I happened to find another cool video on YouTube about some residents of downtown who share their story and gives us a peek inside their loft or condo.
Since writing about choosing my place and moving in, a few people have asked to see what the condo looks like now that I am living in it. So I’m attaching a few photos and a link to my Picasa album for you view. I am very happy with the way the unit turned out.
I know I have to eat, sometimes too much, but it’s a necessity of life. I’m known as one of those “picky eaters”, since I don’t eat a lot of different foods. I’m more of a “meat and potatoes” guy. When I am hungry for something downtown to eat, I generally venture to one of my favorite restaurants. Here’s my list in a non-ranked order:
I happened to be surfing YouTube the other day and to my amazement ran across a video with some of my friends in that they had done for a contest for the Greater Des Moines Partnership. According to their website, the “Des Moines. Do More.” marketing program is a regional marketing effort to recruit new businesses and workers to Greater Des Moines and retain and grow those already here. The slogan “Des Moines. Do More.” refers to “Des Moines” as the whole region, recognizing the area would not be what it is without the sum of all the parts.
Here’s my friends’ video entry, called “Hung Up on Des Moines”
You can see other entries on the Greater Des Moines Partnerships Do More page.
It all began with Sophie and her summer lemonade/brownie stand. Sophie wanted to help children with cancer so she set up her stand on the corner of 6th and Grand outside 418 Liberty where she lives in the heart of downtown Des Moines. Her first day she raised $144.00, the next one she set up in the skywalk outside the RE/MAX office and raised $151.96. Sophie’s mother, Tina, a realtor for RE/MAX wanted to help her daughter Sophie make her goal of raising $1,000 by the end of this summer, so she enlisted the help of her fellow Realtors in the RE/MAX Real Estate Concepts skywalk office. RE/MAX has always been more than selling homes. We believe in giving back to the community. Our RE/MAX office consist of full-time realtors, who live, work and give back to the community in which they serve everyday. RE/MAX became Children’s Miracle Network’s exclusive real estate sponsor in 1992 with their associates having raised more than 65 million for the charity. So here we are, RE/MAX Real Estate Concepts Skywalk office teaming up with lil Sophie Opal Johnson to raise as much money as we can by the end of this summer for our Children’s Miracle Network hospital in Iowa City.
Eight year old Sophie Opal is no stranger to children in hospitals as she has spent a significant amount of time at a specialty hospital in MN this past spring after being diagnosed with epilepsy and experiencing up to 20 seizures per day, preventing her from attending school on a regular basis and participating in the normal activities she loved, ie; swimming, biking, skating, participating on the playground, p.e., etc…. Naturally, Sophie identifies with children who have severe health issues and are forced to remain in the hospital for extended periods of time. This is her way of helping those children. Please help us assist Sophie in exceeding her goal to help millions of children through The Children’s Miracle Network. Children’s Miracle Network; an international non-profit organization, which consists of 170 children’s hospitals ,providing state of the art, life-saving care 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The hospitals treat 17 million children each year for every disease and condition imaginable including cancer; pediatric AIDS, muscular dystrophy, sickle cell anemia, birth defects, asthma and accidents. Supporting Children’s Miracle Network hospitals is the most effective way to save the lives of children throughout North America.
One of the best experiences that I have had since moving downtown is getting to know wonderful neighbors. In fact the three that live next door to me (Jessica, Tom and Wilson) are just awesome welcoming people. Last Monday night when they had me over for a wonderful dinner, I told them about this new blog that I started and got their permission to share their story that had been printed in the “Downtown Des Moines Newsletter”.
URBAN PIONEERS TOM TARBOX & JESSICA ROWE
“Why would anyone want to live downtown?” Jessica Rowe recently overheard that inquiry in a nearby conversation and couldn’t help but politely interrupt. To the contrary, Rowe asks, “Why would you not want to live downtown?” Jessica, a self-employed consultant, resides at 418 Liberty with her husband, attorney Tom Tarbox, and their two cats, Eloise and Oliver.
Their teenage son, Wilson, also lives in the downtown condo during breaks from the school he attends in Virginia. With Wilson gone to school most of the year, Tom and Jessica decided to make the move to downtown in order to streamline their lives and focus more on their careers and less on their backyard garden. While Tom says he enjoyed the hours spent working in his garden, he had become somewhat of a ‘yard slave’ and was ready to give it up and embrace the urban lifestyle downtown Des Moines offers.
Tom and Jessica studied the downtown market for more than a year before deciding on 418 Liberty. Since they purchased their condo early in the development process, they were able to work with the developers to make modifications befitting their lifestyle. “Nelson Construction was great and they worked with us on the modifications we wanted,” says Tom. It’s a wonderful perk of investing in downtown in the early development stage of any condo or loft building. The family moved into their condo in August 2006 and immediately fell in love with their ninth-floor view which features spectacular sunrises and many Des Moines landmarks such as the nearby Traveler’s Insurance umbrella. They were pleasantly surprised at how close they were to the incredible fireworks display on the 4th of July.
