Beaverdale: The Urban Neighborhood as a Community Asset

By Martin H. Shukert, FAICP, Principal, RDG Planning & Design

Great cities are defined by distinctive places and neighborhoods. We can place a person’s interaction with their city on a continuum of community to individual. Great neighborhoods create community identification – a pride of place and a dedication to an urban enterprise that is greater than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, much of contemporary American development has spread people across a wide landscape. Residents organize and identify with one another only in the face of an external threat. The social fabric that holds people together in a city is often absent, and the focus is on individual aspects of the continuum, such as the size and features of the house and lot. Increasingly, though, people are seeking something more. An appetite for community is growing among young households across the county, and in Des Moines is fueling the emergence of downtown housing and reinvestment in established neighborhoods. This trend makes the city’s strong urban neighborhoods especially precious. These neighborhoods and the quality that they offer are the assets that will make the city competitive locally, regionally, and nationally in the new century. Far-sighted cities, like intelligent businesses, invest strategically in their assets.

Des Moines’ Beaverdale neighborhood is clearly one of these irreplaceable assets. Our firm, RDG Planning & Design, has been fortunate to work with the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association during the last year and found a sense of community, identification, and organization that are unusual among urban neighborhoods. Neighborhood design features – a web of interconnected streets; a consistent residential architecture that allows for subtle, individual differences; urban density and intimate scale; public spaces; and a business heart that provides a focus for community activity – create a canvass for neighborhood life. Generations of Beaverdale residents have built on this foundation to create a district of special quality, described by its residents as thriving, welcoming, friendly, peaceful, vibrant, and, most significantly, “a place to come home to.”

Beaverdale is also distinctive for its ability to meet the needs of many different types of people. Residents move into the neighborhood, and tend to stay, even if that means adding to their homes for growing families. The “Beaverdale Bricks” – attractive, Tudor-revival brick homes on small urban lots – meet the continuing needs of long-term residents while providing great homes for young families. The neighborhood’s diversity adds to its urbanity and sense of place. Planning literature touts “New Urbanism” as the model for contemporary development. Yet, as a model, it would be hard to top Beaverdale as a pattern for Good Urbanism.

A random telephone survey carried out as part of our neighborhood planning program indicated that a large majority of residents would support an annual assessment to support neighborhood development. There is no more eloquent statement of pride and commitment to a neighborhood than this.

Yet, even an exemplary neighborhood like Beaverdale faces challenges. Perhaps the most difficult of these is found in the relationship between neighborhood commercial areas and the residential surroundings. A vital and strong commercial district is the living heart of a neighborhood and adds quality to the lives of residents and value to their property. Yet, conversely, a declining or unhealthy business center threatens the health of the entire neighborhood.

Just as downtown is the image center of Des Moines, and acts as the yardstick that residents and visitors use to measure the city’s health, so does the neighborhood business center become the measure of the strength of an entire neighborhood. Yet, in an era of mass, auto-oriented retailing, maintaining strong neighborhood business districts requires substantial effort.

This understanding led the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association to focus revitalization efforts on the area around the intersection of Beaver and Urbandale Avenues. The stakes are high – a vital business community here can assure a strong Beaverdale into the foreseeable future, while a declining district threatens decades of work and stewardship of a great urban neighborhood.

The Beaverdale Neighborhood Plan, sponsored by the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association, proposes a realistic program that will maintain the strength of this vital Des Moines neighborhood. Its recommendations include:

• A commercial revitalization program centering around the Beaver and Urbandale intersection that proposes an improved streetscape and safer pedestrian environment; focused commercial redevelopment to improve the quality and expand the occupancy of existing retail facilities; and additional parking with better traffic circulation through the area.
• Land use policies that maintain the pedestrian and mixed use character of Beaver Avenue, assure that new development throughout Beaverdale is compatible with the character and scale of the neighborhood, and recognize the residential density and lot sizes that contribute to the character and intimacy of the neighborhood.
• Establishing a special conservation historic district for the neighborhood that provides protection for important aspects of the neighborhood’s physical environment without requiring the detailed review of all exterior alterations now required in historic districts. In addition, the City and the neighborhood association should work with the State Historic Preservation Office toward designation of Beaverdale as a National Register district. In my hometown of Omaha, the Country Club neighborhood, very similar to Beaverdale in period of development and architectural coherence and style, was listed on the Register in 2004.
• Creating a Self Supported Municipal Improvement District, enabling the neighborhood to raise funds to finance vital commercial district improvements, in cooperation with the City of Des Moines. Tax Increment Financing, by which new development in Beaverdale helps to finance project-related improvements, may also be important to implementing the neighborhood plan.

The Beaverdale neighborhood is a major asset for Des Moines. A moderate investment now that involves a partnership of the city, the business community, and residential neighbors can protect this asset for many years to come, and assure that future generations can enjoy the quality, affordability, and neighborliness of this unique city neighborhood.