NOTEBOOK: A long road to Kum & Go in Waukee
KENT DARR Jun 16, 2016 | 8:26 pm
<1 min read time
0 wordsBusiness Record Insider, The Insider Notebook
A new Kum & Go convenience store opened today at what is now called Grand Prairie Parkway and Interstate 80, the southern edge of Waukee’s 1,700-acre Kettlestone development area.
A grand opening and ribbon cutting event is planned for June 17 from 3 to 5 p.m., but the news gave Senior Staff Writer Kent Darr a chance to reflect back to when he first began writing about what was then called the Alice’s Road Corridor.
Darr also pulled together links to Business Record stories dating back to 2008.
Development typically doesn’t step aside for sentiment.
That message struck home several years ago when Waukee Mayor Bill Peard mentioned that he would like to lose the name Alice’s Road once it was extended through a development area that would stretch south from University Avenue to Interstate 80.
That conversation took place in 2008, when the area was called the Alice’s Road Corridor. At the time, Alice’s Road ended at a stub at University, but ran north, as it has through the ages so far as I know, beyond Hickman Road toward the old coal mines and coal miners’ shanties that were part of Waukee’s history, to a restaurant named Alice’s Spaghetti Land. A little farther north, and Alice’s Road returned to plain old County Road F-90.
Alice was Alice Nizzi. Both the restaurant and Alice have been gone a long time, well before I returned to Central Iowa a little more than 10 years ago. Still, I have eaten many a meal prepared and served by Alice, so I have a soft spot for the name Alice’s Road.
So much for the past. A new Kum & Go convenience store opened today at what is now called Grand Prairie Parkway and Interstate 80, the southern edge of Waukee’s 1,700-acre Kettlestone development area. Grand Prairie Parkway is what happened to that stub of Alice’s Road. The new road is broad and smooth, and if it were animated it would gracefully lope across ground that might someday provide a history lesson on a city’s thoughtful — and expensive — approach to anticipating and preparing for future development.
The Kum & Go is not too far from where Brad Burt, the president and CEO of Maid Rite Corp., another sentimental favorite, grew up. Kum & Go bought the land for its store from Burt’s Oakleaf Properties. Burt grew up in Waukee when it was more noted for its grain elevators along U.S. Highway 6 and had a population that touched 900, but maybe that was in the fall when farmers hauled grain to the elevators.
Burt is ready to kick the dust off the past and plan for the future. He might like to know that the immediate future beyond the opening of Kum & Go could reveal itself very soon.
Here are some Business Record articles from the archives about the Kettlestone area:
An old road fuels development dreams
August 2008 – Read more
‘The premier location’
Kum & Go first business planned for Alice’s Road interchange
July 2013
Waukee, West Des Moines city councils consider new name for Alice’s Road
April 2014 – Read more
Waukee created a development rainmaker
Waukee and West Des Moines seeking ‘fair play’ when businesses decide to make a move
April 2016 – Read more
NOTEBOOK: Bradley Burt generates smiles to spare in Waukee
June 2016 – Read more
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