Let's Catch Up! September '26

IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL RIDE

Have you ever experienced the queue of cars lined up around the City’s schools at dismissal? Yikes! Police will tell you it’s our City’s worst traffic issue.

Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) estimates just 12 percent of students bike or walk to school, so anything we can do to promote alternatives to the auto makes sense. Research shows that walking and biking lead to healthy lifestyles, too.

Last spring, during a visit to Merrill Middle School, on the West Side, I counted a snarl of bikes—27 of them squeezed willy-nilly into a handful of bike racks and locked to nearby trees and signposts. Would more bike racks attract more student riders?

My March meeting with Bekah Harris, lead project manager of Des Moines Public Schools’ Reimagining Education initiative, and Jamie Wilkerson, the school district’s facilities services director, led to a pledge to add concrete and bike racks to the building before the start of the new school year. Call it a pilot project for the system’s 10 middle schools.

It worked!

When I stopped by Merrill on a recent Friday, I counted 45 bikes and two scooters in the racks. Seeing an array of bikes of all sizes and the Merrill dismissal bell gave me a buzz that lasted for hours.

Kids volunteered high praise for the expanded facilities, which included eight additional racks. Ben, an eighth grader who said he bikes 1.7 miles to school, told me: “It’s so much better this year. We needed more racks!”

And get this: Pretty dang high helmet usage among students, too.

“I’d love to add one or two more schools next spring and summer!” Wilkerson told me.

Thanks so much to the DMPS staff who made this happen with just one in-person meeting and six email exchanges.

(Bike friends: The school system may need a hand to purchase additional bike racks.)

STATION 4 WINS NATIONAL HONORS

Recognition continues to roll in for Des Moines Fire Station 4 and its one-of-a-kind training tower.

Earlier this month, at the Fire Station Design Symposium in Greenville, South Carolina, the $15.8 million station, at 1505 M.L. King Parkway, received the Fire Industry Education Research Organization’s highest distinction, the Honor Award.

Leah Rudolphi, left, accepted the award on behalf of her firm, Substance Architecture; she and Paolo Orlando, right, led Substance architects on the project. Substance worked alongside WSKF Architects of Kansas City, which served as the design consultant and brought years of expertise to the station’s planning and design, which officially opened in May.

The station’s other notable awards include the Masonry Institute of Iowa’s Grand Award, and the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification.

“We put about 500 hours into designing and inspecting this tower,” Des Moines Fire Chief Jonathan Lund told me. “There’s really nothing like this in the U.S.”

Firefighters from all 11 Des Moines stations and the recruit academy train at the five-story tower, with members of the technical rescue teams from Stations 4 and 7 the most frequent users.

“The addition of a training tower within the city limits, specifically Station 4, has been a great asset,” Captain Rick Schaffer said. “We have the capabilities of training on site, in multiple disciplines, while remaining in our first due territory [geographic zone for a station]. Previous training sites required crews to leave the city and be out of service longer.”

Features not found elsewhere in training towers include a simulated confined basement space and rescue trench.

The station also has been a magnet for fire departments and related organizations wanting to learn more. Recent visitors include the Iowa Professional Fire Chiefs, encompassing over 30 stations, and the 17 departments of the Polk County Fire Chiefs. Visiting out-of-town departments came from Milwaukee and Brookfield, Wisconsin; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Roanoke, Texas.

The station also has been featured as part of a tour by the U.S. Green Building Council, and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Certification classes held at Station 4 include the International Association of Fire Fighters’ confined space course and its hazmat test.

Orlando marveled at the tower’s tight conditions, inside and out. “Everything is smushed together,” he said. “There are anchors on the floor to go down an elevator shaft. Anchors on the ceiling. Anchors in the corners. And all tested, so they can rappel off ledges.”

For the architects, a project like this doesn’t happen regularly. “This is the most interesting, unique, and complex project I’ve been involved with,” Rudolphi told me. “The firefighters knew exactly what they needed.”

TAX SALES AND VACANT LOTS

A few weeks ago, I spent a healthy chunk of a Saturday with fellow Central Presbyterian Church members at a Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity Faith Build. Always a rewarding experience! That’s members Ray Getting and Mark Schmidt, above, cutting sheathing.

As I left the home-building site, on Bennett Avenue, I realized I had only a vague idea of how Greater Des Moines Habitat and other nonprofits acquire infill lots for new housing projects. I reached out to Lance Henning, CEO of the local Habitat nonprofit, to ask how his team acquires lots. He said the organization acquires most through open market purchases, as well as programs facilitated by area municipalities and counties.

“Historically, a considerable portion have come through Polk County’s annual tax sale, with assistance from the City of Des Moines,” Henning told me. “The two properties on Bennett where you volunteered came through the tax sale process.”

