Plans for a soccer stadium south of downtown are on timeout, but key players hope to push them forward. (Rendering: INVISION Architecture/Gensler Architecture)
By Dave Elbert
If John Ruan were alive today, he might have some coaching advice for Kyle Krause, whose seven-year effort to build a half-billion-dollar soccer stadium and entertainment complex south of downtown was benched last week when city officials said new property tax laws will force Des Moines to sideline crucial financing.
Ruan, who died in 2010, faced a similar situation nearly 40 years ago, which I’ll get to in a minute.
First, it’s important to understand that obstacles like those Krause is facing have deflated many major development efforts over the years.
In 1997, businessman Ted Townsend wanted to build a 20-story, domed rainforest downtown on 16 city blocks south of Grand Avenue. The $330 million project was described as a game-changer for Des Moines, and Townsend eventually lined up $48 million in federal money with help from Sen. Chuck Grassley. But the initial flurry of local support quickly faded, and Townsend spent the next decade shopping the idea to other Iowa communities — Cedar Rapids, Coralville and Pella — before pulling the plug.
Even grander projects were in the queue in the early 1930s when the Great Depression arrived.
The Roaring Twenties had spurred elaborate downtown proposals, including a 1928 riverfront plan that called for a new convention hall, bathing beaches, baseball diamonds, a golf course and tennis courts between the Center Street Dam and University Avenue. One year later, St. Louis planner Harland Bartholomew added proposals for a riverside art museum, fountains, monuments and a riverfront obelisk.
In 1931, the Des Moines Federation of Women’s Clubs pulled it all together and commissioned a wall-sized painting titled “An Airplane View (of the) Civic Center (of) Des Moines.” It included an interstate-type highway where Interstate 235 is today, along with new U-shaped library and education buildings connected by Brandenburg Gate-style pillars that stretched across Locust Street and led into a courtyard and obelisk on the river’s west bank. The painting included more than a dozen new structures and was displayed at all Des Moines high schools in 1933 before it and all the plans were shelved by the hard economic times.
Bartholomew was hired again in 1958 to draw up a plan for a $300 million downtown makeover that was to occur in five-year increments. But it never got off the ground, either.
Which brings us to 1984 when Ruan, who had already built the 35-story Ruan Center and the Downtown Marriott Hotel, wanted to erect a high-rise World Trade Center that would make Des Moines “the agriculture capital of the world.” His proposal went through several iterations and at various points had substantial commitments from local, state and federal officials before he reluctantly pulled the plug. (Pictured: Two renderings of John Ruan’s World Trade Center.)
As Ruan’s dream was fading, New York architect Mario Gandelsonas was dusting off old development plans for a presentation to the Greater Des Moines Chamber of Commerce in January 1990. His presentation wound up launching the decade-long, unstructured Des Moines Vision Plan. Unlike previous plans, this one had broad public support and no real timetables.
Projects that grew out of it were slow to develop but eventually produced the Western Gateway Park and its John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park, the Principal Riverwalk with its iconic Iowa Women of Achievement Bridge and the renovation of east-side retail into today’s East Village.
Ruan’s World Trade Center idea eventually became part of the Vision Plan when it morphed into the World Food Prize and a stunning renovation of the downtown riverfront library into the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates.
During the limbo — after Ruan’s Trade Center folded but before the Hall of Laureates emerged — he told me the trade center failed in the late 1980s in large part because he wanted the state to pay ongoing operating expenses for the project and they would not.
If he had it to do over, Ruan said, those expenses were not so large that he could not have easily paid them himself, and he wished he had.
That’s advice that I’m sure Ruan would want Krause to consider before his soccer stadium and entertainment venue completely vanish from view.
Dave Elbert has covered local history and business news for more than 40 years, first for the Des Moines Register and then the Business Record. Find more local history in Elbert’s Backstories.
Show Comments (3)
James Machamer
This is about far more than a soccer stadium.
It is about vision—and whether a community has the courage and persistence to turn vision into reality.
Des Moines has been shaped for more than a century by people willing to imagine something bigger than what existed at the time. Some of those visions failed. Others took decades to find their moment. And some became the places, institutions and public spaces that now feel as though they were inevitable.
They weren’t.
John Ruan understood that. So did the people behind the Vision Plan. The Western Gateway, Pappajohn Sculpture Park, Principal Riverwalk, East Village and World Food Prize Hall of Laureates all required people to see something before everyone else could see it.
That is the part of this story we should be careful not to lose.
A difficult financing environment, changing tax policy or political resistance cannot become an excuse to stop envisioning what Des Moines could be. At the same time, vision alone isn’t enough. Vision has to be matched with disciplined economics, creative financing, political relationships and a willingness to stay at the table.
And that last part matters.
We need to keep working with the people who control the purse strings—but also with the people who want to be elected to those positions. Today’s obstacle can become tomorrow’s opportunity if the conversation continues and the relationships are built before the next decision has to be made.
The history of Des Moines is full of projects that looked impossible, impractical or premature at the time.
Some disappeared.
Others simply needed a different path, a different champion, or a different moment.
The lesson from Ruan’s story may not be “pay for it yourself.” It may be this:
Don’t confuse a setback in financing with the death of a vision.
Cities that stop imagining their future eventually become defined by their past.
Des Moines should keep imagining. Or we risk once again losing an opportunity that could help define our city and positively impact our state for generations to come.
We need to think beyond the immediate limitations of municipal and state coffers and recognize the broader economic ecosystem these projects influence. And with the Legislature’s continued changes to development economics—including constraints that affect developers, builders and other visionaries—we should be mindful that the consequences extend far beyond a single soccer stadium.
There is another reality we cannot ignore: capital is mobile, talent is mobile, and visionary ideas are mobile.
If we cannot find a way to make transformative projects work here, other communities will. Our neighboring states are competing for the same investment, the same developers, the same entrepreneurs and the same economic impact. And some are winning.
Look no further than Omaha. Favorable to development, increasing tax base because of it, and a city exploding with opportunity. Their moving forward as Des Moines and Iowa once again aren’t seemingly on the same level…again.
The question isn’t simply whether Des Moines can afford to build something.
The more important question is whether we can afford not to.
Steve
Ouch! Omaha besting Des Moines. Truth be told, Omaha has always been a been a vibrant city. Economically, they punch way above their weight class, with an impressive list of publicly traded companies. And these private (plus private) firms. FNB Omaha may be the largest privately held bank in the US. Gallup. Godfathers Pizza. Valmont. Union Pacific. Kiewit. Mutual of Omaha. Bozell Worldwide. And of course, Berkshire Hathaway.
Dave Elbert
Thanks, James. You make some excellent points.
Dave Elbert