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.<\/p>\n
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<\/em> reports.<\/a>\u00a0A 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 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<\/a>\u00a0and sent to Madison County shows WDM gets the area by taking the right-of-way for I-35 from the county line south 2\u00bd 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<\/a>) and is probably very happy Iowa doesn’t have laws like Nebraska where one city can swallow another up<\/a> if it’s big enough.<\/p>\n 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.<\/a> That corridor, in the NW\u00bc of Section 7, doesn’t have a road now, but technically <\/em>this doesn’t box in the land. However, the edge is either on the wrong side of I-35 or I-35 itself<\/em> so it looks a bit silly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading Alice’s Road<\/del> 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.\u00a0West 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<\/em> says.<\/p>\n