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A village within a village

The Historic Market District poised for growth

By Amber Williams

From outside, it looks like little more than an old, rundown building. Ranking over a once blithe intersection in Des Moines' old Market District at the corner of Southeast Fourth and Market Streets, today you'd almost think the Market Building at 118. S.E. 4th St. was abandoned — perhaps home to raccoons and homeless drifters — save for the line of nice cars parked along its front. And that's exactly what its occupants love about it.

" We call it a village within a village," said Mike Kinter, who is an historical reconstruction consultant and architectural salvage and antique dealer. He bought the Market Building in 2006 along with business partner Joe Coppola. "I'm not really sure why I chose this building. I'd been in the building a couple of times before, and it intrigued me."

Somehow, beneath the discarded collection of stripped cars surrounded by scraps, the "indoor junk yard" breathed with potential to Kinter. The structure itself, though, had dire needs and was poised for demolition.

" It was either salvage its parts before demolishing it or save the building," he said. "In reality, Des Moines has already torn down too many of its old buildings, and you lose history when you do that."

Six years later, the Market Building houses several very different but also very complementing businesses and organizations including artists, photographers, a massage therapist, non-profits, lawyers, website producers and activists.

" A lot of the tenants we have are here because they like the old, funky building. We're not a strip mall. This building has personality," Kinter said.

For example, professional photographer Tonya Scarcello came looking for a place to start her business, My Studio By. She said she was looking for a building that was "rough enough" for a prime photography studio.

" As photographers, we like and appreciate things in a different way than others do," Scarcello said. "An old, deserted alley might be an eye sore to someone else, but to a photographer, it's a place we'll be coming back to with a camera. This building has so many different textures and elements within the same space. It's the perfect environment for photography — it's a photographer's playground.

" Once this building gets in your blood, it takes you over," she said.

The resurrection

It certainly possessed Kinter. He and Coppola spent the first year cleaning out the junk, sandblasting the timbers down to the original bare wood and removing 60 tons of material from the roof and installing a new one.

" That's a lot!" Kinter said. "You could stay drier standing outside in the rain than you could inside the building."

So far, according to Kinter, the two have sunk half a million dollars into the Market Building, including a $90,000 roof and a $30,000 sprinkler system project.

" A big challenge for anyone rehabbing a century-old building for adaptive reuse is working within the confines of modern day building codes," Kinter said. "They want everything to fit into nice, little boxes, but that's not how it is with old structures."

Using salvaged trim and doors and other materials from structures that have met graver fates — including a tornado-torn house in Mapleton and a dilapidated barn in Winterset — the Market Building has, in essence, been given life from the death of other buildings.

" Another challenge is finding used materials that are compatible and that match the original décor of the building," Kinter explained. "We're all about sustainability. We go in search of building materials. We want the décor to fit the (1870s) timeframe of the building. There are no two office doors that are alike."

For example, the doors they installed on the new Market Street entrance were taken from an old grocery store in Riceville. When it comes to doors, Kinter has a surplus of more than 200 in the unfinished second floor of the building, which is currently being used for storage (save for a soft mattress where a family of cats sleep the day away). A corridor of doors that Kinter has salvaged from various sources lines the spacious room, ready for installation as needed.

The second floor will get a facelift during Phase Two of the renovation project, and Scarcello plans to expand the photography studio upstairs as soon as the space is available. In the meantime, the ground floor is buzzing with life like a hidden community.

" There's a lot of give and take and cross-collaboration among the tenants," Kinter said.

The village

The exchange of ideas and collaboration among tenant neighbors in the Market Building is a personification of what's to come in the Market District neighborhood's near future, according to the vision laid out in the city's urban design study, which was drafted by Jeffrey Morgan Architecture Studio in May of 2010.

" I've always maintained that Des Moines is just a big village," Kinter said. "This is one of the last warehouse districts with warehouses that still have rehabilitation potential — and in walking distance from the East Village. The East Village is running out of raw land, and there are no old buildings left to be developed. So the natural direction to expand is to the south here… And we're ahead of the curve."

That idea has already been acknowledged in the city's urban design study, which calls the Market District a newly accessible area with "promising potential" to thrive, according to the study which can be viewed online at http://www.dmgov.org.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway expansion and the new downtown Des Moines River bridge makes the 45 acres of the Market District more accessible to the public than ever before, which has, and will continue to have, "a huge impact on the East Village Market District and East Village as a whole," Kinter said.

The planned infrastructure offers a "back door" to the east side of downtown, with the completion of the MLK bridge and Parkway, according to the plan. So the Market District will eventually serve as a more convenient entry into downtown from southern and eastern parts of the metro.

From manpower to market

If you ask Kinter, there are two key moves yet to be made that are crucial in seeing the vision through, making the East Village Market exactly that — a market: relocating the Public Works station away from the District and adding bus service to the area.

The area currently serves as a workhorse for the city, occupied by the City's Public Works facility, the main police station, the federal courthouse, warehouses for a local utility, a salvage yard and a collection of industrial and warehouse uses. But what if those same city blocks were lined with new and revitalized structures that house offices, condominiums, a new market, retail and federal courts, as well as open spaces, gardens, parks, trails, connections to the river and the state capitol grounds, access to multi-transit modes and "a commitment to sustainability," as the plan suggests?

The Market District of the East Village Urban Design Study shows a thriving section of downtown with unique development potential, the study states.

" With its dearth of constraints, the Market District is a rare opportunity to create a new district with an array of desirable and progressive contemporary amenities that is tightly knit into the city's urban fabric," the study reads.

City planners are suggesting relocating the current Public Works facility to what is considered a more ideal location east of Southeast 14th Street, freeing up the area across from the Market Building on Southeast Fourth Street. Where there are currently orange work trucks beeping and bustling around a wide parking lot, instead a proposed year-round farmers' market could bring an old fashioned ambiance to this modern world.

There, the market could operate all day. And with the construction of a few buildings and awnings, some vendors would operate year round, despite the weather.

Taking action

The "What's Next, Downtown" plan first outlined these ideas in 2008. It highlighted the growing potential of the Market District by building from the basic ideas that were proposed in the downtown plan as well as identifying a set of planning ideas that capture the enthusiasm for the area and depict the desired long-term vision for the District.

Many of those plans have already been put into fruition with significant investments being made and changes being considered in the area, including the MLK bridge construction across the Des Moines River and the Riverwalk multi-use trail.

In addition, other items included in the plan involve a feasibility study by the General Services Administration to understand the long-term future of the federal courthouse and the physical needs of the Southern District of Iowa Federal Courts; obtaining federal transportation funds for the Iowa Department of Transportation to look into a possible passenger rail service to downtown Des Moines on active rail lines that pass through the District; and the completion of a tram feasibility study that shows electric trolley lines bordering two edges of the District; as well as increased developments along the river.

" Rivers developed correctly enhance a city dramatically," Kinter said.

Then and now

As a member of the Historic East Village (HEV) Board of Directors, Kinter plans to see the Market District grow and expand while also preserving its authentic history and charm. With its location adjacent to the East Village, overlooking the Des Moines River and its bridge arches and in the shadow of the gleaming Capitol building, the District is a prime location for a town square type of atmosphere, he said.

For more than a year, the HEV board has been working on an action plan for the East Village neighborhood development, and it should be ready for public review later this summer, Kinter said.

If all goes according to plan, a slice of the 19th century could exist in this modern world right in the heart of Des Moines — a pedestrian market with hand-to-hand commerce, local talents being celebrated on every corner and newcomers navigating through the city for a peek at the action creating a vibrant, human experience much like the days from which the District and the Market Building were born. CV