Addison Lathers, Des Moines Register
Des Moines, IA-When Jasmine Brooks and her husband started their construction company, Brooks Homes, they anticipated taking on fixer-uppers around Des Moines’ River Bend neighborhood, where she grew up.
Brooks learned something very quickly, though: Banks weren’t willing to take a chance on her or the area.
“Our goal was not to build million-dollar custom homes. My goal was to build market rate housing and affordable housing,” she said. “But we could not get financing to do it.”
In May, the now-more-experienced Brooks was hired as executive director of the 6th Avenue Corridor, a program that has been working for more than a decade to revitalize the 1.2-mile stretch from the Des Moines River to Interstate 235. It was a main thoroughfare of Des Moines’ Black neighborhood and a center of culture before I-235 cut through Center Street, the district’s commercial hub, in 1968, demolishing homes and businesses and displacing hundreds.
It’s the same area Brooks was told she couldn’t build in when she and her husband, Darryl, started their business eight years prior. Her new, leading role in the effort to turn that around is why she’s one of the Des Moines Register’s 15 People to Watch for 2025.
She and her husband’s initial disappointment didn’t quash their goal of developing housing. Her husband suggested they re-apply for a loan to build a home on Des Moines’ far south side near Carlisle. Suddenly, the money flowed.
Brooks Homes pivoted after that, focusing on new home construction in other parts of the metro. It’s built six homes total.
The contrast between the response to application for loans in the suburbs and those in less-affluent areas left Brooks wondering what other barriers existed for would-be urban developers.
“Traditionally, white males who come in and they rip through town, and they can throw up 1,000 properties and no one bats an eye,” she mused. “But yet, when you have young, Black, Hispanic, any minority group that’s trying to do it… it’s extremely difficult.”
As 6th Avenue Corridor executive director, she’s in charge of projects aimed at addressing that challenge. She will help oversee the upcoming grand opening of Center at Sixth, a mixed-use building that will serve as both housing and an incubator for Black- and brown-owned businesses. If all goes accordingly, the long-delayed renovation of the former North Des Moines City Hall could finally begin. And a low-income housing project, the Townhall, is proposed next door, with a coffee shop and food hall on the first level.
Separate from Brooks’ organization, planning is underway to transform the blighted downtown Holiday Inn — a 12-story landmark at the district’s southern gateway — into supportive housing for people at risk of homelessness. If Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing decides to buy it, the hotel would become 160 studio apartments providing services like transportation and job training to its tenants.
It’s far larger than anything the 6th Avenue Corridor has helped steer, and that’s a concern for Brooks. She wonders what kind of neighbor the project will be, and whether it will contribute to the area’s newfound growth or burden it.
“We don’t want to be an afterthought anymore,” she said.
Not the job she thought it would be
Brooks wasn’t looking for a new job when the 6th Avenue Corridor position came open; she was busy enough as it was between her work as a Realtor, developer, landlord and mother of two children. But enough people sent her the executive director job listing that her curiosity was piqued.
Naomi Hamlett, a 6th Avenue Corridor Board member and economic development coordinator for the city of Des Moines, said Brooks was chosen for three reasons: “She grew up here; her experience with property development; and her great sense of enthusiasm.”
Four board members and two neighborhood representatives interviewed Brooks. The full board approved her hiring.
Brooks’ new role is, in many ways, more political than she expected. She was ready to build, she said, but she also is charged with rebranding the 6th Avenue Corridor, launching a new website and building relationships (“and getting coffee,” she added).
A nonprofit, 6th Avenue Corridor is the city of Des Moines’ only Main Street Iowa community, a designation from the Iowa Economic Development Authority that has guided reinvestment in commercial districts across the state since 1985. Brooks is the first African American executive director of the 6th Avenue Corridor and, she believes, the only one among the Main Street programs across Iowa.
Beyond building infrastructure like its streetscape projects, the organization seeks to strengthen and expand its business community. One example of how it does that is Joppa Experience, a Chicago-style soul food restaurant previously located in Merle Hay Mall’s food court. When owner Christine Johnson was trying to find it a permanent home, Sixth Avenue was a clear choice.
Previously:Restaurants at Merle Hay Mall food court struggle to survive as new attractions are delayed
Johnson was able to secure a mix of grants and small business assistance loans to convert a long-troubled convenience store at 1829 Sixth Ave. into a full-service restaurant. It’s slated to open in 2025.
Johnson is still working to bridge a $10,000 financial gap due to issues that arose during construction. But she said that without the help of the 6th Avenue Corridor, she wouldn’t have been able to get this far.
Since Brooks has become director, she’s held listening sessions with local businesses to ask what the organization can do to help them succeed. That’s left Johnson wondering: Who’s helping Brooks?
