West Des Moines has had its eyes on northeastern Madison and northwestern Warren counties for a while now, and the concept is taking a step into reality.
The city intends to build a bridge over I-35 between the IA 5 and Cumming exits to open up land for development, the Des Moines Register reports. A new Veterans Parkway, coming diagonally down from the city (the former Southwest Connector), would run between what is now 105th and 110th streets in a rural area. Then it would intersect an extension of Alice’s Road Grand Prairie Parkway in Section 3 of Madison County’s Lee Township, which right now is a spot on a dirt road between two farm fields. West Des Moines wants to build the parkway extension to open development and make way for a new Microsoft data center on the very western edge of Warren County, the Register says.
But in order to get clearance for construction, West Des Moines is engaging in a little expansion gamesmanship. An annexation request filed with the City Development Board and sent to Madison County shows WDM gets the area by taking the right-of-way for I-35 from the county line south 2½ miles, then stopping 50 feet before the city limits of Cumming. Cumming a while back annexed land covering the I-35 exit (except for the OLD exit right-of-way, which doesn’t match the ramps there now) and is probably very happy Iowa doesn’t have laws like Nebraska where one city can swallow another up if it’s big enough.
WDM’s annexation at the very edge of Warren County would leave a boxed-in gap of unincorporated area east of I-35. That’s where the 50-foot corridor comes in. That corridor, in the NW¼ of Section 7, doesn’t have a road now, but technically this doesn’t box in the land. However, the edge is either on the wrong side of I-35 or I-35 itself so it looks a bit silly.