Results tagged “west des moines” from DesMoinesIst
Once in a while, someone takes a cheap shot at a place like West Des Moines, and when pressed to back that cheap shot with a real argument, they might fall back on the tired old argument that the suburbs are filled with cookie-cutter houses. Aside from being a reflexive and unthinking dismissal of the places where half of all Americans choose to live, the "cookie-cutter" argument doesn't really make any sense.
All residential developments constructed around the same time in the same location will tend to look the same, because they will tend to use the materials and methods of construction most economical and most popular at the time. That's just a fact of basic economics. No reasonable person would look at the Anasazi cliff dwellings and argue that they should have been constructed out of timber, or ask why the sodbuster houses weren't made of brick. People construct their homes from the materials that are available and economical at the time.
This alone should be enough to dismiss the "cookie-cutter" myth -- or, at least, to show that sameness is hardly unique to the suburbs. But let's take the discussion a step farther:
- In central Dublin, a beautiful and historic city, hundreds of virtually-identical Georgian row houses are distinguished mainly by their colorful doors. Does that make Dublin "cookie-cutter"? To the contrary: It's considered a tourist attraction.
- In the first half of the 20th Century, Sears Roebuck & Co. sold tens of thousands of mail-order "Sears Modern Homes". These homes made it possible for thousands of American families to enjoy safe, affordable housing with then-modern conveniences. The homes may have been literally uniform when they were shipped, but they are considered historical artifacts now, and are given special recognition in some communities where they were built.
- Closer to home, the Beaverdale section of Des Moines takes a great deal of pride in its local identity, which derives in no small part from the fact that there is a tremendous degree of uniformity among "Beaverdale brick" homes, most of which were built in the 1930s by developers who were simply constructing the equivalent of today's suburbs.
The point to this is that uniformity itself is no real shortcoming; it's basically inevitable. The difference happens to be that people are quicker to recognize and complain about uniformity when it's new, rather than when it's old (thus Beaverdale's uniformity gives the neighborhood "character", while West Des Moines developments are criticized as "cookie-cutter"). The people who complain about suburban "uniformity" are really only repeating and reinforcing their own prejudicial dislike of suburbs (or perhaps of suburban dwellers). They're welcome to retain those prejudices, but nobody should mistake that prejudice for fact.
Mercy has opened its new West Lakes hospital, and so far, they've been behaving and keeping the lights off that form a gigantic white cross on the side of the building. Their cooperation in keeping things toned down will be much appreciated. The presence of two new west-side hospitals (Methodist West opens next month) ought to be mostly beneficial to the area, since it moves high-quality health-care service closer to the ever-growing west-side population, but it remains to be seen how the air and ground ambulance services will add to the noise in the area. It's a new thing to have helipads in West Des Moines.
To an outsider, the shooting in West Des Moines probably doesn't sound like much of a big deal. But to locals, it's a big story. Police-involved shootings seem like a DC thing. (That's not for lack of good reason: In Washington, they measure police-involved shootings in percentage terms.) The official report on crime statistics for West Des Moines reads with an almost Disney-esque lack of trouble. A city of 56,000 people reported just 32 robberies for the entire year. So here's the interesting part: The shooting, which was reportedly based on a warrant executed in connection to a series of home invasions and rapes, involved three police officers, each of whom fired his weapon. So in one incident, West Des Moines police firearms saw more active-duty, non-practice use than in a normal year.
The new Mercy West Lakes Hospital in West Des Moines is quickly approaching completion, but someone really needs to explain why they chose to add a gigantic four-story, brightly-lit cross to the side of the building. Yes, the cross is stylized in the Mercy fashion, but for heaven's sake (pun intended), why did they make the thing so large? Count the number of levels for yourself: It covers four complete levels of the building, and faces out into traffic along 60th Street and Westown Parkway. At such a height, it dwarfs everything around, except for the hospital itself. The Hy-Vee corporate offices across the street are only two stories tall. The cross is just too large, and it's undoubtedly going to create traffic accidents. Mercy is an excellent medical center in its own right; this kind of advertising (if that's what it's supposed to be) doesn't befit the standards of the organization itself.
Continue reading Dear Mercy: Please turn down the lights.
General Growth Properties, the company that owns the Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines, has reported a loss for the last quarter and is now having trouble refinancing almost a billion dollars in debt that comes due at the start of December. Jordan Creek itself still has a long and healthy roster of tenants, but it can't be good news to the local operation to hear that the corporate organization is having such a rocky time. The CFO departed last month, and they also brought in a new CEO just a couple of weeks ago. Now, the company could be seeking bankruptcy protection. General Growth actually got its start in Cedar Rapids.
Continue reading Trouble for Jordan Creek's owners.
Ted Nugent will be playing at the Val Air Ballroom on July 21st. Yes, that Ted Nugent. Perhaps he'll be offering some lessons on preparing wild game for dinner. It's nice to see the Val Air, which went through a number of close calls with extinction -- not the least of which included the Floods of 1993 -- appear to rise from the ashes to become a pretty regular site for decent concerts. Nugent will be following the D-O-double-G, who plays the Val Air on July 3rd.
