Time for a new Core development plan?

[DMRyan]

I agree with you about validating parking, particularly if retail pops up in the Western Gateway and certainly in the East Village. You can't find a parking spot in this city? I think that should be changed to you can't find an easy free parking spot. There are so many parking garages in this city, that you could find a place to park if you needed to, it just may cost you. I noticed all the surface lots south of Court Avenue have finally started to charge $5.00 for parking. In the grand scheme of things, this means success.

[dogbo]

I agree with Dogbo that parking is probably a pretty big concern. I know I have rolled through Court Ave. at 4:30 PM on a weekday and could not find easy parking so I just continued home instead of staying for some fun. It only gets worse in the core. If retail shows up in the core then they need to find a way to validate parking. Almost every city our size I have been to with shopping downtown validates parking.

Pls don't interprete my comment to say I believe there is a parking shortage in the Court Ave area. This is not true. I never have a problem finding parking even on the busiest of evenings.

[dogbo]

Dogbo, you act as if the core is miles away, in many case the core is only 4 blocks from Court Ave, Western Gateway, and the riverwalk. Filling in the spaces between the core and these already or soon to be established areas can eventually link the core.

I'm well aware of the distance or should I say lack thereof.

[hawk61401]

eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww, they were nasty in Winnipeg about Des Moines.

When people talk about making parking more readily available in downtown Winnipeg, maybe they’re thinking about a downtown that would be more like downtown Des Moines, Iowa? If there’s one thing that Des Moines has no shortage of, it’s downtown parking. Unfortunately for Iowa’s capital city, its sterile urban core has caused some locals to give their city the cruel nickname Dead Moan. Maybe it’s because of all the football-field sized dead spots?

Winnipeg barbs: http://theviewfromseven.wordpress.com/2 ... n-parking/



photo attributed to and the author or licensor does not in any way suggest that they endorse me or your use of the work).
: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/3670146992/

[econboy]

eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww, they were nasty in Winnipeg about Des Moines.

When people talk about making parking more readily available in downtown Winnipeg, maybe they’re thinking about a downtown that would be more like downtown Des Moines, Iowa? If there’s one thing that Des Moines has no shortage of, it’s downtown parking. Unfortunately for Iowa’s capital city, its sterile urban core has caused some locals to give their city the cruel nickname Dead Moan. Maybe it’s because of all the football-field sized dead spots?

Winnipeg barbs: http://theviewfromseven.wordpress.com/2 ... n-parking/



photo attributed to and the author or licensor does not in any way suggest that they endorse me or your use of the work).
: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/3670146992/

Deam moan was the popular term back in the early 90's. Not sure it really applies anymore.

[Young DSM Social Club]

No, but the dead zones caused by lack of 1st floor retail on parking lots is dead on. Why the city has allowed so much dead space is beyond me. "Real" cities do not do this, but somehow we have it all over the place. Be curious on feedback on why this happened, since it doesn't appear to have always been the case (that '70s ramp with Mr. Pickle in it has 1st floor retail).

You cannot create good synergy when you have no 1st floor retail/offices.

[JMsioux]

eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww, they were nasty in Winnipeg about Des Moines.

When people talk about making parking more readily available in downtown Winnipeg, maybe they’re thinking about a downtown that would be more like downtown Des Moines, Iowa? If there’s one thing that Des Moines has no shortage of, it’s downtown parking. Unfortunately for Iowa’s capital city, its sterile urban core has caused some locals to give their city the cruel nickname Dead Moan. Maybe it’s because of all the football-field sized dead spots?

Winnipeg barbs: http://theviewfromseven.wordpress.com/2 ... n-parking/



photo attributed to and the author or licensor does not in any way suggest that they endorse me or your use of the work).
: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/3670146992/

Deam moan was the popular term back in the early 90's. Not sure it really applies anymore.

...Coming from the city that Canadians affectionately refer to as "Winterpig." Umm...K

[hawk61401]

No, but the dead zones caused by lack of 1st floor retail on parking lots is dead on. Why the city has allowed so much dead space is beyond me. "Real" cities do not do this, but somehow we have it all over the place. Be curious on feedback on why this happened, since it doesn't appear to have always been the case (that '70s ramp with Mr. Pickle in it has 1st floor retail).

You cannot create good synergy when you have no 1st floor retail/offices.

Exactly, and the bunker mentality in Des Moines that a parking ramp has to look like a bunker and be named like a bunker. This one in Iowa City is called Tower Place and has a cafe. A shocking concept it would be for Des Moines.

[Young DSM Social Club]

I almost referenced that ramp. It is VERY nice and barely looks like a ramp at all, plus it has retail/office on ALL sides (except maybe the side next to another building).

[Cmuse]

Ahh, glorious "Winterpeg." Living there is rather like living in Novosibirsk, I would imagine (except the city has no Stalinist past).

