Editorial: Capital Crossroads' wish list requires your work

The Des Moines Register

It would be tempting to think of Capital Crossroads’ priorities — including a downtown sports stadium, an indoor farmers market and a new airport terminal — as a wish list that some Santa will fulfill in the next five years.

That’s not how the vision plan works, and that’s not how central Iowa works. Improving the region takes pushing and lifting by many hands — hundreds of elves, you might say.

Nearly 700 volunteers have worked to identify and implement projects in the first round of Capital Crossroads. The result has been more trails and improved parks, more job opportunities, new attractions in downtown Des Moines, among other accomplishments.

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Capital Crossroads 2.0 unveiled

Perry Beeman, Senior Staff Writer Des Moines Business Record

Capital Crossroads 2.0’s five-year blueprint for Central Iowa emerged Wednesday night at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden.

If you think the area could use better housing options, a new downtown sports stadium, an indoor soccer venue, better skywalk access, improved mobility and a higher education needs assessment that could include the debate over a downtown university campus, you’ll like what you see. The report includes calls for local option sales taxes, a more regional airport authority, improved mass transit, and a hub for refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs, along with water trails, a new airport terminal, a regional council of governments and remodeling of Drake Stadium to help lure the Olympic trials.

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Capital Crossroads 2.0 kicks off with survey launch

Perry Beeman, Senior Staff Writer
Business Record


Atlanta-based consultant Market Street Services is back in town. Leaders are signing on to guide work on the 10 capitals. And Capital Crossroads 2.0, the area's latest visioning process, officially launches today.

You can fill out a related survey through June 20 to help guide the next five years of advancements in Central Iowa, within a 50-mile radius of Des Moines. There also will be focus groups and comprehensive discussions of how to make the area a better place for development, outdoor recreation, efficient government, and diverse cultural attractions.

Market Street will be interviewing leaders and performing quantitative research, said Bethany Wilcoxon, Capital Crossroads director. These are the folks who helped with the original Capital Crossroads effort and plans for the Walnut Street makeover.

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How America’s Dullest City Got Cool

By Colin Woodward
Politico.com
 

The capital of Iowa has long had a reputation as one of the least hip, least interesting and least dynamic cities in the Western world, a dull insurance town set amid the unending corn fields of flyover country, a place Minneapolis looks down on and the young and ambitious flee as soon as they graduate. “Usually you are born here or marry into here or get transferred here,” says local entrepreneur Mike Draper. “Not many people come to chase their dreams. If they did, you’d be like, ‘What, you want to be an actuary?’”

But unbeknownst to many outside the Midwest, over the past 15 years Des Moines has transformed into one of the richest, most vibrant, and, yes, hip cities in the country, where the local arts scene, entrepreneurial startups and established corporate employers are all thriving.


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All Eyes on Des Moines

By Megan Verhelst, Staff Writer
Business Record

With two high-profile events set to take place in Iowa in the coming months--the Iowa Caucuses and the NCAA men's college basketball tournament--Greater Des Moines is thinking about how to capitalize on these events to promote the region. Market Street Vice President Alex Pearlstein was asked to weigh in on the potential of these events and the perception of central Iowa in general.

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Capital Crossroads gets mid-course review

Matthew Patane, mpatane@dmreg.com
Des Moines Register

Capital Crossroads, the five-year vision plan for central Iowa, still has a few years to go, but organizers are already looking further into the future.

"The last thing we need to do is pat ourselves on the back and say 'boy, look at these rankings, or boy, look at these great things,' " said Jay Byers, CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership.

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Des Moines gives up-close lessons

By Alex Pearlstein
The Des Moines Register

Recently, after living five years in Des Moines, our family packed up and headed south to Macon, Ga. Medical school for my wife at Des Moines University brought us from Atlanta to Des Moines, while a pediatric residency at the Medical Center of Central Georgia has brought us back, albeit an hour south of Atlanta to the largest city in the state's central region.

Macon is smaller than the Des Moines area (2012 metro population of 232,398 versus 588,999), the weather-oppressive season is summer instead of winter, the tea is sweeter, the speech twangier and the college football more obsessive.

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Cultivation Corridor focuses on agricultural, bioscience innovation

By Dave DeWitte
Corridor Business

The name chosen for Iowa’s newest regional branding initiative in Central Iowa may have a familiar ring to residents of the seven-county Creative Corridor in East Central Iowa, but that’s about where the similarities end.

The Cultivation Corridor brand for a 60-mile radius of Des Moines that includes Ames was created to develop a regional image as a leader in agricultural and bioscience innovation, according to Brent Willett, executive director of the new effort. It’s a title to which no other region has yet laid claim, said Mr. Willett, and one in which the Central Iowa region has a potent concentration of resources.

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Biz Buzz: High hopes for 'Cultivation Corridor'

Lynn Hicks
The Des Moines Register


The creators of the Cultivation Corridor hope that central Iowa's new brand evokes "refinement and good education" as well as tending the soil.

Gov. Terry Branstad, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and other officials unveiled the name for the Des Moines-Ames bioscience industry Monday at the World Food Prize headquarters. Behind the scenes was Flynn Wright, a Des Moines advertising firm that spent about a year coming up with a name to please economic development officials, agribusiness executives and other leaders.  

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