When Sara Broek decided to move from a house she shared with a few friends in West Des Moines, there was only one area she wanted to be – downtown.

Her apartment in the East Village is about a mile from Meredith Corp., where she works as a staff writer for several of the company’s food and health publications. She likes the convenience of being able to get on the D line bus right outside her apartment door and get dropped off right in front of her workplace.

Her apartment is close enough for Broek to bicycle or walk to work on a nice day, near her favorite restaurant, Ban Thai, and a stone’s throw from the Chinese pagoda in the Robert D. Ray Asian Gardens.

“I love going there, because it’s so peaceful,” she said. “You can go over there and relax and regroup.”

For young professionals in the downtown area, convenience highlights the experience of living close to both their workplace and a cultural area.

Jennifer Hansen, owner of Eden, a bath boutique in the East Village, recently bought the building between Gong Fu Tea and House of Bricks with her husband, who’s an architect at RDG Planning & Design. The couple have been gutting the building and plan to renovate it to move Eden to the ground floor and have a living space above.

“I’ve always dreamt of having a store and living above,” she said. “I’ve never been to Europe, but I’ve always kind of romanced the idea of having a little shop and living above the store.”

Hansen said the couple’s move from the Sherman Hill area to the East Village will let them switch to having only one car, now that both can walk to work, and will get rid of yardwork.

She said she is excited to move to the East Village because she has watched the area blossom into a “self-sufficient community” during the seven years Eden has been open.

“We’re kind of like a family down here,” she said. “I can call anyone and I know they would be here for me.”

Broek described the East Village residents as an “eclectic” group, a diverse community with people ranging from young to old from many different backgrounds.

“That’s the beauty of the East Village,” she said. “You don’t have to be one way or another to enjoy this place.”

On the other side of downtown Des Moines, husband and wife Scott Kubie and Cat Rocketship call their apartment in the 10th Street Lofts home, a short walk from Impromptu Studio, where both work.

Kubie, a creative strategist at Bitmethod, and Rocketship, an artist and organizer for Market Day Iowa, both graduated from Drake University and moved from that neighborhood after college to the East Village before moving to their current residence.

“Downtown is just more our style,” Kubie said. “I just like walking out my front door and being in the city, seeing people doing things. We’re on 10th Street, so there are people coming and going.”

There’s a diverse group of restaurants in the downtown area, which the couple said is a plus to living in the area.

The variety makes it “kind of hard to choose a place,” Rocketship said, when they go out to lunch with co-workers from Impromptu Studio.

One of the highlights of the summer will be the 80/35 music festival, which will take place about two blocks away from their apartment.

Like the Hansens, Kubie and Rocketship are able to get by with one car and walk to work in the area that they say is the “only place they would live” in Des Moines.

Although they love living and working downtown, Kubie and Rocketship said they consider themselves “activists for art and culture” who hope to find ways to improve the downtown area.

One of the bigger problems they have seen is the lack of a grocery store or retailer that offers basic amenities within walking distance. Rocketship said with more apartment buildings going up downtown, and small shops closing early, the city of Des Moines needs to recognize the demand for a store.

“We have a Hy-Vee Hall; we just don’t have a Hy-Vee,” Kubie said.

Broek agrees that the downtown area needs some type of grocery store, and said although she can do most all of her shopping for gifts and clothes in the East Village, she still has to use her car to get groceries.

“Gateway Market has done really well, but it would be nice to have a Whole Foods or a natural grocery store downtown,” she said. “It would be a great addition.”

Kubie and Rocketship said they would also like to see more cultural events in the downtown area, saying events like the Des Moines Arts Festival are more community events because of their size. They said a lot of the events in the area aimed at younger people are more focused on drinking than on celebrating the downtown culture.

Although there are things that Kubie and Rocketship hope will improve in the downtown area, they listed a number of businesses they enjoy patronizing and said they thoroughly enjoy living where they do.

“I’m critical of Des Moines because I love it,” Kubie said.

Whether residents are drawn to the area because they “love the architecture and old buildings” as Hansen does, or, like Broek, feel that the area just fits their personality, or they’re like Kubie and Rocketship, who enjoy the area so much that they want to be advocates for its future development, downtown Des Moines is a blossoming community.