DSM's "dead spaces" are easily explained. South of "the Core" has always been a flood plain, and based on news reports and what I've read on other threads on this site, that still appears to be somewhat true. The low-lying areas along the Raccoon are particularly vulnerable to flooding, even with flood control improvements constructed since 1993.

The other dead spaces north of the Core, or just to the northwest around Methodist Med Center, or to the east bordering East Village and the Capitol Grounds are the result of earlier "urban renewal" efforts dating from the 1930s to 1970s. Those earlier urban renewal measures often meant simplying tearing down anything built before about 1925 (and even some things built afterward). The areas around Methodist Med Center, Vet's Auditorium, and Mercy Med Center once were fairly densely residential and commercial, if somewhat decayed. There also were many more commercial buildings and quite a bit of older housing (four-family and two-family brick structures mixed in with wood single-family houses) around East Village at one time; only a relatively small percentage are still standing. Sherman Hill's older housing stock has also been vastly reduced since the 1950s, even taking into account all the renovations that have been completed there. There was a time in the not too distant past when even mansions along W. Grand Ave. (and also the Commodore Hotel) were not immune to the wrecker's ball.

That parking structure is Iowa City is tres cool. As for validated parking in downtown DSM, that's seems like a no-brainer to attract people downtown.

[Young DSM Social Club]

I am not talking about those dead spaces ... I am talking about the dead spaces within the core of downtown that are ramps with nothing on the first floor. It is a true loss we destroyed all those old neighborhoods!

[Cmuse]

Ah, I see what you mean. I was going by the "Winterpeg" article and its accompanying photo, which appear to be referring to what I was talking about -- all the relatively empty or underdeveloped land near the downtown area.

I suppose the parking garage dead spaces have been a relatively utilitarian solution to downtown parking, esp. for workers in the insurance and finance industries (or state gov't on the east side). The garages do not seem that much worse than the alternative, which would be to have parking in such short supply that you'd be better off taking a cab or public transit, or shelling out for parking in a pricey private garage (which is the case in some larger cities ).

That's there's no retail on the ground-floor level of the garages might just have had to do with lack of foresight, or even a lack of perceived need for it at the time they were built.

Some of the ground-level parking lots near Methodist Med Center and Vet's auditorium and near Court Avenue -- even though they may not be the downtown Core -- were no doubt part of this same utilitarian parking approach. And in most cases, structures were razed (as the old Joni MItchell song goes) to "put up a parking lot."

[DMRyan]

Not every parking garage needs to have retail space, nor could it support retail space. I agree that it's short sighted and a mistake in hindsight to not require garages in areas like Court Avenue, East Village or the core to have retail space, but how would a garage on the southern fringe of downtown ever expect to fill up? I would love to say that this is a city that could fill retail space in any garage on any street, but in reality, we need to focus on creating several areas of activity on visible corridors like Locust and Grand Avenue.

We as a city have every right to be criticized for over extensive urban renewal. Instead of having a downtown that blends in with surrounding neighborhoods with lower density building stock on the fringes, we essentially have a core with a very steep jump off in building density. Nowhere is this more evident than the southern portion of downtown (which has really always been industrial anyway). All we can do is keep doing what's been done during the 2000's when it comes to filling existing surface lots, which there are still plenty of. Unfortunately more lots keep getting created, normally at the expense of small buildings in bad shape. Perhaps we can one day turn towards making parking garages more street friendly regardless of location, until then, about trying to fill up the huge amount of empty first floor space at 6th and Locust Streets first.

[Cmuse]

All very true, DMRyan. Two thoughts occur to me.

First, if the area 6th and Locust is a dead space now, perhaps it is because of the building of the interior downtown malls and the skywalks (which took people off the street). The skywalks were originally envisioned, though, as a way of dealing with extreme weather, the likes of which DSM is experiencing right now. There was also the loss of the nearby downtown Younkers store, which was the flagship of that chain, as well as a few other once-popular stores like Frankel's. Even into the '70s and early '80s, the downtown Younkers store managed to draw shoppers; around 1982 it was as crowded as I ever remember it having been, even if the chain was already in trouble by then.

Second, you mentioned the "steep jump off" in density from the downtown to surrounding areas. As you know, that wasn't always the case, even in Des Moines. Take a look at this 1960 photo from the Des Moines Register. It was taken at Tech High (now known as Central Campus). The amount of snow is one matter (I suppose I could have posted this on the blizzard thread), but what I'm focusing on is the housing in the right background. You'll see portions of semi-detached multifamily brick row houses that ran along the north side of Grand in the 1800 block (another group ran along the south side of the same block along Ingersoll). Sherman Hill and Methodist Hill had a number of dwellings like these, and some are still standing in Sherman Hill. In these older areas built under lax zoning, blocks typically had both multifamily and single-family dwellings, sometimes of widely varying quality, particularly east of the river.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... day-Jan.-3

The rowhouses in the 1800 blocks of Grand and Ingersoll were torn down only a few years after the photo was taken, along with a number of other structures in that general area. A large 1920s-era apartment house just to the west along Grand was torn down to build a fast-food place. Some single-family residences, especially those near Woodland Cemetery, fell into disrepair and occasionally became abandoned (some have since been rehabbed). Other residential buildings were converted, or had already been converted, to offices, funeral homes, etc. By comparison, the Sherman Hill and East Village of today are quite truncated neighborhoods, even if many of the older structures that have survived are in much, much better condition than several decades ago.

