New city manager brings breadth of experience, success record to town

One thing to know about Jeff Pomeranz - who is leaving here as city manager to become Cedar Rapids' - is he isn't bashful behind the wheel.

During part of a recent interview at City Hall here, Pomeranz commandeered an SUV from the city's motor pool and headed off, hustling from one triumph to another in this central Iowa oasis of economic growth and development.

A veteran city manager with tour-guide promise, Pomeranz heads first to West Des Moines' fringe, to the spot that mighty Microsoft has chosen to plant a new data center. It's farm fields and gravel roads here, but firmly ensconced inside the only city in Iowa that reaches into four counties.

In short order, Pomeranz has kicked up a little gravel and is heading up a hill on a wide new boulevard. At the crest, two startlingly attractive new office buildings fill the windshield. Aviva USA headquarters is on the left, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage offices on the right. About 1,800 jobs there, 4,000 there, he says. He takes the speed bumps on the Wells Fargo campus at a teeth-rattling pace.

And onward: two new suburban hospitals; a bevy of new medical office buildings; an assortment of corporate headquarters; restaurants and retail stores left and right; and the state's largest shopping center, the 6-year-old Jordan Creek Town Center mall.

The 52-year-old Pomeranz isn't puzzled in the least by the questions: What is it that you see here? And what does it have in common with Cedar Rapids?

Is this the stuff of every City Hall's dreams? What is urban sprawl?

And how has time here - during which this Des Moines suburb may be jumping past Dubuque to be the state's eighth largest city - prepared you to take over as city manager of Cedar Rapids, the state's second largest city and a place with a substantial industrial sector, a central core still struggling from a 2008 flood, and a City Hall that has pooh-poohed urban sprawl as it has preached smart growth, infill development and brownfield resurrection?

Pomeranz assures that he's plenty prepared to move on to Cedar Rapids after 12 years at the reins of this municipal thoroughbred of growth and economic success.

Challenges in C.R.

His West Des Moines tour includes older sections of town, including the thriving Valley Junction main street where the city began. The West Des Moines City Council and he, he insists, have fussed as much over the city's older parts as they have with the newest.

Even so, Pomeranz says the Cedar Rapids City Council and he will focus more than he has in West Des Moines on developing and redeveloping in the flood-hit parts of the city, in the downtown and within the existing city boundaries.

But he adds that he is not about to rule out developing on the city's outskirts. 'There are opportunities for all kinds of development in Cedar Rapids, and I'm not philosophically opposed to any kind of development that is quality development and that will potentially cre­ate jobs or residences or economic vitality for our community, as long as it meets the goals of the mayor, the City Council and the community,' Pomeranz says. 'I'm more open than to say I'm only for one kind of development. I'm for positive development that helps move the community forward.'

Plenty of experience

Pomeranz's professional life to date didn't start and end in West Des Moines. A Long Island, N.Y., native, he earned an undergraduate degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1980 and master's degree in public administration from the University of Alabama in 1982. In a stop at his office, he's quick to show off two photos. One is of a concreteblock-like City Hall in Del Rio, Texas, where he became city manager at age 27 in 1985 after two years as assistant city manager. 'We didn't have a good bond rating, and it wasn't a priority,' he says of the Texas city of about 30,000 on the Rio Grande. 'We were trying to provide a basic level of services to our citizens.' In 1990, he moved to Port Angeles, Wash., which he calls a working city of about 20,000 that endured a major downturn in the timber industry during his watch. He says he worked on economic development and tried to retool the local economy.

'So it's not like I'm a silver-spoon city manager who always has hung out in the suburbs,' he says.

'I think it's important for people to know that when I was in Del Rio, Texas, it was a tough time in the economy there. And the same was true in Port Angeles.' Pomeranz's photo of Port Angeles shows a city nestled next to a harbor, dwarfed by the spectacular, white-capped Olympic Mountains behind it.

Jordan Creek milestone

What he sees in West Des Moines - the miles of new boulevards built with City Hall incentives and all the development that has followed - is a thing of beauty, too, he says. Pomeranz recounts a day in the early 2000s when executives from General Growth Properties Inc. walked into his office and said they wanted to build a giant mall on what was farmland if the city would pay for the streets and infrastructure. Neighboring communities all around laughed. 'It's just a mall,' he says they said. West Des Moines' City Council, though, decided to invest, and much has come because of it, he says.

'I don't believe this is urban sprawl,' Pomeranz says of the corporate complexes, the medical offices, the hospitals and mall. 'It's quality development. ... It's gorgeous.' He calls it a great mix of jobs, property-tax revenue and amenities for those who and live in West Des Moines.

Looking ahead

Pomeranz says he's not coming to Cedar Rapids with a savior-complex or with outsized promises at a time when he says the national economy remains slow and the city is still recovering from a flood.

Much of what is seen today in West Des Moines took 12, 15 and 20 years to happen, and mostly during better economic times, he says.

'I certainly don't expect that some corporation is going to knock on my door the first day I get there and say, 'I want to bring 3,000 jobs to the city of Cedar Rapids,'' he says. 'I know I'm not going to wake up every day and be able to announce massive new things for Cedar Rapids. It's a process that occurs over time. It's an environment I hope to help create. That we want to improve and build the community.' Pomeranz says a city manager is one person on a team of elected officials and community leaders who work together to get things done.

He adds that he has great respect for city planning. 'But I also see myself as a doer,' Pomeranz says. 'I like to get things done.

'It's important to have plans and visions and goals. But now it's time to take the work that's been accomplished and begin to implement it. And I see my role as helping move projects forward. That's going to take time, too.

But I think Cedar Rapids is ready for that.'