special prices on memorabilia from the “Khrushchev in Iowa” 50th Anniversary Commemoration. Click on Merchandise/Tickets to order your books, t-shirts and postcards!

 

• CGP helped sponsor the 7th annual Coon Rapids Migrant Welcome Picnic Sept. 12, 2009. Thank you to local niche producer Scott Sibbel for donating excellent free-range pork. Thank you to our excellent Hispanic cooks. Fortunately, it seems all the migrant families managed to find housing this year. Thank you to those local residents who have allowed migrant families to share your homes! Your support is greatly appreciated, especially because migrant student enrollment is a significant help to our struggling school district.

 

• CGP is pleased to have helped our partner organization, Whiterock Conservancy, secure a $360,000 federal appropriation to build an extensive mountain bike trail system just south of Coon Rapids. On Sept. 19, 2009, Whiterock Conservancy hosted a “Trails and Ales” event to further the cause of sustainable trail development in Iowa. See centraliowatrails.com for more information.

 

• The Garst Farm was officially listed to the National Register of Historic Places on Aug. 12, 2009. The ceremony featuring Tosh Lee, Sergei Khrushchev and Wes Jackson was beautiful!

 

• Russia is Iowa’s 5th largest export market and business is booming. Iowa sales to Russia rose from $48 million in 2004 to $380 million in 2008. We hope “Khrushchev in Iowa” helped support personal connections that may lead to more trade in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News & Events

APPLY HERE to bring the two-man play "Peace Through Corn" to your venue. Click here to find out more about the play.
 
CGP Helps Host Senator Margelov of Russia

July 18th and 19th, Senator Mikhail Margelov, head of the Russian Foreign Relations Committee, and his wife Svetlana, visited Iowa for the first time and learned of Iowa's unique role in being at the forefront of positive relations with the USSR and Russia.

 

The Margelovs were escorted on their visit by Ed Verona and Randi Levinas of the US Russian Business Council. Sunday night, the group was hosted in Coon Rapids by Liz and Rachel Garst, who explained the emergence of the hybrid seed corn industry and the 1959 visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the Garst Farm.  Roswell and Elizabeth Garst's home, filled with historic photographs and memorabilia, is now run as a Bed & Breakfast by the non-profit land trust, Whiterock Conservancy.

 

Monday July 19th, after touring Pioneer facilities near Des Moines, Margelov was hosted at an elegant luncheon organized by Drake University. There he made brief remarks and engaged in a round-table discussion with such Iowa emminents as Kieran Williams of the Drake Political Science Department, Agricultural Lawyer Neil Harl of Iowa State University, Ambassador Ken Quinn of the World Food Prize, and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. 

 

The Margelovs were then greeted by Cyndi Pederson, head of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, and treated to one of the first performance of "Peace through Corn," a two-man play recreating historic dialogue between farmer Garst and Premier Khrushchev. This work was commissioned by CGP to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of "Khrushchev in Iowa" celebrated in 2009.

 

The Margelovs were able to experience first-hand the affection, honor and respect with which the Iowa people regard our long-term Russian friends, and our sincere belief that mutual economic progress and ongoing citizen relations are the surest foundation for ongoing peaceful relations between our two nations.

 

Click here to read additional content by the Des Moines Register.
 
CGP director Carpenter recognized as “Iowan of the Day”
Creating Great Places director Doug Carpenter has been recognized as "Iowan of the Day" by the Blue Ribbon Foundation of the Iowa State Fair, due to his excellent volunteer service supporting rural art and community vitality in Coon Rapids. Congratulations, Doug!
 
Anderson donates painting to CGP

Robert T. Anderson donated a 1989 oil painting, entitled “Evening Flashes,” of the Russian village Vinsadi in the winter painted by Victor Fiodorovich Komarov to Creating Great Places (CGP), a Coon Rapids’-based non-profit. The ceremony took place Friday, June 25, 2010 at 5:30 in the evening at the Whiterock Conservancy River House.

           

Anderson has a long-time relationship with Russia through linked programs in education and journalism. He is a former Lieutenant Governor of Iowa and former executive director of the Iowa Peace Institute. He encouraged the creation of both the Stavropol Sister State in Russia and the Cherkasy Sister State in Ukraine. CGP is lead by Rachel Garst, granddaughter of Soviet-friendly farmer Roswell Garst and organizer of the “Khrushchev in Iowa” 50th Anniversary Commemoration. CGP carries out in environmental, rural arts, historic preservation, recreational and diversity initiatives.

