Here’s a helpful bit of information for real estate investors with an interest in the Des Moines multifamily market: Developments that offer no amenities have waiting lists of 100 people or more.

 

Kent Roers, founder of a Minnesota investment company that bears the family name, said the no-vacancy signs add up to a nice return on investment. Tack on some amenities, which he plans to do on a $40 million project that will take up a square city block in downtown Des Moines and, well, it’s tough to go wrong.

 

Roers and his brother, Brian, own Roers Investments, which is based in the Minneapolis suburb of Long Lake. Boyhood buddy Jeff Koch is a partner in the firm.

 

Koch lived in Des Moines in 2012. His wife, Lindsey, grew up in Clive.

 

“We would go to the Farmers Market,” Koch told the city’s Urban Design Review Board this morning. “I fell in love with the Court Avenue district and this location in particular.”

 

This location is bordered on the east and west by Southwest Second and Third streets and on the north and south by Vine and Market streets. It is where Roers Investments plans its first Des Moines project — a four-story, 211-market-rate-apartment development surrounding a courtyard, underground parking. It also will possibly have rooftop gardens, a dog-wash area, a swimming pool, a hot tub and a bar. Roers could add a fifth floor and more apartments.

 

Plans are to improve Vine, a city-certified street that passes for an alley and snakes its way along railroad tracks. Vine would remain a one-way eastbound passageway that is wider at Second than at Third.

 

The city is likely to transfer ownership of alleys within the block to Roers. The appraised value is about $280,000. The city could waive all or part of the price in form of a development incentive. In addition, the project would qualify for a 10-year, 100 percent abatement of property taxes related to the improvement of the site. Roers has applied for state workforce housing tax credits or the rebate of sales taxes paid on construction materials. The company will not seek tax increment financing.

 

It is the private investment component that Kent Roers highlights.

 

His company was formed in 2010 and went directly to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota, where it invested $140 million over three-and-a-half years in residential and mixed-use developments, Roers said. The Market Street development is the company’s first in Des Moines.

 

On the Des Moines project, the partners have talked to about 15 individuals who see a real estate investment as a safe place to park some cash and make a decent return. The recovery in the stock markets has been “great, but it can’t continue,” Roers said.

 

What can continue in Des Moines is the rapid pace of development projects, Roers said.

 

Tod Elkins, principal with UrbanWorks Architecture in Minneapolis, is a designer on the project. He likened Des Moines to Minneapolis during a boom in that ran from 2005 to 2007.

 

“Des Moines is hotter,” he said, with one key being efforts to take advantage of opportunities presented by the Des Moines River.

 

Roers said his company is looking for other projects in Des Moines and in Rapid City, S.D.

 

Why Rapid City?

 

“Because nobody’s heard of it,” he said.

 

Back in Des Moines, construction is expected to begin in October on the Roers development and wrap up late next year.