Just six years worth of experience in urban and regional development has netted Aaron Chittenden, 29, a wealth of opportunities, including his current position as executive director of Grimes Chamber & Economic Development, a membership organization that spearheads economic development in one of Iowa’s fastest growing communities. A native of Hudson, he attended the University of Iowa, where he dabbled in a number of areas of study, including music, biochemistry and anthroplogy. He received a master’s degree in urban planning and moved to the Chicago suburb of Frankfort, then returned to Iowa to become executive director of the Jones County Economic Development Commission. But a more urban environment beckoned him, and he felt right at home in Greater Des Moines, which he believes will be the perfect place for both him and his wife, Jennifer, as well as they settle into their careers and life as new parents with their son, Dante, who celebrated his first birthday July 4.

Where did your course of study lead you at the University of Iowa?

I started off in music – I went to Iowa on a voice scholarship – and then I went into biochemistry and while sitting in chemistry class discovered that I hated chemistry. I just fell in love with anthropology and archaeology.

What did you want to do with a degree in anthropology?

Be Indiana Jones. Probably the only reason that I’m not doing that today is that I didn’t want to become a professor, but I also knew that if I ever wanted to get married and start a family I didn’t want to be gone half the year. I was interested in South America and knew that I would be gone constantly.

Was it difficult to give up music?

I knew I didn’t want to teach and I was atrocious at melodic dictation. But one of my voice teachers from high school said that if I could find anything else I wanted to do with my life, I should do it because I could still do music. It’s still a passion of mine.

How did you end up in urban and regional planning?

I was walking through the Iowa Memorial Union and the graduate school of planning had a booth up, so I just started talking to the admissions director. I thought, “I was studying archaeology, which is ancient cities. I can study planning, which is new cities. That makes sense.” But I really didn’t know anything about it.

What about the field appealed to you?

I like that, in being involved at the city level with planning and development, I can have a real hand in helping to craft the kind of city I’m living in. Also, it’s helped me understand the process of how things come to be. Hopefully, it’s not just an accident.

After living in a Chicago suburb, was Jones County, Iowa, a better fit to your pace?

No, getting to this area is more my pace. I like a metro with a half-million or 600,000 people. I used to come to the Des Moines area for meetings, and about a year before I came here I started to realize that the Des Moines metro was starting to become the type of area that I could see myself wanting to live in. It was starting to get cool, for lack of a better term.

What about the position in Grimes excited you?

The chance to work with honest-to-God developers, people who understood the development process, people who would buy land, subdivide it, get it zoned, put in the streets, the infrastructure. Plus, I have as much activity in Grimes and probably more than I had in all of Jones County.

Is it energizing for you to travel through Grimes and see signs of growth?

That was a comment I made when I first came to meet with the committee. I said, “It’s always a good sign when I see dirt moving.” Even in the six months I’ve been here, I’ve seen so much development take place. It’s amazing. Growth has been happening, but I really believe it’s going to increase exponentially. I just hope we’re ready for it, because it doesn’t matter how fast growth happens as long as you’re ready for it.

Do you feel this is a good place for you to live, raise your family and grow professionally?

There’s a lot of opportunity for that. Before we came down, I pulled up the Department of Education Web site to look at the [Dallas Center-] Grimes [Community] School District because we have one child now and I presume we’ll have more. We’ve got parks here, easy access to Saylorville, we can be downtown in 25 minutes. There is no traffic here. One of the things I like about living in Grimes is yes, it is the metro area, yes, it is urban and urbanizing, but it still feels like a small town. So it’s kind of like you get to have both.

How has the first year of parenthood treated you?

I do not remember ever being so consistently tired in my life. Being a dad is great. It’s not so great at 3 in the morning. But it’s fun to watch him. I can have a really bad day and walk in and he smiles at me and it’s just the greatest thing.