The city of Grimes hopes to begin implementing some of the recommendations to redevelop its downtown in 2027, with a longer term vision to explore recommendations on parking and other improvements in the years to come.

But the first project will be undertaken this spring — a mural on the side of the Kupka Real Estate-RE/MAXPrecision office at 210 SE Main St. The artist, Courtney Garcia, worked with Dallas Grimes High School students on the design. The paint for the mural, the first in the city, is being donated by the local Sherwin-Williams store. A grant from Bravo Greater Des Moines is helping fund the project.

It’s part of the assessment done last year of the downtown, commonly referred to as the Governors District, and the community engagement process undertaken as part of the assessment, which was done by the Iowa Economic Development’s Downtown Resource Center.

Staff from the Downtown Resource Center released its report in late 2025, with recommendations forwarded to the Grimes City Council as it works on the city’s 

comprehensive land use plan through 2050 with consulting firm Confluence.

Those recommendations included defining roles and responsibilities for downtown revitalization, defining the downtown’s identity, considering rebranding and strengthening communication and engagement with stakeholders. Recommendations also included activating Main Street with plantings, benches, banners, bike racks and wayfinding signs, adding public art, and improving and activating alleyways. 

Other suggestions were to address zoning and regulatory barriers to redevelopment, explore mixed-use housing and boutique lodging to bring more people downtown, prioritize the rehabilitation of buildings and encourage quality infill development.

The city will also consider restructuring and promoting existing tools for redevelopment, consider new grants and incentives, and pursue state and regional funding for downtown improvements, said Katie Lord, the city’s economic development director.

“We’ll be looking at providing some of our development-related incentive programs to help encourage additional investment and reinvestment in the district, and then developing a plan to impact visible quick wins,” she said.

Those will include the installation of benches, banners, bike racks and additional plantings, Lord said.

“So starting slowly with a number of those initiatives and building on that foundation,” she said.

Lord said the city wants to start with items that are doable in the short-term before undertaking some longer-term initiatives that are more reliant on funding, such as a parking study of the downtown.

“We heard a lot of comments around the concern for parking, so we want to validate that question and understand is there a parking issue?” she said. “We want to make sure this area stays vibrant and welcoming to visitors.”

A study that will look at parking is a longer-term initiative, Lord said, as are recommendations to extend Main Street to 11th Street, look at lighting in the downtown and the eventual redevelopment of the Grimes Community Complex on Main Street.

The more immediate plans to install benches, bike racks, banners and more plantings will be an easier lift that will provide more immediate results, Lord said.

But they will still take a year to implement, she said.

“They may not be large dollar figures, but we have to figure out how to maintain them for the future, so I think the planning will occur this year and I’d like to get more input from property owners and understand their willingness to participate and see what that looks like,” Lord said.

It was that willingness from a business owner that has led to the mural project, she said.

The idea for the mural came out of the public input sessions the city did last spring, including a focus group that included students and staff from the high school. Another focus group had local downtown business owners.

“It was interesting to sit in on those two sessions,” Lord said. “The students said public art would make them come downtown more, and then we had a property owner who expressed interest in having a mural on the side of their building, but they didn’t know how to get started.”

Lord said after the focus groups, the city brought the students and the owners of Kupka Real Estate together, began meeting with the high school administration and found an artist to paint the mural.

“That was a really exciting opportunity to engage students and to get their buy-in and get their input,” she said.

Allison Kupka and her husband, Dustin, bought the building in 2023. They wanted to do something with the empty brick facade on the side of their building but weren’t able to find a path forward — until the downtown assessment began last year.

“The really neat part was not only were the middle-age and older adults excited about having public art in this area of Grimes and a mural, but the high school students and the younger adults were really excited about it, too,” Allison Kupka said. “They kind of live in an Instagram world, and they thought it’d be really fun to have somewhere in Grimes where they could also go to take photos and have it be kind of interactive in that way, and this was something that was wanted across all ages that would bring all different people to this area of Grimes.”

As a local business owner who lives and is raising her family in Grimes, Kupka said it was important to get involved in the revitalization of the neighborhood.

“We look at it as we’re investing in the community,” she said. “We’re a part of this community and we love this community so why wouldn’t we want to put everything we can into seeing [it] grow and be a good place for people to come and want to live here, and to bring in business owners who can thrive and be successful and support each other?”

Kupka said the redevelopment that will occur in the coming years will make the downtown more attractive for businesses to locate and for people to visit.

“It’s not only going to make it better for the business owners who are there, but for anybody who has been wanting to open a business and sees the potential but may be nervous about taking the risk,” she said. “The beauty [of] coming back to the area, there’s some really neat buildings here but there’s also a lot of potential for other spaces to be restored and renewed. We would love for downtown to be a destination where people could come and be able to get something to eat, maybe add some retail, just a place where people can come to experience and really enjoy each other and that nostalgic part of Grimes.”

Lord said the Kupkas stepping up and offering their building for the mural is a good example of how the local business community can get involved to move downtown redevelopment forward.

“It takes a willingness to participate and be an active member of the business community, even if your business is not retail facing,” she said. “It’s being actively engaged and community focused, and I think we have that which is great. It feels like there’s interest from folks that have invested today, and there’s already new investment from new developers coming to town. So, I think keeping an open mind, being willing to contribute either through resources or just time or expertise in helping drive change will be valuable.”

Related stories:

• Assessment of Grimes’ Governors District to engage stakeholders, help city define vision for future development
• Grimes takes next step in downtown vision plan