If bringing young professionals together for downtown events were the only solution to combating the “brain drain,” there wouldn’t be a group called Impact Downtown.

Impact has grown to about 200 members since it was launched last October. According to Andrea Stackhouse, Impact’s president and founder, the organization differs from other groups for young professionals because of its unique focus on downtown Des Moines and its development projects in particular.

“When Impact was formed, I felt that the city was lacking a group that took a proactive approach in getting young people involved in development,” said Stackhouse, who worked until recently for developer Harry Bookey’s marketing team. “With the whole brain drain issue, it seemed like there was a need for young people to have a say in what’s happening in the city – as a next generation of leaders – and to have a hand in shaping the city as it evolves.”

Along with residential and commercial development, Stackhouse said Impact’s monthly meetings focus on bringing the city back to life through research, marketing, public policy and special events. About 90 percent of the members work downtown, and 26 is the average age.

“Downtown is the center of the city, and it should be thriving and hip and a cultural destination,” Stackhouse said. “It seemed like it was a good place to start, and there are so many young people who work downtown and already have a vested interest in it, and others who want to move downtown and want to have affordable housing.”

Impact members have a variety of reasons for being involved in the group, with the common goal of strengthening the city center, Stackhouse said.

Kirsten Anderson, 26, serves on Impact Downtown’s eight-person executive board. She moved back to Des Moines from Kansas City about three years ago for a job as the executive director of the Iowa Architectural Foundation. Anderson grew up in Southwest Iowa, and is excited to be in Des Moines, a city small enough where she could be involved.

“I wanted to get involved with people my own age who shared my passion for the city,” Anderson said. “It wasn’t that I necessarily thought poorly of downtown Des Moines, but more that I saw potential in the downtown area.”

Anderson said she enjoys working with other ambitious young people to spread awareness about what’s going on downtown, and being tied in to architecture like she is with her job, she likes seeing developers invest in the old downtown buildings to preserve the “architectural gems.”

Chris Diebel, 24, also a member of Impact’s board, got involved with the group after moving from Los Angeles back to Des Moines, his hometown, about nine months ago.

“I decided to come back to Des Moines after comparing the pros and cons of living in a huge city verses the pros and cons of living in an emerging city,” said Diebel, who works as the event manager for the Hilton Garden Inn in Johnston. “One thing to be said in Des Moines is that the cost of living is so much lower, and if the entertainment component and affordable housing components are developed more, there will be a big future for young people here.”

Diebel believes that affordable housing is one of the major issues for downtown right now, and he speaks from personal experience. When he moved back to Des Moines, looking for a place to buy, he was disappointed with the price points he found downtown – a place where he was interested in living. Instead of investing in one of the new downtown housing projects, he did what a growing number of people his age are doing and purchased a townhome in the suburbs. Only 2 percent of Impact’s members live downtown.

“I grew up in Des Moines and didn’t think that I would ever be a suburb dweller,” he said. “But to have what I have in West Des Moines downtown, I would have had to spend $100,000 more for something comparable.”

Diebel said his idea of affordable housing would be for something in the 900- to 1,300-square-foot range with two enclosed parking places and a price of less than $200,000. He knows that urban living tends to carry a higher price tag, and said he would be willing to pay more to live downtown if the entertainment component were more developed.

“I believe in an urban lifestyle as meaning that you should be able to walk to everything that you need in downtown,” Diebel said. “Entertainment is one of those things where people argue about what must come first – the housing or the entertainment – but I think they have to both come at once.”

In April, Impact hosted an event called Celebrate Downtown to showcase businesses, entertainment and development in downtown. More than 250 people attended the event, which was held at the Temple for Performing Arts. It was so successful that the organization plans to hold a similar event this fall and continue with them twice each year.

Looking ahead, Stackhouse said Impact will likely focus its attention on another successful event it hosted earlier this year, a downtown development bus tour.

The group will also continue to meet with groups like the Downtown Community Alliance and lobby local and state representatives on behalf of issues important to young professionals. For example, early in this year’s legislative session, when a tax break for people under 30 years of age was proposed, Impact lobbied against it, saying it appreciated the concern for young professionals’ situations, but that there were better uses of state resources.

“Before starting this group, we hoped that we would be able to have our voices heard after we had been around for a while and established ourselves as a group,” Stackhouse said. “Instead, we’ve had city leaders approach us from the start and ask us for our ideas.”

One new project Impact is working on is an entrepreneurial grant program for new businesses. Stackhouse and Mike Draper, a member of the group who is planning to open an East Village clothing store, are organizing this project to provide new business owners with grants and other resources for starting a business.

“We’d like to be able to raise between $30,000 and $50,000 each year to help three to five people start new businesses,” Stackhouse said. “And it’s not just grants. We are interviewing downtown businesses owners to learn about challenges they faced initially, contractors they used and so forth. We want to make Des Moines an attractive place for young people to want to start businesses.”

Impact will kickoff the entrepreneurial grant program in September with a duck race fund-raiser on the Des Moines River. The group also has educational workshops on the calendar and a three-part speaker series, all geared toward supporting downtown.

“We really don’t want to be a social organization,” said Stackhouse. “It’s not that we don’t like to have fun, but our purpose is that we really want to be involved in the progression of the city and help create the environment that will keep young professionals here.”