Could the Riverfront YMCA site have been both a courthouse and a downtown hotspot?

The Des Moines Register

The city wanted private development. The feds wanted a courthouse.

The battle over what to do with the Riverfront YMCA site in downtown Des Moines became a minor brouhaha. Des Moines civic leaders cut a deal late last summer to block the courthouse's construction. The General Services Administration had to go back to the $137 million drawing board. And the land is still encased with Hubbell Realty Co. insignias for now.

The controversy sparked a thought inside Tom Leslie's brain. The Iowa State University professor of architecture wondered: Could that spot somehow let everybody win?

THE TWO SIDES:

So he set the challenge to about 25 of his advanced studio students this past semester. Their goal since late January has been to create a design that'd fulfill residential and commercial needs while providing a secure, civic space to conduct courthouse business.

Iowa State University architecture students (from left) Kyla Peterson, Shawn Barron and Jen Hakala listen as they receive critiques of their semester-long project examining the viability of a mixed-use property at the former Riverfront YMCA site in downtown Des Moines. The students' work included a 1/16th-scale model set within a mock downtown setting.

A half-dozen groups presented their proposals this past Friday. Other ISU faculty and representatives from the federal General Services Administration were in attendance.

Their findings: The idea isn't impossible, but it sure is hard.

"Everyone we talked to in the professional field has not wanted much to do with that idea," said Shawn Barron, a final-year master's of architecture student who has a job lined up in Chicago after graduation. "The laws and regulations that come with building a courthouse — you just can't (mix that with a residential plan). This was our attempt to prove them wrong.

"You can't go about doing it until you change some minds."

Rendering of the Central Court project by Iowa State University architectural students Shawn Barron, Jennifer Hakala and Kyla Peterson. The renderings are part of a semester-long studio project in which students were tasked with conceiving a mixed-use civic and urban project at the site of the former Riverfront YMCA in downtown Des Moines.

Barron's group of three encircled a residential space around a central courthouse with an atrium that would look out toward the downtown skyline. He and project partners Jen Hakala and Kyla Peterson discovered that stringent safety measures needed inside a federal courthouse didn't blend well with even the most straightforward retail concepts.

"Even putting a cafe inside the courthouse and delivering things there is pretty much against the rules. That led to our solution — something tied together but still separate," Barron said.

Most other groups were a little more direct in thinking of a separated setup. Babafemi Ade Aina, Hang Gao and Zheyu Zhang teamed up to create a three-building, multipurpose complex with a trendy "L3" nickname. (That's "law, living and lifestyle.")

The courthouse building dominates the north side of the space, with a couple of residential complexes sitting to the east. A walking bridge extends out to the Des Moines River to provide an overlook.

Rendering of the L3 Complex project by Iowa State University students Babafemi Ade Aina, Hang Gao and Zheyu Zhang. The renderings are part of a semester-long studio project in which students were tasked with conceiving a mixed-use civic and urban project at the site of the former Riverfront YMCA in downtown Des Moines.

"We tried to let the city have what they want, the U.S. courts have what they want, the residents of Des Moines have what they want and make anybody even visiting Des Moines see the change," Ade Aina said.

All of the teams researched city and federal codes to make sure their designs would comply with accessibility standards. The courthouse building, in particular, had its own challenges. Leslie said keeping judges, juries, defendants and the commercial and retail public all separated as they move into a building was enough of a task before adding in homeland security concerns.

"The mixed-use concept, on the other hand, has to be about being open and generous and welcoming. So these two programs are totally opposite in the way they want to invite or organize circulation throughout (the site)," he said. "That opposition proved to be difficult and interesting."

The students received critiques throughout their 12-week exercise, including by a three-person panel during their presentations Friday. The reviews were positive but realistic, emphasizing the difficulty of such a mashup.

"We realized that it would be a great challenge because of a huge range of spaces and programs with different intentions. One wants to be monumental and the other kind of friendly," Leslie said.

One of the takeaways, Leslie said, was that students found out there are a lot of reasons not to undertake this kind of project. But just as important was a concept of never saying never.

"When we started this project, there was a thought of 'Oh, this is impossible. Oh, it was horrible,'" Ade Aine said. "But in almost any situation, you can help create a place where people can live, work and play."

For his part, Leslie wanted the project to steer the discussion back toward what's possible in a city that, for his part, has gotten so much right in its past 10 to 15 years of downtown revitalization.

"The stakes are high, but the opportunities are high, too. I wouldn't be interested in doing something like this if it couldn't have helped the process along in some way," he said.

"Even if it's just as a conversation starter or a continuation."