As I’ve previous written about, the skywalk system was a major factor in me purchasing at the Liberty Building, so I have a real interest in how the skywalk system looks. When I first traveled to Des Moines in early 2003, I stayed at the downtown Marriott since it was near the Wells Fargo Financial building where my interview was to be conducted. I had to navigate the skywalk system from the Marriott to Wells Fargo Financial, it was a little confusing, but I made it there. I think the hardest part was getting my bearings or knowing which was north, south, east or west. I feel it’s similar to coming up out of a subway tunnel, sometimes its hard to know which way you are facing to know which way you want to go.
So after accepting my new position at Wells Fargo Financial, I moved to Des Moines, we’ll technically West Des Moines, and began working downtown at 800 Walnut Street. At lunch, I eagerly walked the skywalk system in every way I could to explore my surroundings and get familiar with the maze of turns. After a few weeks, I believed I had mastered the skywalk system and took it most everywhere when it was rainy or too cold to go outside (seems like we get a lot of that here in the mid-west). After a couple of years of working downtown, my office was transferred to other locations out west, so I no longer had the chance to walk the skywalk system that often. Since moving downtown to live in March of this year, I have re-acquainted myself with the skywalk system and use it now on almost a daily basis.
So one of the biggest things that people warned me about when I told them that I was moving downtown, was you’ll have to drive to get groceries. After living here for a few months, I don’t exactly agree with that thought and here’s why: Wal-Greens and Hawkeye Pantry.
If I’m in need of just basic staple items like, milk and bread, I just walk down to Wal-Greens on Walnut Street and I can easily pick up these and other basic staples items. If I need alcohol or other basic items you find in a convenience store, we have a great convenient store right here in the skywalk called the Hawkeye Pantry. So between these two stores I’m usually covered for basic items.
Also see previous blog “My Decision to Move Downtown”
Now that I have a chosen a condo, I needed to get myself a realtor. I could have used any of three realtors that I’ve had good luck with before, Georgia Caldwell with Coldwell Bankers; Anne Bickell with Iowa Realty or Kelly Schall with Burnett Realty, but instead I chose Tina Johnson with ReMax Realty due to a couple of reasons. First reason I choose Tina is that she lived in the building I was purchasing and new the ins and outs of the property and what I could do to get a quick acceptance. Secondly, Tina has been selling in the downtown market for the last 10 years and really knows the market which will help in the negotiating process.
So I met with Tina, asked her to represent me and we set down and wrote up an offer. Within 24 hours I had a slight counter offer, I accepted and a closing date for March 3rd was set. Now the real work started. The unit was just a shell with some walls and plumbing stubbed in. I would have to choose everything from hardwood flooring, to bedroom carpeting, to kitchen and bathroom cabinets, granite countertops, lighting fixtures, paint colors, and lots of small details. I would be working with Charise Flynn and Jake Christensen on the details. This is where I may start sounding as a promotion for Nelson Development, but I can honestly say that I’ve never worked with a builder that was so easy to work with and really cared about every small detail. Working with Charise on a daily basis and with Jake on a few occasions, I knew that even with my tight 6 week timeline that my place would be exactly as I had designed it and the workmanship would be the highest quality. Even four and half months later of living in my unit, I can say without doubt if I was ever in the market to buy again, a Nelson Property would be a no-brainer.
In January, my current relationship at the time ended and I was in the need to find a new place to live as soon as possible. I had the choice of buying a new place in the suburbs or buying a place downtown. Having lived in the burbs since I moved to Iowain 2003, first in a townhome in Glen Oaks and then later to a large home in Clive, I knew I wanted to try something different. Over the past few years, I, like many others, would go on open house tours around the area and my favorites were always the downtown lofts.
So the next question decision was which lofts to choose from and budget was a main consideration since downtown living tended to be a lot more expensive than buying a townhome out west. Since I had toured most of the locations downtown previously and only had a couple of weeks to make a decision and get the closing process started, I narrowed my choices down to the following:
Big factors for me where:
I drug my friend Todd along with me as we set out on my search for where I would call home for the foreseeable future. Our first visit was to the Whiteline Lofts. This was a cool looking new trendy building near the Science Center. Within my price range, I could get a unit on the 6th floor with a southern view. The space was a little small for me on the square footage size, but in my head I figured I could do it, just sell a lot of my existing furniture and buy new small sized stuff. I didn’t really care for the southern view that much and it over looked the parking lot. Oh, the parking lot, I would have to park outside and I wasn’t really keen on that with dealing with the snow and stuff. This was a huge drawback for me, so we ventured on but not before falling in love with their rooftop patio. How great it would be to bring my friends up there!
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