The developers of the Market District, a large new urban district in downtown Des Moines, will want to plan with something else in the brain than street grid design or conceptual use and building design.
They also want to think about how to restrict the height of buildings to keep an eye on the Iowa State Capitol.
Approved in 1997, the city’s Capitol Gateway East urban design plan limited residential buildings in the East Village to 75 feet (up to seven stories, depending on ceiling height) and advertising buildings at 55 feet. The master plan created a year after the state legislature passed an invoice that requires that “the maximum panoramic prospects of the state Capitol remain clear by building structures, including, but not limited to, buildings, towers, and monuments.”
A new zoning code, followed in 2019, removed the 55-foot directive, on the understanding that any request for a structure above the 75-foot limit would require the approval of urban planners and town halls.
Now, with a local company’s plan to rebuild 11 blocks from the market district into a mixed-use pedestrian community, the city is allowing higher buildings to provide more density and visual interest.
“From a genuinely proprietary, visual quality perspective, I think having a variety of building heights is one thing here,” said Jim MacRae, director of Kansas City-based Design Workshop, who consults local developer jSC Properties about the Market District plan. On Tuesday, he submitted plans to the city’s urban design review committee.
“Urban progression will have to maximize all those public investments that are made in InfrastructureArray … so put as much density as you think you can afford,” he said.
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JSC Properties plans $750 million of 39 acres belonging to the city in an urban domain with dense homes, shops, restaurants and entertainment. Initial plans include an indoor/outdoor concert corridor with lawns and a rooftop viewing domain, an apartment complex with ground business, a combined hotel, a workplace and condominium complex, and an 8-acre waterfront park on newly owned MidAmerican Energy.
THE JSC proposal is a component of the larger 260-acre Market District, which is the subject of an overall planning effort across the city, including relocating commercial warehouses and a public works facility to make way for development.
Ryan Moffatt, the city’s economic progress coordinator, is presenting a proposal to rezon the market district to allow the structure of taller buildings while keeping the barriers to maintaining the view of the Capitol in the brain. The new designation is expected to be approved through the City Council after being first presented to the East Village Historic Neighborhood Council and the State Capitol Planning Commission.
“It’s not the ability to make mistakes here in terms of building height,” Moffatt said. “There will be that control and balance as the projects progress.”
The buildings will remain of average height, unlike the 801 Grand or Rouen buildings in the city center, with proposals of seven to 15 floors, depending on the location. It is also very likely that the tallest buildings are on the outer edge of the JSC Properties site, the lowest to the center.
To accommodate height restrictions, the city performed a three-dimensional style of the area, taking Lidar measurements (smooth detection and telemetry) every six inches. Project proposals will be combined with 3-D style to discover how they might influence the prominence of the Capitol.
Design Workshop also took photographs of drones from the space board in Main Park to visualize where taller buildings can be placed to maintain the view from the lobby level.
The view of the ballpark at the Capitol is one of many that the city and the state have agreed to obstruct. East High School and Wells Fargo Arena are among others.
“I appreciate the efforts they have made to create a visual valley, a line of sight, from the main park leading to the Capitol,” said Bill Dikis, chairman of the Capitol Planning Commission.
But Dikis said some of the proposed building heights would obstruct parts of the Capitol. He hopes the proposals will also take into account how the buildings would obstruct the view from Fleur Drive to the 18th Street viaduct.
“For me, the research they showed cuts the back to the point where you can’t see under the railing,” Dikis said. “You can see the five domes, which is their purpose, but my purpose is to see so many buildings where the domes are supported.”
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Dik is the leading architect of the Capitol Restoration from 1981 to 2005. He was then appointed to the Capitol Planning Commission in 2011.
Efforts to maintain the prospects of the Capitol began when the Embassy Suites built its eight-story hotel at 101 E. Locust St., along the Des Moines River in 1990.
Since the adoption of The Capitol Gateway East design plan in 1997, developers of at least six projects have called for building above restrictions, Moffatt said. Only the Iowa Department of Public Safety, which in 2005 added two floors to its construction at 215 E. Seventh St., granted an exception.
In addition to those two buildings, the Lyon Apartments, 600 E. Fifth St., and the Teachout Building, 500 E. Locust St., are more than 75 feet long. Both were built before the passage of the Capitol View Protection Bill.
In addition to a discussion on the height of the structure, the MacRae Design Workshop on Tuesday presented plans for infrastructure works, basically street structures and stormwater responses, which are expected to begin in spring 2021.
JSC Properties estimates that it will spend $30 million on infrastructure paints alone, the Vine, Market and Fourth Street extensions.
The Market Street plan includes a seat that would be limited to pedestrians at night, with other restrictions on network events. Fourth Street would have a bigger ride for motorcycles.
Kim Norvell covers the expansion and progression of the Registry. Contact her at [email protected] or 515-284-8259. Follow her on Twitter @KimNorvellDMR.
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