Iowa City's big picture

You get a long view, reading The Gazette's archives about downtown Iowa City development over the past couple decades.

Start in 1992, when leaders are bragging about the mix of retail, services and restaurants attracting people to the city's core, and everyone's excited by plans to expand downtown south of Burlington.

Especially Hieronymus Square on Burlington and Clinton streets - a “first-class addition” to help fill pent-up demand for retail and upscale office space.

On the other hand, some worry the city's expanding boundaries will take some of the bustle out of downtown, and still others wonder why things can't just stay the way they've always been. They have their say, too, at the League of Women Voters' forum “To Grow or Not to Grow: Do We Have a Choice?”

Back downtown, there is face lifting, streetscaping, new lights, a few trees - “People may see this as a frill” Iowa City planning Director Karin Franklin admits. “I don't think that it is. It's important that a downtown, a center of a city, have some sense of place.”

Let's build a conference center! An arts district! Where should we put the new library? All the while citizens complain about parking - Iowa City's only constant - and plans for Hieronymus Square march along.

Spirits are high even when neighbors approve a “big mall.” “Coralville mall plans may spur Iowa City growth,” reads one headline, but Eby's Sporting Goods, Moda Americana and Land's End are among the first to go.

The Amoco closes; a Starbucks opens. Owners shutter The Mill, then someone else throws open the doors. “We are charged with looking at the big picture and must make the pieces fit into the larger puzzle,” Mayor Ernie Lehman says in his State of the City address.

There go plans for the convention center, there goes Hieronymus Square. Here comes Plaza Towers. “Moen plan deemed unprofitable,” the 2002 headline reads. The ink was much different just a couple years later when the final six-figure condo was sold.

By 2006, headlines promise “High-rises reshaping Iowa City” - including a new version of Hieronymus Square - this one 13 stories.

Sidewalk cafes sprout up, panhandlers are yanked by the roots. More apartments go condo, and city planners cast eyes even farther south - all the way to Highway 6.

May 2011. Leaders again meet to discuss the city's future, to “get our hands and heads around a bigger picture of where we're going,” City Manager Tom Markus' says.

Marc Moen snatches up a shuttered bar. He gets to work.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net