Nicknames don’t get much more disparaging than “Dead Moan.”
Yet, Des Moines, Iowa, forged ahead and in a few years was named as the top-ranked city in the country for young professionals by Forbes Magazine in 2011. The Urban Districts Alliance hosted a trip of 25 community leaders to travel to Des Moines on June 21–23 to see its progress first-hand and learn from its successes.
The Iowa state capital has a litany of impressive statistics: more than $1 billion in commercial investment across 100 projects in the past decade; more than 80,000 people working at downtown corporate headquarters for companies such as Principal, Nationwide and Wellmark; and 8,000 residents now living in revitalized urban neighborhoods. Several “crown jewel” projects include the World Food Prize, Grays Lake, the east and west gateways, and the $60 million Principal Riverwalk with greenways, landscaping and bridge enhancements. An arts festival draws 200,000 people – that’s almost 10 times the size of Springfield’s Artsfest – and its farmers market is one of the nation’s biggest with 200 vendors and 20,000 people on Saturday mornings.
Throughout the UDA Discover Downtown trip to Des Moines, three factors surfaced as catalysts for downtown development.
World classSomeone forgot to tell Glenn Lyons, executive director of the Downtown Community Alliance in Des Moines, and other civic leaders that they’re in the middle of a cornfield. “Good enough” wasn’t tolerated, and they recruited three of the 20th century’s greatest names in architecture – Eliel Saarinen, I.M. Pei and Richard Meier – to collaborate in the design of the Des Moines Art Museum. Public art is placed throughout the city. The John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park elevated public art to a new level with its collection valued at more than $40 million. The park draws art lovers from across the country, and every civic project now includes public art in its vision.
Culture of civic investmentMore than a decade ago, a group of Des Moines leaders came together to create a fund for patient capital to acquire and assemble blocks of blighted properties. This reclamation of the downtown core facilitated the expansion of two corporate headquarters, a higher education learning center, the Central Library, the Temple for Performing Arts, and a variety of loft apartments and restaurants.
It appears that the band is looking to get back together again, and Des Moines has aspirations of a new $10 million fund for loan guarantees from 20 investors. The financing would come from area banks and the annual interest payments, estimated at 4 percent, would be tax deductible for the investors through a nonprofit. A variation on that program could be helpful for UDA as it looks to spur redevelopment in targeted areas in Springfield’s center city.
An initiative such as this could be transformational. But it is ultimately dependent on the passion of civic leaders with the financial capacity to seek to accomplish more together than any one person or organization can do alone.
Revising the visionDes Moines also demonstrated a refreshing openness to change. When its 40-year arts festival needed to be reinvigorated, leaders moved it to the downtown bridges in 1998. Several years later, event organizers saw the promise of the new Western Gateway Park and moved it there in 2006.
Just a couple of years after that, John Pappajohn – one of the early venture capitalists from Des Moines – donated his sculpture collection to the art museum and the city, and completely redesigned the park for this new use. It elevated a nice green space into a world-class showplace.
Downtown Des Moines reinvented its image by setting high expectations, cultivating civic investment and changing the game plan as needed. Springfield can build on its strong foundation established by Vision 20/20, strengthen its collaborative and philanthropic cultures, and set a new course for a vibrant and inviting center city.
Rusty Worley, executive director of Urban Districts Alliance, can be reached at rusty@itsalldowntown.com.
