I.C. works to keep development at the forefront

In the coming years, Iowa City hopes to have a thriving wind-energy industrial park on its southeast side and a downtown with more retail stores and high-end offices.

The area south of downtown, now called Riverfront Crossings, also is slated for a major redevelopment. And an office park that includes shops and housing has been proposed for northeast Iowa City.

There has been a flurry of activity on these industrial and commercial fronts in recent months. That includes a just-completed study of the retail potential in downtown Iowa City and ongoing infrastructure work at the industrial park.

“We're trying to figure out where we fit in,” said Jeff Davidson, Iowa City's director of planning and community development.

Industrial development is a good fit for Iowa City, Davidson said, and those efforts have been focused on its Wind Energy Supply Chain Campus east of the Scott Six business park in southeast Iowa City.

The 173-acre wind-energy park, which is still being developed, is being marketed mainly to companies that supply components to the wind-power industry. Iowa City expects to spend $7 million on things such as railway siding, roads, storm sewers, and water and sewer lines to get the park shovel-ready, Davidson said.

The Iowa City Area Development Group has been working to have the site certified as shovel-ready, meaning much of the development-related due diligence has been done and a business can come in and quickly start construction.

This saves time and money and is a major selling point for ICAD, which works with companies often considering locations in several states, said ICAD President and CEO Joe Raso. ICAD recruits interstate commerce companies to the area and assists them with their projects.

“They're saying ... ‘We can go there (another community) just as easily as we can go here,'?” Raso said.

In April, Nadicom (North American Ductile Iron Foundry) of Fulton, Md., said it would build an $85 million ductile iron castings foundry, its first in North America, at Iowa City's wind-energy campus.

Still, officials acknowledge interest in the industrial park is low right now, which they blame on the economy.

The city needs to be more aggressive in marketing properties such as the industrial park to complement ICAD's efforts, City Manager Tom Markus said. He has in mind more direct marketing to different segments of the industry and targeted recruitment.

Elsewhere in Iowa City, the south-central and southeast portions of the Iowa City Municipal Airport property are future candidates for industrial use, Davidson said.

When the 21-only bar ordinance went into effect in June 2010, city and downtown leaders saw it as a chance to get away from the drinking culture downtown and to encourage more retail, office and owner-occupied housing opportunities.

Among those efforts was a downtown study commissioned by the city and the University of Iowa with Virginia-based Divaris Real Estate.

The study found that 11,000 of the UI's 30,000 students are counted in the U.S. census as households with little or no income. Using the ZIP codes of the students' hometowns, Divaris said that the students' parents had an average household income of $81,600 annually.

The study also considered the economic impact of the large number of visitors the UI attracts for things such as home football games.

Divaris concluded that UI students and visitors had a “combined hidden economic impact” not found in the census of $513.1 million.

These numbers will help recruit businesses, said Nancy Quellhorst, president and CEO of the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce.

“Our demographics are skewed, and so that report helps us identify ways to more accurately communicate the buying power of our citizens,” she said.

City and downtown officials have talked about adding some national retails chains to an area traditionally dominated by locally owned stores. That has drawn some criticism, but the argument is that a small number of national stores could bring more people downtown.

This past Tuesday the City Council approved a self-supported municipal improvement district, or SSMID, that will take an additional tax collected on downtown commercial property owners and use the money to hire a downtown business development manager and assistant manager and for marketing.

South of downtown, the city is planning for a redevelopment of the Riverfront Crossings district into a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood that would complement downtown. It currently is home to several government buildings, apartments and some light-industrial businesses.

More office space also is a priority in Iowa City. Davidson said he believes Iowa City will provide financial incentives to encourage office space downtown, something it has already done with a retail/office project in the former Vito's bar building.

Away from downtown, a private landowner broke ground last year on a 170-acre environmentally friendly office park northwest of the Interstate 80-Highway 1 interchange with plans for office buildings, shops and housing. There has been little progress on that project, however, and Davidson said the owners are working with a new development team and, given the economy, are reassessing the plan.

Beside these larger projects, Davidson noted pockets of potential commercial activity elsewhere. Those include Riverside Drive and the Towncrest medical area, and keeping Sycamore Mall viable with the expected loss of its Von Maur anchor store.