Can Cumming keep its small-town growth amid metro Des Moines' hustle?
Paul Rasch may be one of the few people in Iowa who would like spring to hold off.
With temperatures pushing over 70 degrees at times in March, Rasch fears blossoms that burst open too early on his orchard’s 15,000 apple trees will be vulnerable to late-spring frosts, potentially cutting how many apples he harvests in the fall.
“We’re a little worried that everything will explode too early in the spring,” said Rasch, whose family is opening a second Wilson’s Orchard & Farm in Cumming, replicating most features of the original near Iowa City.
Rasch’s apples, strawberries and raspberries and fields of tulips, sunflowers and other Instagram-worthy flowers are the heart of the family’s new $7 million, roughly 20,000-square-foot restaurant, bakery, market and event center, most of which opens in mid-April.
Along with Rasch’s tulips, development is popping at the $750 million Middlebrook agrihood that Wilson’s Orchard helps anchor on 800 acres south of Cumming, a Warren County town of 440.
Diligent Development is beginning construction of a $13.5 million office, retail and housing project that will extend the 135-year-old community’s Main Street south across County Highway G14. And more homes are under construction in its first residential development.
The projects are likely to transform the town. But will it be able to keep its small-town charm?
Though a slice of rural Iowa, Cumming has something other rural towns lack: growth
Already, people swarm to Cumming, located about midway on the popular, 17-mile Great Western Trail that runs south from Des Moines to Martensdale. The rustic Cumming Tap is a bikers’ destination for races and revelry.
Across North Fourth Street, the Iowa Distillery offers Iowa-crafted spirits and cocktails. And Middlebrook offers the Middlebrook Mercantile pub and has Fridays at the Farm, laid-back summer music and food-truck gatherings where kids and dogs run free.
Cumming is “a welcoming place,” City Administrator Rita Conner said. “Everyone just piles in and has a great time.”
At its core, it still looks like many a rural Iowa town, with an American Legion post, a small post office, a prominent water tower and nary a traffic light.
But it has some distinct differences. It's officially part of the Des Moines metro, sitting just off Interstate 35. Burgeoning Norwalk is less than 5 miles away, and downtown Des Moines is a 20-minute drive.
And unlike the dwindling towns in much of the Iowa countryside, Cumming has new homes rising.
Over the past five years, the city’s tax base has doubled to $101 million, state data shows, fueled primarily by Middlebrook’s residential development and a $71 million Hy-Vee warehouse under construction near the I-35 exit.
Steve Bruere, the developer behind the Middlebrook agrihood, said the Main Street development will add about 60,000 square feet of office, retail and apartment space while designed to capture the look of a traditional town square.
East of Cumming's Main Street, single-family homes and townhomes are under construction in Middlebrook’s first housing development, called Great Western Crossing.
Diligent Development recently built trails that connect the Great Western Crossing community to The Mercantile, the agrihood’s first retail development. And more trails are planned, connecting the Great Western Trail to Cumming and the new Main Street and orchard — and eventually, hundreds of acres of future development.
At the same time, Hy-Vee, the West Des Moines-based grocery chain, is finishing its 560,000-square-foot warehouse, expected to employ 240 people. In front of the warehouse, Hy-Vee is building a Fast & Fresh convenience store, which fully opened March 26.
A competitor, Ankeny-based Casey’s, is building a convenience store across the road.
More: Goodbye, city life: Iowa's first 'agrihood' promises country living on edge of Des Moines
Growth in Cumming's commercial and residential values will mean growth in the town's property tax revenues. which will be used to help build a new sewer system, estimated to cost $6 million.
"Some of the new taxes will be invested in the oldest part of the community," Conner said.
Bruere hopes some of Hy-Vee’s new workers will want to live in the 26 apartments on the upper floor of the new Middlebrook Main Street, slated to open next year, or in its Great Western Crossing homes and townhomes.
Diligent Development snagged about $800,000 in state workforce housing tax credits for the Main Street project.
“Everything is happening, moving forward,” Bruere said, adding that progress comes after months of work, including getting City Council approval of the project’s comprehensive development plan.
“We’ve been grinding,” he said. “But we’ve come a long way.”
Iowa City-area's Solon a potential template for Cumming's growth
Rasch sees Cumming growing like Solon in eastern Iowa — one of the 10-fastest-growing cities in the state, with a population that climbed 48% over a decade to about 3,020 people, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
Like Solon, “Cumming has a good vibe," Rasch said. And like Solon, Cumming likely is "going to evolve,” he said.
City Administrator Cami Rasmussen said Solon has grown mostly because it sits in "a sweet spot" in Johnson County, 10 minutes from Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and North Liberty, and is next door to Lake McBride, Coralville Reservoir and other recreational amenities.
"It really is a premiere location," she said.
Despite the eastern Iowa city's growth, community surveys have shown that residents want to keep its small-town feel, Rasmussen said, preserving it as a “place where people put down roots — build their families and careers."
The town is focused on creating "opportunities for families and people to connect," she said, "because really, that is the core of a close-knit town.”
Rasmussen sees people connecting on Main Street, at schools and parks and around kids’ soccer and baseball fields. The foundation for those encounters is the city’s infrastructure improvements on Main Street, its requirements that parks be built into housing developments, and its investment in entrepreneurs, she said.
Rasch said original location of Big Grove Brewery was a major spark in the small town’s development.
“It’s thrived,” said Rasch, who lives on a farm outside Solon.