My point is that as recently as around 1960 there still were a number of people of widely varying incomes who lived near the city core. Sherman Hill and East Village, of course, have if anything a greater diversity today in most respects, but they are both much smaller areas than before, esp. if you discount the elderly housing. While the exodus from downtown has been reversed in the past twenty years, perhaps the downtown area still hasn't reached enough of a threshold of residents that it could support block after block of retail and entertainment venues and the like -- not when it has to compete with all the suburban development that was only in its very early to middle stages in the early '60s, depending on the suburban location.

Also there now is a much greater concentration of downtown housing within a few blocks of the river, some of it fairly upscale. At an earlier time, much of the housing near the city's core was in the areas (immediately West-Northwest, East, and especially North) where the steepest dropoff is evident now.

[hawk61401]

Gooood points, Cmuse.

Considering how much has been destroyed and how much Des Moines has screwed up, at least Des Moines had the good sense to not build a north - south freeway through the heart of the city.

The first six photos in the link to the thread show the progression of what that can do. Scroll down to near the end and check out downtown Jacksonville in the 1940's. It could very well be Des Moines. A busy street with retail morphs into football size parking lots.

from retail to parking lots: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=122541

[DMRyan]

Heck, there are a few football field sized parking lots in DSM, namely north of Vets Auditorium, north of the Capitol Complex, and of course the dead zone tucked between the viaducts on the south side of downtown. I would've loved to have seen the north side of downtown before it was obliterated, probably moreso than any other portion of downtown in the name of urban renewal. This looked to be a pretty densely populated area based on historical photos, but there's only a small smattering of residential blocks left among I-235 and the campuses of DMACC and Mercy Hospital.

I truly think the north side of downtown will be the hardest and last spot to redevelop, despite having a huge presence of activity being nearby with Mercy and DMACC. We just went through one wild wide downtown and there's not been much to show for the results in north downtown, excluding the arena near the riverfront.

[GoVerticalDSM]

One good thing is we haven't heard any crazy talk about removing the skywalks lately. Wonder why?

[DMRyan]

More problems for the core of downtown with the Keck City Center Building/Parking Ramp going into receivership and the strong possiblity that the accliamed Downtown School will be moving to the Central Campus building. There was an article in this past weekend's Register about how many downtown core buildings are in receivership already. As if it wasn't apparent already, this is now problem #1 for downtown to solve over the coming years. It could be a long time before office projects like what was once slated for the City Hall parking lot and the office park down at Riverpoint West/Gray's Landing become reality unless something is built for a relocated or expanding tenant in hand. The filling up of the speculative office space in the Davis Brown is a welcome sign, however, it came nearly entirely at the expense of other office buildings downtown.

On another tangent, it never occured to me just how ugly this building is. Wasn't there a movie theater on the first floor of this building back in the 1990's? The Register article is saying this was a lynchpin for downtown development when it was built in the late 1980's. Good thing we've come so far in crowning "lynchpin" projects since that time.

[dogbo]

Yes, it was a movie theater. I remember it as a second run theater, but I don't know if it was built as that. My question - why do they keep the awning frame on the building without any awning? It has been that way for years and really is tacky looking.

[Young DSM Social Club]

This building is hideous and I am sure it leveled some historic buildings, as is the norm it seems.

Hopefully, our city leaders will finally start realizing buildings such as these with no first level retail/office space really create dead zones and stop allowing them. You'd never see this in Chicago, and you don't even see it in Iowa City.

[wmjindsm]

This building is hideous and I am sure it leveled some historic buildings, as is the norm it seems.

I thought that this area where the Paramount (Capitol) Theater & Des MoinesTheater was but I guess that was across the street where the Polk Co. Convention Center is. But I thought I'd still post the links cuz I hate that these old theaters were destroyed. I think on the first link the second picture has a shot of across the street where the Keck Center is.

http://bp1.blogger.com/_YMIs1_9-z2E/Rc6 ... 196205.jpg

http://bp2.blogger.com/_YMIs1_9-z2E/Rki ... o_jtx3.jpg

http://www.booksattransworld.co.uk/bill ... na/11.html
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/20446/

[DMRyan]

Judging by the 2nd picture (which is incredible BTW, good find), it looks like The Paramount Theater is sitting exactly where the Convention Complex is today. That brick building is the 5th Avenue side of the Insurance Exchange Building.

[Young DSM Social Club]

Great pictures ... are there other places to see more like these?