photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The Casey's Center in downtown Des Moines, Iowa is pictured in October 2025.

Given the number of times I’ve glowingly mentioned Casey’s breakfast pizza in this column, you might think it dangerous to my health to travel to a city with a downtown arena named after the convenience store chain

But I did it, and I’ve returned. Des Moines, Iowa is home to the Casey’s Center, as the company’s headquarters is located in a suburb of the city. Last week I was part of a local delegation organized by the Lawrence chamber of commerce that traveled to Des Moines and Ames to learn about how those two communities are tackling everything from economic development to university/community relations.

I filed articles about Iowa State University’s research park, and about how ISU and Ames have some unique financial arrangements to help fund city government. But there were a few other quick takeaways from the trip that I didn’t get to share, but will now.

I suppose my biggest was that none of the breakfast buffets at the hotel had Casey’s breakfast pizza. (But as the hotel manager — and the mayor — noted, it is probably best to move past that.) So, here are a few others.

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photo by: Courtesy: City of Ames

Shoppers and volunteers are shown at a Rummage Rampage event in Ames, Iowa.

Ames has a unique program for dealing with the large amounts of trash that students leave on the curb when students are moving in and out of apartments in early August.

Lawrence is familiar with that issue, but it may be even a larger one in Ames. Ames has more college students than Lawrence, and they make up a bigger percentage of the population. Enrollment at ISU is a little more than 31,000 students, and that is in a community of about 70,000 people.

About nine years ago, the City of Ames, ISU and various nonprofits came together to create a new program called “Rummage Rampage.” During the weeklong event, Iowa State designates an area on campus where individuals can bring items — think couches, TV stands and other such big items that you have seen on many a Lawrence curb.

Volunteers from 51 different nonprofits volunteer their time to clean, move, manage and price the donated items, and then staff a makeshift shop where the items are sold to other people in need of some apartment furnishings.

This year, the store had a little more than $72,000 in sales. The money from those sales were split between the 51 nonprofits, based upon the number of hours each nonprofit worked at the store.

The other big number from the event: 131,000 pounds of material were sold through the store that otherwise would have been sent to the landfill.

A lot of the nonprofit organizations that take part in the Ames event are student groups, an official with the City of Ames told the Lawrence delegation.

I have no idea whether such a program would work in Lawrence. Would students really haul their stuff to a site on campus? (How large of a couch can you strap to the top of a Toyota Camry?) Is this different enough from the network of thrift stores we have in town?

Again, I don’t know, but Ames officials reported that the program has made a dramatic difference in the look and feel of certain neighborhoods during the move-in/move-out period.

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Iowa State is doing a project similar to KU’s Gateway District. They call theirs CyTown — they are the Cyclones, if you remember — and it is being built on parking lots between ISU’s football stadium and basketball arena. Construction is just starting to begin on the ISU project.

While KU is counting on a conference center to be the major driver of day-in-day out traffic for the Gateway District, CyTown has turned to a different driver — a major medical office building. The plan is for multiple doctors and medical services to be located in the district. The hope is that traffic will help support the retail and restaurants that will locate in the district. The district also plans to have a mix of traditional office buildings and research buildings for private companies.

The other part of the plan that caught my eye is the condo development that will happen near the stadium and basketball arena. KU is planning some of that too. KU plans to have 16 condos atop a new hotel building that will be connected to the football stadium.

ISU officials shared that their plans are for donors to make a $500,000 donation that will give them access to a condo for 10 years. They can use the condos 365 days a year, if they choose. However, they also could enter the condo into a short-term rental program that will be managed by ISU. In other words, ISU will operate its own version of Airbnb or VRBO. That will be another way the university will make money off of those condos, which likely will be highly rentable during certain events.

KU hasn’t yet announced how it plans to manage its condo program.

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One thing KU plans to do in the Gateway District is to host up to six major concerts per year in David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Iowa State officials indicated KU could have some success in that regards. One official told the group stadium concerts are back in vogue. In August, ISU had country megastar Luke Combs at its football stadium, and last year it hosted country legend George Strait for a concert stadium.

Ames has had that success despite being less than an hour from Des Moines. However, it is worth noting that Des Moines — unlike Kansas City, for instance — doesn’t have a major NFL stadium to host concerts. It will be interesting to see how the idea of stadium concerts work in Lawrence, given the various stadiums available in Kansas City.

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photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Downtown Des Moines, Iowa is pictured in October 2025.

Both Ames and Des Moines love interns. Officials in both cities highlighted that a strong internship infrastructure can be a key to attracting companies to town. I briefly mentioned in my article about the ISU Research Park that officials there actually will hire interns on behalf of interested companies. That means the research park pays the interns, takes care of all the paperwork, and then just sends a bill to the companies. Companies seem to like that streamlined approach.

In Des Moines, the regional chamber of commerce — the Greater Des Moines Partnership — runs an annual program called DSM Intern Connection. It brings together about 500 students a year from 65 different universities or colleges, and then markets those students to companies looking for interns. It also provides the potential interns training on issues such at networking, workplace conflict resolution, and career perseverance, among other issues.

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The Greater Des Moines Partnership is an economic development and chamber of commerce organization that serves 12 counties in the greater Des Moines area. The Lawrence and Douglas County delegation heard a lot from that group that it believes broader is better.

That was the same theme a Lawrence delegation heard when it took a similar visit to the Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas region a couple of years ago. They too preached that their economic fortunes improved once area communities began marketing themselves as a region, rather than individual, competing communities.

What such a partnership would look like in Lawrence and Douglas County isn’t immediately clear. The Lawrence chamber of commerce — which organizes these visits — did the Northwest Arkansas trip with the Topeka area chamber of commerce. But the idea of Lawrence and Topeka coming together to market themselves as a region has never advanced very far. Nor, has there been much discussion of doing so with the Kansas City region.

Lawrence seems to be nervous of any loss of identity that could come with such a partnership. That may be a trait of a college community. Several of us on the trip noticed that Ames — despite being less than an hour from Des Moines — is not part of the Greater Des Moines Partnership. Ames, however, has structured its economic development entity to be a broader organization. In addition to serving Ames, it serves three other counties and several communities.

Again, what that would like in Lawrence and Douglas County isn’t entirely clear, but conceivably could be a situation where smaller chambers like those in Baldwin City, Eudora, Tonganoxie, Wellsville and maybe even a community like Ottawa might be under one umbrella.

To be clear, no one on the trip proposed that, but it is an interesting thought exercise to gauge how open or closed our region is to such partnerships.