For some, life in a big city eventually leads back to Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS — For years, Chris Ciccariello organized an ugly sweater bar crawl to raise money for charities in the Boston area.

When he and his wife, Emily Ciccariello, moved to Iowa earlier this year, he wanted to bring the tradition with him.

What he didn't expect was for it to be almost immediately picked up as an officially affiliated event to Cedar Rapids' Fire & Ice Festival Dec. 5.

'He started reaching out to a few bars, and they were so jazzed,' Emily said. 'In Boston, he's always reached out to bars and generally gotten no response.'

For the Ciccariellos, the relative ease of organizing the event in Cedar Rapids confirmed their decision to move to the Corridor, where Emily was born and raised.

She's part of a group that organizations such as the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance are trying to recruit — Iowans who left for life in the big city but who might be persuaded to come back.

'We know talent is being educated here,' said Ellen Bardsley, talent acquisition specialist at the Alliance. 'We have 50,000 college students in the Corridor, but they're leaving.'

Ciccariello left Cedar Rapids even earlier, after high school. She went to college in St. Paul, Minn., and also has lived in London, Chicago and Boston.

North Liberty, where she and her husband landed about six months ago, is fairly far from those large metropolitan cities. But they decided it was a better place to raise children — their son was born in 2014. Childcare, housing and other expenses are more manageable here than in Boston, said Ciccariello. And they don't have to spend as much time commuting, even with daily drives for their jobs — she works at Iowa City-based marketing agency Sculpt, Chris is at Cedar Rapids architecture engineering firm Shive-Hattery.

Still, it wasn't an easy choice. Chris is from the Boston area, and many of their friends were flabbergasted they were leaving for a small town in Iowa.

'I think shock or confusion would be the No. 1 sentiment,' Emily said. 'It would catch them off guard.'

It was meetings Emily set up through organizations such as the Economic Alliance and the Iowa City Area Development Group that convinced her they were making the right choice. She contacted both groups, who helped her network with potential employers.

Almost everyone she emailed agreed to meet for coffee, or at least responded to her emails.

'People here were so awesome about helping and connecting,' she said. 'The experience of job searching in Boston versus here was completely night and day. … I walked away from those meetings very impressed with all the companies and cool things happening here.'

Whether job hunting or organizing a bar crawl for charity, making connections is easier in Iowa than it was in Boston, she said.

'I think it makes me realize the best thing about living here is how easy it is to make something happen when you have an idea about something or want to get involved,' she said.

More than 'landing place'

Fostering that feeling is one of the goals of the Economic Alliance's two-year Workforce Campaign, which wraps up at the end of this month.

The campaign aims to grow the talent pool for local employers, who consistently tell the Alliance their No. 1 impediment to growth is not being able to find enough skilled workers, Bardsley said.

The efforts spearheaded during the Workforce Campaign will continue, including at recruiting fairs around the Midwest and connecting current college students with young professionals. A relatively recent initiative to directly reach University of Iowa alumni who have left Iowa also will be expanded.

The Economic Alliance partnered with the Greater Des Moines Partnership, the Iowa City Area Development Group and the UI Alumni Association to host a party in Chicago this fall aimed at that demographic.

The event, which included a cocktail hour during a screening of a UI football game, was a chance for Alliance representatives to chat with graduates about giving Iowa a second chance.

A similar event is in the works for Minneapolis this spring.

'We're looking into the best way to target people who have left Iowa,' Bardsley said. 'Sometimes it takes leaving to see the world or another city before they're ready to be here, and that's OK.'

Affordability a factor

Katie Roche, of Iowa City, agreed. From Asbury in northeast Iowa, she moved to New York City, where she pursued a career as a musician.

'There's been this big conversation about brain drain or people getting educated and moving away,' Roche said. 'I think it's really natural to want to go see the world and live in other places. I am so very grateful for what I learned in New York City, and I think it's made me a better Iowan.'

When she and her husband, Joe Demarest, decided to move back to Iowa in 2005, she didn't believe it would be a permanent move.

'I thought it would be just a landing place while we figured out our next step …. We looked up one day, and 11 years had passed,' she said.

Like Ciccariello, she cited affordability as a big reason.

'We wanted to live somewhere we'd eventually be able to own a home,' she said.

In New York, she added, 'we started to feel like it was a ton of work for very little payoff.

'While we were both doing things we loved there, we didn't feel like we were going to break through to the next level any time soon …. We didn't do a lot of living, we did a lot of working.'

Being back in Iowa hasn't always been easy.

'There are things you don't even realize you're going to miss,' she said. 'For a long time, I really missed a certain soup from this Korean restaurant in the East Village. … At first, before we had kids we missed the 24-hour lifestyle of New York City. We were living a much more nightlife-centered existence.'

She's also given up a music-centered career. Though she's in two local bands, there simply are fewer opportunities to perform here.

But she is glad she's been able to keep a pedestrian lifestyle — she walks her children to school before walking downtown to her job at the Englert Theatre. Her husband, however, has to drive to Cedar Rapids for his job at the Arc of East Central Iowa.

They purchased a house through the UniverCity Neighborhood Partnership, which works to return houses near the downtown district to single-family homes.

Closer to family, friends

Jen Knights and her husband, Ted, also purchased a house through the program, though they are fixing it up themselves — usually the city renovates the home before selling.

Knights said they haven't looked back once since leaving their lives in the Chicago area for Iowa City in 2003.

Originally from Marshalltown, Jen said part of the appeal of returning was being closer to family and friends.

'We ended up coming back and starting over completely. We had no jobs, no savings, no place to live for a month or so, but we had this wonderful network of people here willing to help us out,' she said.

She hopes her children will make similar choices.

'I have kids, and I really hope they go off and do some interesting and cool things, but I do kind of hope they end up here and they can be successful here,' she said.

'I hope they go off and have some experiences and decide this is where they want to invest their knowledge.'