           

Of the painting, Anderson says, “I traveled to Ukraine and Russia in 1990 and attended a peace conference that was held in Moscow and Sochi. That is also when I traveled to Pytigorsk and purchased the oil painting at what was described by the Jewish owner as one of the first privately owned art galleries in the country.”

           

Anderson further explained that “both Roswell Garst and John Chrystal played historic roles in the Iowa relationship with the former Soviet Union. John was the chief proponent of a Sister State relationship with Stavropol, the home region of former U.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev.” Anderson says he’s donating the painting to CGP because it represents the history he has described and the essence of rural Iowa.

 

U.S./Russia Deliberative Dialogue

By Kimberlee Spillers

 

Kim and Frank Spillers, the team teaching the pilot project “Coaching in the Classroom” at the Coon Rapids-Bayard (CR-B) Community School, were contacted by colleagues from the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio. Phil Stewart, a senior Kettering associate, was at CR-B Thursday, May 20, 2010 to videotape a student conversation on the subject of “America’s Role in the World.”

 

A number of conversations will be held around the U.S. during the next few weeks with the video results combined with similar conversations in Russia. This video will be shown in Washington, D.C. in October at the 50th Anniversary of the Dartmouth U.S./Russia Conference.

 

As a matter of history, Mr. Stewart visited Coon Rapids in the 1970s, and visited with the Garst family about the long history between Coon Rapids and Russia through local leader Roswell Garst, and Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev. Stewart is interviewing Liz Garst while here to renew the acquaintance and benefit this film.

 

The student dialogue (led by the Spillers) is, to our knowledge, the only student conversation taking place in the U.S.

 

CGP Supports Iowa Natural Resources

Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy is a project of The Conservation Campaign. They can be contacted directly at iowaswaterandlandlegacy@gmail.comor by mail at PO Box 93176, Des Moines, IA, 50393-3176.

 

Creating Great Places supports Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy. In doing so, we are helping to pass the trust fund legislation that establishes a constitutional amendment that ensures a dedicated and permanent source of funding for Iowa’s natural resources and outdoor recreation opportunities, and helping pass a Constitutional Amendment Ballot Measure with a simple majority, showing Iowa voters support dedicated funding for Iowa’s natural resources and outdoor recreation opportunities.

 

Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy is a diverse group of participating organizations, agencies and individuals who are supportive and committed to coalition objectives that were developed in the interest of protecting and enhancing Iowa’s water, soil and wildlife habitat.

 

To find out more about this great Iowa natural resource cause, visit www.iowaswaterandlandlegacy.orgor follow the links below.

 

Click Here to Read the IWILL Fact Sheet

 

Amendment Text: http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=billinfo&Service=Billbook&menu=false&ga=83&hbill=SJR1

 

Enacting Legislation Text: http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=billinfo&Service=Billbook&menu=false&ga=83&hbill=SF2310

FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=Khrushchev in Iowa - 50 years"

 

“Khrushchev in Iowa”

In August 2009, Creating Great Places led more than 30 Iowa organizations in carrying out a state-wide “Khrushchev in Iowa” commemoration. Four days of events marked the 50th anniversary of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to our state, which in turn was the product of farmer-to-farm citizen diplomacy that aimed to create human dialogue during the icy depths of the Cold War.

 

Khrushchev’s unprecedented 13-day U.S. tour was his first contact with the United States. The Soviet Premier visited Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Pittsburgh; New York and Iowa. In the corn state, Premier Khrushchev rode in a baby blue Cadillac and visited Des Moines, Ames, and small-town Coon Rapids (70 miles Northwest of Des Moines).

 

Khrushchev came to Iowa at the invitation of colorful hybrid seed corn pioneer Roswell Garst, who, as a private entrepreneur and citizen diplomat, was reaching out to Eastern Europe with an approach he called “Peace through Corn.” Garst became an important reference for Khrushchev as the communist leader tried to increase Soviet food production by modernizing Soviet agriculture.

 

The improbable friendship of Comrade Khrushchev and Farmer Garst showcases the power of agricultural innovation, trade and direct human relations to reach across ideological differences and help thaw Cold War tensions. “Khrushchev in Iowa"celebrates and promotes an approach to international relations that focuses first on what all people have in common: families, food production, trade, and a desire to improve their lot.

 

Visit our extensive “Khrushchev in Iowa” pages to see historic photos and film, press coverage (old and new), read background documents and see our sponsors.