Bettendorf, iowa, situated on prime real estate on the Mississippi River banks, is a small Midwestern town that is being shaped by the most recent construction and its latest economic center—a casino and convention center. Since the Bettendorf's earliest years, the section of town that meets the river has housed an industrial center, with easy shipping access and a railroad track that separates it from the rest of the town to the north. The stretch of land once held of Bettendorf Brothers Co., an iron wagon manufacturer, after which the town was named. Then Jl Case Threshing Machine Co. took over the site and manufactured combines, until the business shut down in the 1960s. Decades later, developer Bernard Goldstein built an outlet mall on the site, but it never opened.
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