“Sixth Avenue, just now, is an up-and-coming place,” Johnson said. “But the Corridor can’t do it by themselves. They can help start the process but, also, if they don’t have the resources they need, then they’ll be in the same predicament (the small businesses) are in.
“I believe that Jasmine is on the hunt to build those connections and get the resources we need to thrive.”
Small projects could propel the area, Brooks says
Brooks believes the Corridor’s success lies just as much in small businesses like Joppa Experience as it does in multi-million-dollar developments like Center at Sixth. And she wonders what could happen if smaller developers got a chance to invest in the neighborhood.
After she became director, Brooks became aware of two extremely blighted parcels the nonprofit acquired that had been cleared and prepped for low-to-medium-density housing. The Corridor had put out a call to developers that went unanswered.
The organization blamed the lack of response on high interest rates; Brooks thinks the problem was that even her own business didn’t even know the properties were up for grabs.
“What that tells me, from my perspective, is that the reach is not far enough or deep enough into the actual community,” she said.
Brooks will help host the first Iowa Developers of Color summit on March 7 in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to bring together experienced builders and tradespeople who may be interested in taking on their own projects but aren’t sure where to begin.
One of her goals is to “right size” projects along Sixth Avenue, engaging large-scale developers like Center at 6th’s Christensen Development as needed but also leaning on smaller, diverse firms for residential projects.
In the meantime, Brooks said, she will work with students from Drake University to write a new Sixth Avenue Revitalization plan. The last one was completed in 2003.
“I’m going to publicly share opportunities that we have with the small builders and developers and say, ‘Hey, if you guys are interested in this project, I’ll take you to them. I’ll show you what we have,'” Brooks said. “Let’s talk through some ideas and see how we can help bring this forward.”
Corridor shouldn’t be an ‘afterthought’
The future may look bright for the 6th Avenue Corridor, but there are some challenges on the horizon.
The proposed conversion of the Holiday Inn into low-income housing brings with it concerns about oversaturating the area with social services providers. Already present on Sixth Avenue is the Bethel Mission men’s shelter, career guidance service Change Course, the Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families and the Salvation Army Service Center. Five units at the Sixth Avenue Flats are reserved for homeless youth too old to remain in foster care.
But the Corridor’s central concern is that it simply didn’t know about the Holiday Inn plan. Brooks said she only became aware of it a few days before the Des Moines City Council was slated to approve its application for a HUD grant of up to $5 million, and she feels that the organization involved, Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing, should have given her more notice of its plans.
“I was at a conference, and two neighborhood association presidents and a couple other community members asked me. ‘Oh, did you hear?’ and I was like, ‘What do you mean?'” Brooks recalled. “They were like, ‘Girl, that’s your district. How do you not know?’
“As a community, we’re pissed off because we never know anything. It happens in our backyard. It happens with our people, our community members, our children, our aunts and uncles, our family members, and yet we don’t know about it until after the fact,” she said. “I think that’s been the biggest frustration, that this is happening once again in our territory, and I didn’t even know about it.”
Emily Osweiler, CEO of Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing, in November explained that the group didn’t publicize its plan earlier because they had only just signed an options contract on the building.
“You can’t be talking about a building that you don’t even have the rights to move forward with,” she said.
Brooks acknowledged that a former member of the Corridor’s board, Kuuku Saah, has plans to build two low-income housing projects on Sixth Avenue. But she worries the Holiday Inn would be a much more sizeable undertaking, with the potential to stifle the area’s growth and potentially dissuade other for-profit businesses from opening nearby.
Osweiler’s group is expected to decide whether it will purchase the hotel in January. After that, Osweiler said, there’s room for negotiation. In an early meeting with the city, the group indicated it would be interested in adding offices, a café and even a restaurant to their plans.
But Brooks is skeptical that it has the budget to add quality, commercial spaces to the hotel’s first floor. She’s open to change on Sixth Avenue, but, whatever the final plans are, Brooks hopes it doesn’t mean closing off the property from the community.
“The old guard has to die at some point,” she said. “Letting new people and fresh ideas and fresh perspectives that include intrinsic diversity and real purpose… I think we’ve gotten away from that to a degree, especially being such an insulated community. That shift is happening now, and I’m excited to like be leading some of that.”
Meet Jasmine Brooks
AGE: 33
LIVES: Grew up in the River Bend and Drake Park neighborhoods in Des Moines. Lives in Waukee.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in marketing from Drake University
CAREER: Executive director of the 6th Avenue Corridor and CEO of Brooks Homes
FAMILY: Husband Darryl and two children
Facebook Comments