Best charity to give to

United Way of Central Iowa

Making charitable contributions through United Way of Central Iowa is a wise investment, says its president, because of the assurance that the gift will go to the organization where it can do the greatest good.

“I do believe that by giving through United Way, you can do more than any one single community agency can do alone,” said Shannon Cofield, president and chief professional officer of United Way of Central Iowa. “By giving to the community-solutions provider, you get a lot of bang for your buck. As an investor or donor, you are buying a lot for your investment.”

Greater Des Moines businesses and their employees have acknowledged United Way’s leading status with their contributions. The charity, whose mission is “to unite our community in measurably improving the condition of people’s lives,” last year received a record $17.2 million in contributions, the third consecutive year that giving increased by $1 million or more.

“The ultimate value of fund raising for United Way lies in the difference we can make in our community – our mission is not simply more dollars; our mission is improved lives,” said Kirke Dorweiler, the 2003 campaign chair. The charity funds 108 human-services programs in Greater Des Moines through 67 human-services and non-profit agencies.

Runners-up: Variety – The Children’s Charity; March of Dimes

Best hospital

Iowa Methodist Medical Center

For the second year in a row, Iowa Methodist Medical Center has been voted Des Moines’ best hospital by Business Record readers. The 376-bed teaching hospital, which averages nearly 20,000 inpatient admissions and 200,000 outpatient visits annually, is the only Level 1 trauma center in Central Iowa

We’re pretty tickled about (the award),” said Eric Crowell, president and CEO of Iowa Health-Des Moines, which operates Iowa Methodist. “We think it’s really a reflection of our staff, our volunteers and our physicians. I’m excited and pleased. It’s an outside opinion, which I think is what makes it special.”

Iowa Health-Des Moines is a $520 million health-care organization that includes Iowa Methodist, Blank Children’s Hospital, Iowa Lutheran Hospital and more than 35 primary-care physicians’ clinics throughout Central Iowa.

Established in 1901 in a single building, Iowa Methodist has grown to a 42-acre campus near downtown Des Moines, employing nearly 4,000 people.

Iowa Methodist’s areas of specialization include cancer treatment, cardiac care, maternity and women’s services, emergency and trauma treatment, physical rehabilitation, wellness programs, behavioral medicine, surgery, orthopedics, critical care, primary care, older adult services and home health care.

Among Iowa Methodist’s world-class facilities are the John Stoddard Cancer Center, the first Central Iowa facility to house radiation, oncology and ancillary services in one location. Also located at the hospital is the Human Gene Therapy Research Institute, a non-profit center for cancer education and research involving genetic therapies that was the nation’s first community-based clinical facility to receive FDA approval to produce genetically engineered drugs.

Iowa Methodist’s cardiac care team performs hundreds of open-heart surgeries each year, as well as other important procedures to correct valvular and coronary diseases.It also offers a complete cardiac care program to diagnose, treat and manage heart problems.

The hospital’s Younker Rehabilitation Center is the largest, most comprehensive physical rehabilitation program in Central Iowa, providing a wide range of inpatient and outpatient care.

Runners-up: Mercy Medical Center, Iowa Lutheran Hospital

Best place to pick up coffee on a commute

Grounds for Celebration

Waiting in line for coffee is hardly convenient during a hurried commute, so Jan Davis, co-owner of Grounds for Celebration, and her employees want to make sure customers are in and out as quickly as possible with their cup of joe.

“With our regular customers, we can start making their drinks as soon as they pull up,” Davis said. “Even when people see a line, they know it’ll be quick.”

The speedy service at all five locations has made Grounds for Celebration the best place to pick up coffee on a commute again this year. After 11 years in business, the company has shops in Beaverdale, West Des Moines, Des Moines, Windsor Heights and a new location at the State of Iowa Historical Building.

Davis and her co-owners, George Davis and Bryan Marker, wanted to get involved with development in the East Village and believed the location in the State Historical Building would function well for the lunch crowd. They will be adding a drive-through cart at the building to get people their coffee and on their way.

Top-quality ingredients, from Ghiradelli chocolates to Monin syrups, combined with home-roasted blends keep customers coming back. Davis said a very loyal customer base has added to the success of the stores. Grounds for Celebration is the only place in town that makes its own pastries and offers gelato made from scratch as well.