I then turned to Tess Cody, special projects manager in Des Moines’ Neighborhood Services Department, to explain the process and how the City uses it to give access to nonprofit agencies. She told me Polk County's tax sale is in June but City staff, beginning in early May, start identifying properties that Iowa law might consider as abandoned or nuisance property.

“A lot of work happens to secure title before any work even begins,” Cody said. “And this work is often impactful in the neighborhoods.”

Cody summarized how this important work happens:

Every year, Polk County holds a tax sale to recoup the costs of unpaid property tax. What is sold is the debt—not the property—which is represented by a tax sale certificate. The property owner has an opportunity to pay the debt. As with other foreclosures, if the debt remains unpaid, the County Treasurer issues a property deed to the holder of the tax sale certificate.

The City can request a tax sale certificate from the addresses staff have identified; only vacant lots and abandoned structures are considered. In the latest perusal, multiple lots had public nuisance judgments, and all had been vacant property for a long time.

The City developed two lists of properties for which agencies could request tax certificates. The first list went to agencies that were candidates for redevelopment under some aspects of the Citywide Housing Strategy. The City offered a second list to nonprofits such as Invest DSM, Habitat, the Neighborhood Finance Corporation (NFC), and HOME Inc. Invest DSM got the first pick to help ensure alignment with its six Special Investment Districts.

When a nonprofit selects a tax sale certificate, it agrees to pay Polk County the value and any interest, and is responsible for processing it to deed. If the City is processing a tax sale certificate, the City pays the cost of the title search and noticing, typically $300 to $500. Some of that can be recouped through the sale proceeds.

Cody said in the last four years, nonprofits have acquired 34 properties through the tax sale. Of those, 19 were from tax certificate assignments. The other 15 were sold to nonprofits after the City processed the tax sale certificates to deed.

She also told me six of the seven lots the City processed to deed and sold to NFC have been redeveloped, and property value has increased by $2,002,850. Impressive.

Habitat’s Henning told me his group plans to create 38 affordable homeownership opportunities this year. “Eighteen will be the traditional new construction builds,” he said, “and 20 will be properties that we've purchased and fully rehabbed.”

FESTIVE ATTIRE AT E.K. DAVIS EVENT

Dancers with the Folklor Mexicano Estilo y Movimiento (Style & Movement) folk dance group were among five groups performing September 12 at the Multicultural Fall Festival at E.K. Davis Park. Thirty dancers, from preschool to adult, practice weekly to preserve treasured choreography from eight Mexican regions and states. Many of the group’s colorful dresses are imported from Mexico.

TRUCK DRIVERS IN HIGH DEMAND

In late August, The Wall Street Journal reported that 300 truck-driving schools across the U.S. faced an emergency shutdown.

The Journal noted that according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duff, many of the closed schools were failing to train drivers properly. In a little more than a third, Duffy said, a disproportionate number of commercial license applicants couldn’t pass the English-language part of the test, and nearly two-thirds of the facilities were too small or unequipped for the training.

DMACC’s Transportation Institute wasn’t on the list because it does neither.

The $9 million facility, overseen by Derrick Walker, DMACC’s director of Manufacturing, Engineering, Trades, and Transportation, is barely a year old and gleams with professionalism. During a recent morning visit I spent with Walker at the facility, he pointed out a student going through a pre-trip inspection exam. Nearby, another instructor tested a student on backing-up skills with an 18-wheeler.

Walker told me the school—which he says is one of Iowa’s largest—has seven full-time instructors and two part-time instructors to keep up with demand from students earning a Class A commercial driver's license (CDL). Most students are from Central Iowa.

Walker described the typical student as 25 to 65, seeking new careers with higher pay. Some couples are attracted to team-driving opportunities.

Trucking jobs can pay well, Walker told me. “The starting annual pay for our graduates is somewhere between $55,000 and $75,000—pretty attractive for a lot of folks,” he said.

Students complete 17 hours of online training before their classwork begins. DMACC offers a three-week program, with day classes, and a six-week program for evening classes. DMACC also has earned in-house Department of Transportation testing.

Walker said the school will graduate 170 to 190 drivers this year and most will be offered over-the-road positions. Regular recruiters, he said, include Sharkey Transportation, Schneider Transportation, and Werner Enterprises.

Recruiting competent drivers isn’t a task taken lightly. The companies that recruit at DMACC need confidence that new drivers are fully prepared to get behind the wheel of a Class A tractor and 53-foot trailer (the rigs you see on our interstates), valued at $100,000 to $300,000.

Along with driving skills, DMACC instructors emphasize key soft skills: Show up on time and be reliable.