Dec 13

Des Moines’ smallest annexation?

Posted on Wednesday, December 13, 2023, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The City Development Board approves actions related to municipal boundaries in Iowa, which makes it an important source for annexations and discontinuations. The board’s website is pretty good at posting agendas and minutes, but no additional information is included. This makes it tricky when I see an entry for an annexation and have no idea what area of land is being talked about.

For example, the September minutes included annexation items for Sioux City, North Liberty, Fairfax, Cedar Rapids, and Des Moines. This point is where I have to start digging into city council minutes and hope the cities in question have “best practices” on public records. I also have to kind of guess that I have the “right” annexation when it comes to cities that do it on a regular basis. I’ve asked if maps could be included on the CDB’s website and was told that won’t happen.

This blog post is going to talk about what might be the smallest addition ever to Iowa’s largest city. It’s not an empty space for building a dozen houses. It’s not one house. It’s not even an alley. It’s the space between the Days Inn and south side of the Taco Bell parking lot on Merle Hay Road. If you scan around on Street View there’s one tiny clue of the change between Des Moines and Polk County jurisdiction: The curb on the frontage road disappears.

A Des Moines City Council packet from June 12, about a hearing on the annexation, highlights the parcel on Page 3 (above). The right-of-way parcel for Merle Hay Road adjacent to it is at/near Des Moines’ northernmost extent.

The only way Des Moines can expand northward is through small acquisitions like this, although this one is really tiny. East of the Des Moines River, most of the city’s northern border has been stuck at Aurora Avenue since 1890. The GIS map for the county at NW 6th Drive, for example, shows the teal city border running down the middle of Aurora Avenue. Each parcel is outlined in red.

If we assumed each house was on an equal-sized portion of land (they’re not, but work with me here), an “80/20” annexation means 4 of 5 landowners in a given area would have to want to be annexed by the city. Each individual landowner could request annexation, but the city isn’t going to grow by leaps and bounds (or even tens of acres) that way. This also explains why Ankeny keeps adding to its southeast but can’t swallow Saylorville.

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Dec 11

The last link in the Transcontinental Railroad

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2023, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Did you know that when the (first) Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, there was no connection between Omaha and Council Bluffs? A bridge wouldn’t be built for three years.

The story of that bridge, and how it took a whole bunch of legal work for Council Bluffs to be confirmed as the first eastern terminus of the Union Pacific, is covered in my Substack post.

As always, this is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, which has added some new writers in the past couple of months.

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Dec 08

Cedar Rapids annexes one house

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2023, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

In September, the state’s City Development Board approved Cedar Rapids’ annexation of 3241 Blairs Ferry Rd. NE. One property, singular.


Screencap via Linn County GIS website

The long driveway in the middle goes to First Assembly of God Church, which owns the property. Hiawatha is on the north side of Blairs Ferry, which put this property between two cities but also made it an unincorporated island.

There’s also a collection of islands/trapped land southwest of the intersection of Edgewood Road NE and 42nd Street NE. Developments between Blairs Ferry Road and IA 100 west of Ushers Ferry Road, as well as undeveloped land south of Xavier High School, aren’t technically islands, just never added to the city.

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Dec 06

Cedar Rapids, Fairfax finally touch

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2023, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

(Delayed until I needed fillers. — Ed.)

Despite annexations in the southwest quadrant of Cedar Rapids over the past half-decade, the city limits have never touched Fairfax. The right-of-way for Williams Boulevard (US 151) around the intersection with Stoney Point and Beverly roads remains part of unincorporated Linn County.

This summer, however, the cities found a common boundary — to Fairfax’s southeast.

In July and August, the Fairfax City Council introduced and approved annexation of land between the CRANDIC Railroad and 76th Avenue SW. At the same time, Cedar Rapids was working on an annexation just to the east of that. The latter annexation, which Cedar Rapids approved on Sept. 26, moves past a previous line the two cities had agreed on. The annexation plan also involves a large study about water consumption for the area because Cedar Rapids wants to add its section to an industrial park.

These annexations automatically preclude the cities from joining together at Williams Boulevard. The area at the Williams/Stoney Point/Beverly intersection will be the only connection from an area of unincorporated Linn County between the CRANDIC and US 30 to the rest of the county. (Technically, there are two intersections of Williams and Beverly, to avoid a skewed-angle intersection.) The situation is exactly identical to why the US 65 beltway in Polk County can’t be annexed by anyone.

Unrelated to the above, Cedar Rapids also annexed a small parcel of land west of what’s now named 80th Street Lane. There’s a finger of city land going up the relocated 80th Street SW to E Avenue and this adds to that. However, Morgan Creek Park remains half-in/half-out.

Posted in Geography, Maps | Comments Off on Cedar Rapids, Fairfax finally touch
Dec 04

Traer Theatre needs ten grand

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2023, at 10:04 AM by Jeff

The Traer Theatre is in financial trouble again.

The North Tama Telegraph reports that last month, the sound system went out and has added to the strain. The theater is looking to raise $10,000 to pay for the repairs and keep the lights on.

Movie theaters all over are having trouble. AMC no longer has any locations in the Des Moines area. Those closures include the former Carmike at Southridge Mall, which I used to be able to walk to. The AMC in Cedar Rapids closed for COVID and never reopened.