RUNNERS-UP: Panera Bread Co.; Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure

Best grocery store

Hy-Vee Inc.

Greater Des Moines residents rarely have to travel far to pick up all their groceries, with 14 Hy-Vee Inc. supermarkets in the area.

The West Des Moines-based company, headquartered out of West Des Moines, has made its stores “one-stop shops” for customers, with dry cleaning, video rentals, can redemption centers, floral shops and pharmacies in most locations. Hy-Vee opened a gas station at its store at 1725 74th St. in West Des Moines and has another under construction at its Pleasant Hill supermarket. The company also operates four DrugTown locations in Greater Des Moines. Each grocery store in Greater Des Moines is equipped for online shopping as well.

That level of convenience has helped Hy-Vee Inc. become the best grocery store in Des Moines for another year, as voted on by Business Record readers.

What started as a small general store in Beaconfield in 1930 has grown into an employee-owned company with more than 200 stores in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas. Approximately 44,000 people are employed by Hy-Vee, which generates more than $4.2 billion in annual sales, putting it in the top 15 percent of supermarket chains nationwide.

RUNNERS-UP: Dahl’s Food Marts; Fareway Stores Inc.

Best place to live in the metro

Beaverdale

Accessibility, charm and sense of community have contributed to the spirit of Beaverdale, making it the best place to live in the metro.

“People really identify with the area as a community within a community,” said Bill Miller, president of the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association. “There’s a lot of pride [in the neighborhood].”

Though Miller said the name of the neighborhood is shrouded in mystery, residents are familiar with the long-lasting efforts to preserve Beaverdale. Those efforts will be given a boost in the near future through a pilot project with the state of Iowa. That project will take lessons learned from small-city downtown areas and implement them along Beaver Avenue in Beaverdale.

“A lot of economic development efforts go along with downtowns, but this is the first time using it in a neighborhood,” Miller said.

Miller moved to Beaverdale two and half years ago, though his years at Drake University Law School made him familiar with the neighborhood. He said others have been drawn to the area because of its accessibility to downtown Des Moines and other parts of the city, as well as its close-knit community.

“People feel like they’re in a small town when they’re in Beaverdale,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood with a lot of character, from the houses to the residents to businesses.”

RUNNERS-UP: Sherman Hill; Quail Park.

Best place for auto repairs

Betts Auto Campus

Business Record readers have named Betts Auto Campus the best place to buy a car for the last three years, and when it comes time for repairs and maintenance, they are returning to their favored seller as well.

Rich Willis, the company’s dealer principal for Betts Auto Campus, says Betts has worked hard to ensure that its employees are trained and knowledgeable about its newest product lines: Jaguar, Volvo and Hummer. The dealership is known for its exceptional customer service, he said, and that’s true for all of its lines.

“Certainly, the three added car lines have in fact, increased the number of guests coming to our facilities,” Willis said. “Our people have worked extremely hard in learning these new products and becoming experts in these products. We’ve been able to add excellent talent to our employee base.”

In the past two years, since adding the three additional lines, Betts has hired another 25 employees, bringing its total up to about 200 full- and part-time workers. The employees, Willis said, make the dealership stand out among the competition.

“Our employees treat a customer as if they are a guest in their own home, and it is that type of atmosphere and attitude that makes it work.”

RUNNERS-UP: Acheson Auto Works; CarX.

Best recycling/waste

Metro Waste Authority

Metro Waste Authority has become an expert at managing residential waste and recycling, and is now using its influence to encourage businesses to take responsibility too.

As an independent government agency, MWA serves 17 communities and four additional planning members, serving approximately 400,000 residents. Its Curb It! recycling program is the most comprehensive curbside recycling program of its kind in Iowa, and has a high participation rate when compared nationally with other programs. Tom Hadden, executive director, knows that business recycling isn’t as convenient as the residential curbside recycling that MWA does, but increasing corporate participation is vital to ensuring that its landfill last into the future.

“The amount of waste generated from the business community is enormous,” Hadden said. “As a community, we’re always going to be looking for ways to work with them and partner with them so that they can recycle more materials.”

