Jason Hancock noticed that an exit on the IA 5 bypass in West Des Moines is now Southeast 35th Street instead of just 35th Street. (For a short time after the bypass opened, it had a Polk County designation instead. West Des Moines not adopting the Polk County/Des Moines grid in the 1950s causes headaches to this day.) I did some more digging on the city’s website, and found some more background and a different change to what used to be part of IA 5.
At the beginning of 2015, the West Des Moines City Council started ordinance readings to assign the prefix SE to all streets south of the Raccoon River and east of I-35, and SW to all streets south of the Raccoon River and west of I-35. Only a handful are in the “southwest” — see my blog post from May 2014, “A township that needs to be put out of its misery, but probably can’t” — and only a handful likely ever will be.
The city’s official map, which is dated June 30 but was available before then, has all the new street names and additions. Only SE and SW are added; there are no NE or NW street areas.
The very very very long-term plan for the Greater West Des Moines Co-Prosperity Sphere includes a scheme to link up the Southwest Connector Veterans Parkway with a north-south road nearly all the way by Van Meter. Look out, Cumming.
That segues into the other change West Des Moines has made in its southern area — it decided to muck up part of what was left of a perfectly good, straight Army Post Road. As Army Post comes from the west toward Veterans Parkway, the street now turns southeast, to run past the new Microsoft data center and intersect IA 28 nearer its interchange with IA 5. But that meant that the connector (which, for the most part, isn’t connecting much at the moment) intersected Army Post Road twice:
2015 aerial photo via Iowa Geographic Map Server
The city didn’t want that to stand, so it renamed the part of Army Post running east of the parkway Willow Creek Drive — but between the parkway and IA 28, it hits 1st Street, and reverts to being Army Post because we’re back in Des Moines.
The better solution would have been to name it Old Army Post Road, and then persuade Des Moines to do the same for the short portion running west from IA 28. (The street east of IA 28, which still exists until the airport, is named Old Army Post Road.) Only one place in Des Moines — the Baymont Inn and Suites — would have to change its address, the few affected locations in West Des Moines would have an easy change, and there would be continuity between the cities with a callback to the original name.
