.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; clear:left;} Every morning, Tom Tarbox passes through the downtown skywalks from his home in the Liberty Building to his law office on Court Avenue, distinctive in his carefully knotted bow tie.

But one day, he was less formal. And before he could complete his six-block commute, a woman said, “Hey, where’s your tie?”

If Des Moines’ experiment in downtown living really takes off, if we end up with thousands of people who walk the same routes every workday and frequent the same weekend hangouts, moments like that might become more common. Like the people on a college campus or in a small Iowa town, downtown residents might start to recognize one another and feel as if they belong to their own little community.

“We sold 500 mugs last year for our Mug Club,” said Mike Utley, general manager of Court Avenue Restaurant and Brewing Co., “and this year we added 100 in anticipation of people moving downtown. We sold all of those in three months.”

For $35, you get a T-shirt and the right to drink beer at a discount all year long. “We want to make this a neighborhood bar,” said Utley, who is on the Downtown Planning Committee and serves as president of the Historic Court Avenue Association. It’s early in the effort to fill the core of Des Moines with residences, but “there already has been an effect,” Utley said. “It’s becoming a real neighborhood.”

Across Court Avenue at the Spaghetti Works building, Hubbell Realty Co. renovated the upper floors to create 51 apartments. As of last week, only two remained available.

Carol Fay, manager of Johnny’s Hall of Fame on the ground floor, is getting to know the new tenants already. And not just by name. “We get a lot of evening takeout orders from upstairs,” she said, “and they always order the same thing.”

Patrons of a small-town café might order the same thing every time, too – but they wouldn’t get it to go.

The quick pace of rentals at places such as the Spaghetti Works and the Hubbell Tower Apartments, 904 Walnut St., suggests that it’s going to be easy to fill reasonably priced apartments downtown.

“I was one of the last to get in,” said Matthew Harless, who moved into Hubbell Tower last June and began enjoying one of the world’s least-challenging commutes. It takes him just a few minutes to traverse the two-block skywalk route to his desk at Allied Insurance Co., 1100 Locust St.

Harless, 25, moved here from his family’s home outside Charles City. There he looked out windows and saw farmland. Here he sees a Wells Fargo & Co. office building across Ninth Street.

His one-bedroom apartment gives him only about 700 square feet to move around in, but that’s not a problem. After living in a dormitory room at the University of Northern Iowa and then returning to his small room at home, he said: “All this space, I didn’t know what to do with it at first.”

Harless pays $670 per month, utilities included, for his living quarters. Over at the Kirkwood Hotel, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets, J.P. Phillips lives higher up in the air and pays a lot more – $1,180 per month with parking included. But he moved here from New Jersey, not Charles City, and the rent sounded just fine to him.

“I thought it would be $2,500 or $3,000,” said Phillips, who was sent here by Lithia Motors Inc. to manage European Motorcars after the company purchased that dealership. People told him to look in West Des Moines for a place to live, but Phillips, 50, had something different in mind.

“I’ve been doing that all my life,” he said, referring to suburban living. “I wanted some character, and I wanted to be at the center of things. I looked at two other places downtown, but from the minute I saw the Kirkwood, I knew it was the one I wanted.”

So in December he bought some wine glasses, a martini shaker and an air mattress and settled into an apartment with 12-foot ceilings on the 12th floor. He has a view he describes as “not New York City, but pretty good.” He gives a thumbs-up to the restaurant choices, too.

“There’s Centro, and 801 Grand I love. There are so many great places to go,” he said. Phillips doesn’t even have to leave his Fourth Street block for a fair amount of variety. “I eat at the Trattoria once a week, the Royal Mile is a great bar, and I like Java Joes for Sunday morning breakfast,” he said.

Phillips was the sole resident on the 12th floor for a while. “It was a little spooky at first,” he said, “but now there are people moving in.”

Deb Smith, 46, moved into the unit next door to Phillips after selling a 4,400-square-foot house in West Des Moines. Now she has just 1,350 square feet, but views of downtown in three directions. She’s furnishing the place with leather, ultrasuede and stainless steel items and painting it in teal and chocolate brown.

Deb Smith now lives in a Kirkwood Hotel apartment, but is considering buying a condominium in the future.Photo by Duane Tinkey

“For six months I’ve been thinking about moving downtown,” she said shortly after moving in. “My friends are all married and looking to buy houses, but I think this is the coolest place to be.

“There are not a lot of things to do on weekends, but I’m sure that will change.”

Smith, a pharmacist, plans to rent for a year and then see if condominium prices have fallen, reasoning that the sudden burst of condos onto the market will put supply well ahead of demand.

So far, her strategy seems sound; downtown condo sales are going much more slowly than apartment rentals. At the Liberty Building, for example, four units are occupied, and four more sales are in process, leaving 17 units available.

Dominic Leon was the first buyer to move into the Whiteline Lofts condos at 120 S.W. Fifth St., choosing to live downtown because he was “really not ready to settle into the suburbs.” He had been staying at his parents’ West Des Moines home, waiting for the renovation of the former tire warehouse to be finished. Finally, Leon bought an 890-square-foot unit on the sixth floor. The base price was $190,000, but he added a parking space for $15,000, upgraded the countertops, appliances and fixtures and wound up at $245,000.

“I probably could have gone more if I really wanted to,” said Leon, 30, who is a manager with Murphy Construction and Tower Service. “But I had a mortgage payment in mind, and I wanted to stick to that, not blow it out of the water.”

More residents have moved into the Whiteline Lofts, but it’s far from full. It hasn’t developed its own neighborhood feeling yet, Leon said. “Nobody is encouraging that, so I think I’m kind of going to take the lead, because I’ve been there the longest,” he said. “I want a sense of community, so I think I’ll plan a ‘get to know each other’ function.”

Nobody in a sampling of downtown pioneers had any confrontations or threatening behavior to report – Matthew Harless goes for walks on the skywalk system at 10 p.m. and later – but, of course, every neighborhood has its troublemakers. And downtown’s numbers are a bit more serious than you’d find in a small town.

In 2006, according to the Des Moines Police Department, downtown and the East Village together were the scene of 282 thefts, 263 public intoxication arrests, 144 simple assaults, 51 assaults with injury, 30 assaults with the use or display of a dangerous weapon and 19 rapes, among other bad behavior.

But it’s also a place where people throng to events at the Wells Fargo Arena, the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines and Principal Park. A place where the Spaghetti Works restaurant, newly renovated after 30 years in business, serves as many as 5,000 diners each week.

Tom Tarbox and his wife, Jessica Rowe – a consultant and former Des Moines Art Center deputy director – left an old home on 49th Street, south of Grand, to move into the Liberty Building at Sixth and Grand.

Both in their 50s, they left behind a fine house that required endless maintenance and their elaborate gardens – which also required endless maintenance – for 1,500 square feet, nicely appointed surroundings and a ninth-floor view.

“People ask us, ‘what do you do on weekends?'” Rowe said. “We do the same things we always did. We get together with friends, we go out to eat …”

But now they might start at their new home, walk to the East Village, dine at Basil Prosperi’s Lucca and stroll back, enjoying the lights.

One thing is different.

“The view from our condo gives you an interesting perspective on the city,” Rowe noted. “When we got together with people before, the talk was about what’s going on in our lives. Now, the conversation turns to the city.”