MWA works with area recycling companies that serve the business sector to evaluate how to improve the “disconnect” with recycling that seems to exist in the corporate world, as shown by the fact that recyclable paper accounting for 32 percent of the materials that businesses send to the landfill.

“We think the landfill will last the next 30 to 50 years in eastern Polk County,” Hadden said. “To ensure this, we need to think long term when we’re doing our business.”

RUNNERS-UP: Artistic Waste Services Inc.; Weyerhaeuser Recycling.

Best cultural attraction

Des Moines Arts Festival

Although it’s the fourth year in a row that the Des Moines Arts Festival has won plaudits from Business Record readers, the festival’s executive director, Mo Dana, says, “We don’t tally the score, because every year is just as important as the year before it to produce an event that is enjoyed by people in the community.”

The Arts Festival began in 1998 and has not gone unnoticed. Nationally, the Art Fair SourceBook ranks Des Moines’ event fifth among 600 fine art festivals, Dana said. A lot of planning and evaluation goes in to making the festival what it is.

“We compete with all the big cities,” she said. “That’s the playing field we want to play on. We feel that Des Moines has all the ability in the world to play against other cities across the nation, whether they’re larger than us or not.”

Determined to build on the festival’s strong reputation, Dana said her staff is always looking to add features that are new and different. The 2004 festival had higher artist sales, great weather, a good turnout and increased artist sales, but no matter how swimmingly the festival went, Dana says we “won’t be sitting on our laurels until next year.”

“We take it very seriously,” she said. “We try to add components that are new and different. While the components are all very successful, we want to continue to entertain our audience and have new things every year.”

RUNNERS-UP: Winefest Des Moines; Jazz in July.

Best thing that will happen to business this year

Jordan Creek Town Center

Build the state’s largest shopping center and Central Iowans will come, as shown by the first weeks of business at the Jordan Creek Town Center, a 2 million-square-foot “retail resort.”

Jordan Creek is not only changing people’s shopping patterns, but it’s also having a major impact on the economy, one that will continue years into the future. According to Naomi Larson, a planner for the city of West Des Moines, the Jordan Creek Town Center development is responsible for creating 3,500 jobs. Just one of the restaurants in the mall, the Cheesecake Factory, employs 300 people, she estimated.

John Bucksbaum, chief executive officer for General Growth Properties Inc., which owns and manages the shopping center, has set lofty expectations for the revenue that Jordan Creek will bring to Greater Des Moines.

“Jordan Creek is expected to recapture more than $82 million in 2005 from Iowans who had previously traveled to Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City to do their shopping,” he said in a recent statement.

The city of West Des Moines estimates that the combination of the Wells Fargo & Co. campus, Jordan Creek and the shopping centers being built adjacent to it will increase its tax base by $1 billion within the next three to four years, Larson said.

RUNNERS-UP: Iowa Events Center; keeping the Polk County Convention Complex open.

Best thing to happen to business in the past year

East Village

People involved with the vision for the East Village district on the east side of downtown Des Moines get goosebumps just talking about it.

Thom Guzman, Historic East Village Inc. board member, says so many projects are taking off or making their home in the district that “it’s created an energy of its own.”

It wasn’t that long ago, he says, that the “study district,” the buildings on East Locust and East Fifth streets, were close to being torn down and lost forever. The argument was made that the buildings contributed to the pedestrian-friendly environment. Now, businesses such as the Kitchen Collage and Gong Fu Tea occupy the space, just two of many success stories to report, Guzman said. The way that the city of Des Moines has stepped in to support the effort has also made a big impact, he said.

“The city was a big player in the streetscape and developing design guidelines for the historic buildings, as well as financial incentives,” Guzman said. “I’ve worked in this area for 17 years, and it’s so exciting to see people come together and say let’s make this the best place it can be.”

Kit Curran, president of Historic East Village Inc., agrees that the collaborative effort has made all the difference in the East Village’s development.

“The thing that I am so proud of is the fact that the residents, the businesses and organizations show a real shared passion for this area and wanting to make it a vibrant area for people to come to and enjoy themselves.”

RUNNERS-UP: Securing Wells Fargo for West Des Moines and Des Moines; housing in downtown Des Moines.