The Evolution and Expansion of Downtown Des Moines
Tenacity, brick, and mortar — that’s what built Des Moines in the early days. Now, years later, our materials and methods have evolved — just like our city. Mark Nevenhoven, principle architect at INVISION architecture, has been working in Des Moines for more than a decade, and has seen it built up from a bump on a prairie into “the biggest hometown we have.” As of 2017, Des Moines is the U.S.’s fastest growing city, and Nevenhoven, armed with more than a decade of experience and flourishing hopes for the future of Des Moines, is readily fielding the challenges and triumphs of the city’s expansion as they come.
You have been working in Des Moines for a long time — what drew you here?
I was in Sioux Falls originally and I decided to move to Des Moines because culturally [Des Moines] was changing. I also knew that since it was changing culturally and continuing to grow, architecture was going to be a prominent element within the city.
What was Des Moines like when you first came here?
There was not a lot of housing downtown, and a lot of the initiatives that the city has brought forward were not in place. You still had old buildings that were dilapidated coming in on the western gateway edge. Nothing had really happened on the east side of the river, and development had not really been established downtown yet.
What are the biggest differences you see in Des Moines now?
Bringing people downtown to live has really heightened the experience for anybody coming down. At 5 o’clock it was a commuter city, right? Everyone was going out of town to their homes. Now, you have fewer people heading out west or heading to Ankeny…because you have people that actually live downtown. At five o’clock you’d go to Court Avenue and there was nobody there because everybody would leave — so the life within the city has really changed immensely.
Can you describe the “character” of Des Moines?
I would agree with most people on the character — it’s the biggest hometown you have. I think that the scale of the city allows you to feel as though you’re not enveloped by the city itself, but it has a lot of the amenities that a lot of the larger cities in the country have. You feel that you’re not overwhelmed with the city, but yet you get the big city feel that most of us didn’t have growing up in smaller, rural communities in Iowa. You also get to experience a lot of different events and festivals while living within the bigger city.
Going forward, how do you see the city evolving?
We hope to see the city continuing to grow. I think that as we start looking at the initiatives that the city has for the Market District, and for a lot of the older properties that we have in town… we see the city continuing to flourish. Ultimately we see the city continuing to grow with new neighborhoods hopping up within our existing city limits, which is going to be a major benefit to everybody.
Last but not least, what’s your next big Des Moines Project?
The next project we’re starting is the renovation of the historic hotel Fort Des Moines, which is an 11-story structure over by Nationwide Corporation campus. We’ve actually had people looking at that project for eight, nine years and its finally moving forward, so construction should begin sometime next spring. It was one of the first high rises on the west side of the Mississippi. It’s an exciting, big project — it’s going to have 250 plus rooms, and [we’re restoring the] grand two-story lobby.
