By Jonathan Turner, Hola Iowa
Things are looking up for both Elevator co-warehousing and one of its Des Moines tenants, Studio Siembra, a landscape architecture practice founded by Magdalena Aravena, that moved to Elevator in May 2025.
Elevator opened the facility April 1, 2025, on 12th and Mulberry Street just two blocks from the iconic Pappajohn Sculpture Park. This marked Elevator’s second location following its successful Omaha site, that’s home to over 100 businesses, and now the growing firm has five sites in three states.
With month-to-month terms, daily carrier pickups, access to warehouse equipment, fully-equipped meeting spaces, high-speed internet, a thriving entrepreneurial community and modern amenities, Elevator provides infrastructure growing businesses need without long-term commitments.
Aravena, a 34-year-old native of Chile, was looking for a new office location after working from home four years in Denver, Colo., and South Bend, Ind.
“I love the Midwest, was kind of looking for a place that had a lot of activity, good commitments to parks and art,” she said recently. “I had visited Des Moines for a conference, and had a few friends here.”
Elevator met all her needs.
“It’s great being in the middle of downtown, the opportunity to have my own private office, still able to enjoy the people aspect of folks coming in and out,” Aravena said. “They have a great story, I love how they formed Elevator Omaha. They’ve been really great, and I’ve been able to use their Omaha and Lincoln office as well, for a couple meetings I had out there. It’s great to feel like I’ve got other locations.”
Shannon and Emiliano Lerda own Elevator, which provides co-warehousing and co-working spaces, to help businesses grow. They have locations in Omaha and Lincoln, Neb., Des Moines, north Kansas City., Mo., and their latest, in St. Louis, which opened March 1, 2026. The Lerdas have plans to grow nationwide.
After growth of their home-based pet products business in 2019, and obstacles to finding an affordable place to lease, Shannon came up with the co-warehousing concept and “it kind of really struck a chord with me,” Emiliano said recently.
“We thought, maybe there’s an opportunity for us to start doing that in the Midwest and going to cities where the big players may be focusing on the big cities, but we have an opportunity to be first to market in these medium sized cities,” he said. “And so we started going after this dream and this idea.”
In 2022, Shannon and Emiliano opened Elevator in Omaha’s Old Market district. The four-story building includes 104 spaces that range in size from 80 square feet to 1,500 square feet.
They also have strong ties to the Des Moines area. Shannon graduated from the University of Northern Iowa, and worked at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines for six years. Emiliano, a 45-year-old Argentina native, graduated from UNI and Drake University’s Law School. He worked for the Iowa Corn Growers Association for over year before relocating to Omaha to lead the Immigrant Legal Center, eight years as executive director.
Sowing her own roots
Founded in Denver, in 2021, Studio Siembra provides dynamic landscape architecture design and community engagement services in the Midwest, and across the U.S.
Landscape architecture is designing everything outside a building, including parks, playgrounds and streetscaping. Aravena grew up in California, graduated from UC-Davis, moved to Chicago in 2017, and was there for four years.
“I’ve done everything from amenity roof decks for buildings, work in parks, school campuses, streetscapes,” she said. “I do planning work with municipalities, and I do a lot of community engagement right now as well for park projects.”
In Des Moines, Aravena is working with the city on Good Park and Brian Melton Park.
The decision to establish roots in Iowa’s capital city reflects Studio Siembra’s commitment to:
- Community Impact: Transforming spaces and empowering communities through thoughtful landscape architecture design and community engagement strategies.
- Strategic Growth: Working with local organizations and institutions to continue building with, and for communities in new and different ways.
- Equity & Inclusion: Currently the only Latina-owned landscape architecture practice based in Iowa, Studio Siembra offers an opportunity for deeper community engagement with populations that may not be well represented locally, across the state, and within the region. According to a 2024 Report from Capital Crossroads, by 2050, nearly 50% percent of Greater Des Moines residents will be people of color, up from 19% in 2020, and Latinos represent the fastest growing group by ethnicity, followed by Black residents.
“We are excited to immerse ourselves and continue growing in a city that values creativity and innovation as much as we do, and contribute our unique skills and ideas to the local landscapes, communities, and beyond,” Aravena said.
Through her work with Studio Siembra, she’s partnered with residents, stakeholders, and municipalities to ensure community voices are at the heart of transformative public spaces.
“Siembra translated from Spanish means sowing, as in sowing seeds. This is my vision for our practice, literally and figuratively,” she said. “We are transforming spaces with plants, art, and beyond; while sowing seeds of optimism, resilience, and beauty with our work to benefit those communities who need it most.”
Her community engagement work includes gathering input and feedback on projects.
“What is more difficult is gaining people’s trust,” Aravena said. “There’s a lot of mistrust of institutions, a municipality going in, people felt they’re being told what they need, educating, letting them know their feedback is important and necessary, especially with communities that are Hispanic and underserved, I do a lot of translations.”
“It’s meeting people where they’re at, understanding going in as an outsider, being humble,” she said. “I don’t live in their shoes, but we’re there to get knowledge they have that we need, to build a successful public space.”
One satisfying project her studio worked on was in Denver (with a large Latino population), to refurbish a former park, renamed to La Raza. That included not just building trust and teamwork, but new playgrounds, gathering spaces, shelter, and new plantings, to be finished this May.
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