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Dec 01

Big 12 traitors as Taylor Swift songs

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2023, at 10:05 AM by Jeff

I admit you’ll need to know a little (OK a lot) about college football and a little (OK a lot) about Taylor Swift to fully appreciate my latest Substack post, but those who do get it, I hope you like it.

I wish the preview image would let me control how much of the intro shows up.

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Nov 29

Misspellings and errors since June 29

Posted on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Just because I haven’t been a professional copy editor for five months doesn’t mean I stopped seeing typos and errors … everywhere.

  • The most galling one, since I saw it every week for months, is that the IowaWORKS pop-up screen at login misspells “reemployment” as “reemployement”.
  • My new health insurance card misspells “benefits” on the back.
  • Before the Iowa State Fair, KWWL offered a “sneak peak” at the butter cow.
  • During the fair, KCCI’s locator map showed Iowa Highway 46, which hasn’t existed since 1998, on East 30th Street.
  • The Associated Press — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS!! — also committed the “sneak peak” error — IN THE HEADLINE!! Too much attention on deleting hyphens, I guess.
  • KWWL misspelled “Old Threshers” as “Old Threshures”.
  • KCRG misspelled “pricier” as “priceier”.
  • KCRG misspelled “September” as “Septempter”.
  • Politico wrote “Authorization for Use of Military Use” instead of “Force” for the AUMF acronym.
  • Both KWWL and KCRG said in their broadcasts that a house fire in Cedar Rapids was on “East Avenue NW” instead of E Avenue NW.
  • Politico wrote “stepped foot” instead of “set foot”.
  • This sentence from the Athletic dropped at least one word: “His successor was Bob Bowlsby left Iowa in 2006.”
  • KCRG’s football score ticker called Loras the Durhawks instead of Duhawks. (Du. Du Hawks. Du Hawks Mich. — Ed.)
  • The Des Moines Register misspelled U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota’s last name as Emmert.
  • KCRG covered a “Mustangs vs. Mustangs” game on Oct. 27, except that on the video board, it was the Mount Vernon “Mustans”.
  • This happened in the Oct. 27 print edition of the Register:
  • KCRG misspelled “antisemitic” as “antisemetic”. (Regarding the lack of a hyphen, see the note at top and an AP Stylebook tweet from April 2021.)
  • KGAN misspelled Fairleigh Dickinson (Iowa WBB’s first opponent) as “Dickenson”.
  • The envelope for Iowa PBS’s monthly newsletter put an apostrophe in “Iowans”.
  • Pinseekers, “Iowa’s first year-round golf entertainment facility” used “sneak peak” in a TV commercial.
  • WQAD wrote “Donaldson” instead of “Donnellson” in a story about top vehicle crash areas in southeast Iowa.

Anyone interested in a proofreader?

UPDATE 1/24/24: In a July story, the Council Bluffs Nonpareil had a sentence where the number of Iowa counties added up to 105 instead of 99 and misspelled Linn as Lynn.

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Nov 27

Early Iowa college football on TV, part 2

Posted on Monday, November 27, 2023, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I should’ve posted this Friday, since it was on my Substack the week before last. This is the second part of a look at college football on TV pertaining to Iowa, and a game that set the tone for a 30-year relationship between broadcasters and the NCAA.

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Nov 22

Belle Plaine, Reinbeck churches in second wave of UMC disaffiliations

Posted on Wednesday, November 22, 2023, at 12:53 PM by Jeff

On New Year’s Day 2023, Grundy County had four United Methodist Churches. On New Year’s Eve 2023, it will have one.

Two of the churches, in Conrad and Grundy Center, disaffiliated from the UMC in May (officially June 30) in the church’s slow-motion schism. Reinbeck is one of 59 that’s out at the end of November following a second special meeting. Beaman is the only one left.

In Tama County, five of eight remain part of the UMC, after all three “G” churches — Garwin, Geneseo, and Gladbrook — split in May. The most recent list includes “Gladbrook Chapel”, which is a rural church just over the Marshall County line west of Union Grove State Park (so technically not Tama County). The chapel building was destroyed in a fire in 2020.

Also Tama County-adjacent in the November wave is Belle Plaine. Other places with a notable number of churches leaving are Linn County and about a 50-mile radius around Ottumwa.

The Des Moines Register has a statewide map, although it put Gladbrook Chapel in Gladbrook. (Gladbrook’s Methodist Church was in the previous flight. Its previous Facebook page said it would switch to a new one in July, but I am unable to find it. A message from the pastor on the church’s website said that church would join the splinter Global Methodist Church, but the website hasn’t quite eliminated all UMC markings.)

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Nov 20

Floyd interchange fully opens today

Posted on Monday, November 20, 2023, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Thanksgiving week traditionally means the end of Iowa’s construction season. This year, that’s being marked with the opening of the US 18/218 interchange in Floyd today and tomorrow. The DOT has a press release and the Charles City Press has a story.

For a year, traffic has been head-to-head using the future eastbound ramps while the other half of the interchange was finished. The opening converts a 2-mile segment to a full freeway, including the closure of Packard Avenue to the southeast.

The eastbound exit sign for US 18 is already up, although the placement of the arrow in the lower right instead of underneath throws off the visual balance of the entire thing. Even though Osage would be a backtrack for eastbound 18 traffic, I think it should have been included as a second destination. It’s nice that T44 is signed but the only place it goes is back to US 18/218 at the north end of the Charles City business route.

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