Being a musician in Des Moines I'll take whatever we can get. Your right though the Mews will leave a need for smaller bands unfulfilled.
What’s happening to Des Moines?
- Thread starter ClonesTwenty1
- Start date
My leader moved downtown a couple of years ago. I think she is going to end up buying something downtown but her biggest complaint is the sound of Harley's. She lives 2 blocks from the train tracks but her biggest sound issue is with motorcycles. She lives across the street from EBS. I would seriously weigh 600 lbs if I lived there.
since the 5th failed and the Blackbird tower failed, do yo think Des Moines will ever get another project like those, an apartment tower downtown? I would think there would be good demand. From what I understand, there was huge amount of people that were interested in the 5th (a proposed 41 story tower) but the project fell apart. Blackbird submitting a 35 story tower for the same site hurt the project because the city told the 5th, if they wanted the property, they had to speed up their time lines.
Tower projects are more about financing than demand. If the developers obtain solid financing. It'll happen. Both the Mandelbaum and Blackbird towers had minimal financing in place. They were talking a big game to drum up interest so a lender would sign off on the loan.
For Des Moines to get a large skyline shaping tower. You either need an institution like Principal with a strong balance sheet, a national developer who is working with Chase or Bank of America. Not Bankers Trust. A $50 million bad loan for BT is a career ruining move for a Des Moines exec. That's a normal Tuesday for a national institution
Many of the commercial buildings are getting funding through BDCs or REITs of some sort.
Hilarious. If you think Des Moines is a s***hole you must not get out of Ankeny or whatever milk toast burb you live in.
I'd heard mandelbaum had the money in place (possibly chinese investment?) but blackbird had shopped theirs around and generally got dismissed pretty hard.
I still think if blackbird hadn't come in with their ******** alternate bid to try to kill the competition from mandelbaum that that project would still be alive. Delayed by the pandemic, but still alive. From my reading of it the city seemed to move too quickly to declare default on that project instead of working with the developer on a tough project, a situation mandelbaum would never have been in if Blackbird hadn't forced the deadlines to be sped up.
Damn the sucks, fkn Blackbird. They also partnered with a Chicago firm on a project, maybe it was the 33 story tower the proposed for the Younkers Site, but that firm had a falling out with Blackbird, said something about Blackbird not operating honestly. Des Moines has not put a tower 24 years. I doubt it will happen in the form of office towers anymore. That market is going to be a tough one. And the companies big enough to do towers, have all built massive buildings with millions of feet of office space (like Nationwide and Wells Fargo-huge footprints but no height) in the last 20 years or so.
Right or wrong, a city is generally judge by it's skyline.
The city seemed to cause it to fall apart more than anything. They seemed to think they could be more demanding because of the Blackbird one. I’d like to see if they could somehow resurrect it because it seems solid if the city would get out of the way.
DM is a wanna be "Big City".
Get to 1.5M in population, DM is in the ballpark.
In our lifetimes, DM is a nice, small metropolitan community.
A single mid-sized building won't matter.
Get to 1.5M in population, DM is in the ballpark.
In our lifetimes, DM is a nice, small metropolitan community.
A single mid-sized building won't matter.
It's not going to happen anyway but I see very little benefit in Des Moines becoming a large city. Des Moines is the 86th largest metro area with 450k.
Omaha is 58th with 725k.
Memphis has a million
Louisville has a million
KC has 1.5 million
St. Louis has 2 million
I've only been to Memphis twice, Louisville and St. Louis once. I've been to Omaha probably 10 times and probably 50 times to KC.
When I go to a place like KC, I go for eating, drinking, and events. It's a nice weekend getaway 3 times a year but why would I choose it over Des Moines? I live in the suburbs and if I lived in KC I'd probably live in the exact same type of suburbs. I'd work in a similar job. My non existent kids would go to the same quality of schools. My work commute would be worse. The weather would be a little better. I'd do similar things for entertainment. All this and KC is by far the best city on this list. Omaha is 150% larger than Des Moines and I don't consider it better.
What does expanding do? I mean how often do I go to the east or south side of town? Maybe a few times per year when I go to the airport or Confluence. I haven't been to Southridge in probably 20 years. I may go every other year to the fair on the east side and that's it.
Where did you get those numbers? KC is over 2 mil. Omaha is over 900,000, Des Moines, Metro is 700,000 not 450,000. https://www.dsmpartnership.com/news...owth-percentage-outpaces-other-midwest-metros
Not sure where I saw the list but it doesn't really matter. I'm not big into throwing around numbers that consider Ames to be part of the Des Moines metro. I personally don't think you should be able to drive 20 miles on 35 and see nerly nothing but fields and still consider it Des Moines.
This needs to happen ASAP. The terminal is always packed. There’s one real restaurant plus a sandwich shop and a couple places for coffee. Meanwhile air traffic to DSM continues to grow.
Regardless of what numbers are used, IMO Des Moines is a pretty nice size and I see very little to gain by it growing to the size of Omaha, St. Louis, Memphis, etc. But there is no science behind that theory, just my experience when visiting those cities.
