Market District beckons more urban pioneers
KENT DARR Jun 13, 2016 | 8:05 pm
<1 min read time
0 wordsAll Latest News, Business Record Insider, Real Estate and DevelopmentThis pioneering must be pretty exciting stuff. If you doubt it, chat for a few minutes with Jim Kottmeyer, who, along with brother-in-law Adam Petersen, plans to break ground this summer on a three-story office building in Des Moines’ Market District.
They are not the first into the area, which is the southern extension of the East Village and has been in the news a lot recently because it’s also the area where the federal government plans to build a new courthouse.
But you can count the number of new projects — or projects that have created new uses for old industrial buildings — on one hand.
Kottmeyer is a partner with GPS Impact Inc., a design and media-buying agency with an office in the East Village. Petersen is president of PDM Precast Inc., a 4-year-old company “with a long history” and offices on Southwest Ninth Street. The company makes prestressed and precast concrete products.
The two men have kicked around the idea of creating new office spaces for their companies for the last year or so. They considered spots in the East Village, and were particularly drawn to the Market District.
As such, they bought a one-acre lot at Southeast Sixth and Elm streets that lacked sewer and even lacked an Elm Street. They will pay for the extension of Elm as well as the installation of a public sewer line that will benefit future development in the area.
Why?
They have looked at the city of Des Moines’ long-range plan for the Market District, and they like it.
“We want to be part of that pioneering in the district,” Kottmeyer said.
The $10.7 million, 47,000-square-foot building will have three stories and a 125-stall parking garage. GPS Impact and PDM Precast will call the building home. Along with other partners, they will take up more than half of the space.
If the Market District is ready for a restaurant and retail shops at the location when the building is completed in about nine months, then the partners will provide restaurant and retail. If not, they’ll wait for the need for those services to come calling.
In retrospect, it would have been nice to be part of the pioneering in the East Village proper, Kottmeyer said. “In knowing what you know now, who wouldn’t have wanted to be part of that?” he said.
They have a pioneer’s optimistic view of the future. The project will be among others that bring jobs to the district. The parking garage will help fill a need that frequently generates some controversy. The project is part of many “green shoots” that bringing renewed vitality to the area.
“We’re excited about it, we’re in it for the long haul,” Kottmeyer said. “We’re not looking at it as what the district is today; we’re looking at it as what the district will look like 10, 15 years from now.”
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