The sprawl monster has 4,500 more acres of Iowa to feast on. A few months ago, Waukee added two huge tracts of land* and one smaller one in annexation procedures. The vast majority is undeveloped but that will change. A whole bunch of Dallas County rural street names are likely to change eventually.
The annexations push Waukee’s already-janky city limits farther west and south, without any infill in that Sugar Creek area, and run right up to an extension of Adel from 2009 along US 6. Adel has feared Waukee chewing its way west, and now that has become a reality. The two cities now meet across from each other on US 6 (where the Hickman Road name is likely to be extended) just east of the eastern junction with R16. The southeast corner of that intersection, for now, is a house in daddy-won’t-sell-the-farm mode.
The southwest annexation, land owned by Ruan Inc., pushes Waukee into the Van Meter school district in a huge way. A little bit of the city southwest of the I-80/R22 interchange was already there (the Kum & Go), but this goes to and south of the Raccoon River. It’s worth nothing that neither Waukee nor West Des Moines has made a move to swallow up unincorporated Booneville and nearby existing subdivisions … yet.
The western annexation preceded Apple’s announcement last week of a huge data center at US 6 and S Avenue — closer to downtown Adel than the Dallas/Polk county line (142nd Street). It also happens to be the last intersection heading west that’s still in the Waukee school district.
Besides the data center itself, Apple is going to be pouring money into “quality of life amenities” in Waukee, the Register reports. My thought about that is, while that’s very generous of Apple, I can’t help but think about the hundreds of other communities in Iowa — say, Waverly, Carroll, Keokuk, Fort Madison, Spencer, Oskaloosa, or Boone, all of which Waukee zoomed past in population between 2005 and 2016 — that don’t have a new house going up every day** and could derive greater benefit from outside help.
*Obligatory
**Figuratively. I think.