North Liberty leaders consider renaming Highway 965 through town

NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa - People driving through North Liberty could see some changes in the near future.

The city is starting the discussion to rename the portion of Highway 965 that runs through town.

The idea has been floating around for a while, but it came up again at a public budget meeting last week.

Now many are working toward making the name change a reality.

'I would call 965 our main thoroughfare through town. It's certainly a key piece of infrastructure. It's certainly a big part of what North Liberty has for a business district,” said North Liberty Communications Director Nick Bergus.

Air Efex is one business with a Highway 965 address. Inside they're building and painting vehicles and more.

'I talk to people, customers come from Des Moines and they can come right off here, off the interstate and hit 965 no problem,” said Air Efex Owner Eric Seckel.

So what about changing the highway's name?

'As long as people can still find the businesses, I'm OK with it,” Seckel said.

North Liberty city leaders said they still need to identify the process they want to use in order to move forward.

'There's been an interest in sort of giving North Liberty a little bit more of its own identity and particularly, what was an old rural highway through town to give it a little bit more identity and give it a name that sounds a little nicer,” Bergus said.

Down the road from North Liberty, Coralville has changed road names a few times in the past couple of decades - Highway 965 became Coral Ridge Avenue and First Avenue became Hayden Fry Way.

'It's a very usual thing to change a name because changing names creates address issues and those kinds of publicity, marketing type of things, especially if there are commercial units there,” said Coralville City Administrator Kelly Hayworth.

Coralville's city administrator says the city also contacted Google.

'So, to have it be able to show up officially in Google is probably the most important thing, so people can locate where you are talking about,” Hayworth said.

North Liberty plans to get started with the name-changing process in coming months.

'I think that those kind of identity things are important to a growing town like North Liberty,” Bergus said.

North Liberty's Communication Director said the city is not sure of a cost yet, but the majority would be from new signage.

The city is planning to take name suggestions from the public.