The city gave Big Grove a $120,000 forgivable loan for its downtown start, seeing it as a big attraction for cyclists connecting to the Hoover Nature and Lake MacBride Recreation trails, Rasmussen said. The investment was “a major big deal for a small town," she said.
Since its 2013 opening, Big Grove has opened taprooms, restaurants and breweries in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines and is slated to establish its first out-of-state location in Omaha. And it’s helped Solon's Main Street become a foodie’s paradise, Rasmussen said, with several popular restaurants springing up around it.
Solon “takes a lot of pride” in being the starting point for Big Grove, she said. "Small towns can make a big impact in Iowa."
Residents of Cumming 'want to know their neighbor,' mayor says
Connections are the heart of Cumming and the Middlebrook agrihood, people there say.
In planning surveys, residents say they want good schools ― something Cumming has as part of the Norwalk Community School District. They want a “walkable, bikeable” community, said Mayor Brent Highfill. And "they want to know their neighbors," he said.
It’s why Cumming residents get their mail at the post office instead of in home mailboxes, Conner said. It's a chance to chat. And new residents have embraced it.
“It's kind of an old tradition, but everybody seems to like it," she said.
It’s also why Highfill borrowed Norwalk’s Front Porch night concept, where folks can gather monthly with host neighbors during the summer to get to know each other. It attracts two or three dozen residents, he said.
“It’s pretty small-townish,” he said, but over the past three years, it’s “become a big deal.”
It’s why Fridays at the Farm brings 400 to 500 people to Middlebrook to relax, grab dinner and drinks, and listen to music while kids play, Bruere said.
And The Mercantile has become a community hot spot as well, with standing room only during live music nights, club and coffee klatch gatherings, and a slate of classes offered at the renovated, 134-year-old one-room schoolhouse.
Conner said the opening of Wilson’s Orchard, extending Cumming's Main Street and the Hy-Vee warehouse brings people to the community during the day. It’s a big change for a bedroom community, she said.
"Cumming can see how big they want to get, and it's not some crazy big, lose-your-identity number," she said.
High standards provide a way to keep growth in bounds
Highfill said the Middlebrook agrihood could bring as many as 7,000 new residents to Cumming.
But that growth is likely to come over several years.
“I don’t think we’ll get there for a long time,” the mayor said.
Bruere agrees. His group has rejected multifamily housing that fails to meet the agrihood’s design standards. And Great Western Crossing homes also must undergo an architectural review, a process that frustrates some homebuyers, he said.
“The good and the bad with that is, you can see the character of the homes we’re getting. But it kills velocity and sales,” Bruere said. “Growth is intentionally slower.”
In addition to single-family homes, Great Western Crossing has smaller villas that Bruere said appeal to young buyers and empty nesters. And developers are building about 60 townhomes in small clusters. All the new homes will have geothermal heat and cooling.
“With the trees and unique homes, people aren’t doing developments like this anymore,” Bruere said. “It’s going to be special.”
Bruere, a partner in Diligent Development, sees the Middlebrook Main Street attracting a strong mix of retailers, restaurants and small businesses. He’s moving the offices of the Peoples Co., the agricultural real estate, investment and farm management business he leads, from Clive to the new development.
Bruere said Middlebrook’s commercial development could become an attraction like Prairie Trail in Ankeny. The fast-growing, 1,000-acre mixed-use project has sparked about $953 million in commercial, retail and residential development since 2007, Ankeny building permit data shows.
Highfill doubts Cumming will see that intensity of growth.
“We don’t want to be a Waukee,” he said, of the Dallas County city, one of the fastest-growing in the state.
Rasch said he hopes the Middlebrook agrihood helps shape the development, “keeping an agricultural character … rather than the ever-exploding, endless rows of duplexes that all look the same and feel the same,” Rasch said.
'Go play in the creek. Go catch frogs'
In growing communities that want to keep their small-town feel, leaders should intensely focus on quality-of-life issues — like access to small business development, jobs, education, health and child care and recreation, said Biswa Das, an Iowa State University community and regional planning professor.
“Belonging to a community also is important … where people care for one another,” Das said.
In Cumming, Bruere said, people mistakenly believe an agrihood means big houses on large lots. The plan, however, calls for more dense development, with large greenspaces that residents share. About a third of the project is open space that includes parks, trails and farmland.
Bruere sees Middlebrook’s Main Street development and, eventually, a Middlebrook Market Hall, giving entrepreneurs a chance to reach consumers. Already, the owners of some of the food trucks that are popular at Fridays at the Farm are looking at space in the Main Street project, he said.
Rasch, whose family is opening Wilson’s Orchard, likes that the Middlebrook agrihood will attract unique businesses. It fits his family's business perspective.
“We want people to think a little bit differently about where their food comes from, where their fun comes from,” said Rasch, who hopes the orchard helps demonstrate the diversity of food that Iowans can grow.
The family will raise sheep, and possibly cattle, on meadows near the orchard. The animals will help supply the restaurant. And the apples and other fruit that visitors can pick also will be used to make sweet and hard cider, pies and other food.
The family's restaurant, Ciderhouse Restaurant & Bar, and the Farm Market opens April 10. The orchard is expected to open by May.
“We want people to bring their kids in clothes they can get dirty in, Rasch said. "Go play in the creek. Go catch frogs,”
Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com or 515-284-8457.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Cumming looks to keep small-town Iowa vibe amid new construction
