By now you’ve probably heard the latest news about Des Moines Public Schools and Drake University.
The educational couple’s been going steady for a long time and now they may be moving into a brand new stadium together. This relationship is getting serious!
The site for the proposed Des Moines Public Schools Community Stadium at Drake University is land donated by Drake, but it’s going to extend the athletic campuses of the DMPS middle and high schools, much like Central Campus and Central Academy do for academics.
As Drake Athletic Director Brian Hardin said at the big reveal on Wednesday, it was “a great day to be a Bulldog – and a Polar Bear, and a Railsplitter, and a Scarlet, and a Roughrider, and a Husky.”
They’ll probably have to come up with a nickname sometime after the place gets up and running, running, running in the summer of 2021. An anagram/acronym might not be possible; too few vowels in DMPSCSDU. In the end it may have an altogether different name, as naming rights could be a part of a fundraising effort.
No matter what the facility might one day be called, Bill Good is a name that will be long associated with it. As DMPS Chief Operations Officer the past 13 years, Good is the man who’s overseen the district’s commitment to make a dramatic upgrades and improvements to our schools.
Good has coordinated hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of capital improvements, transforming a district made up of buildings with an average age of more than 65 years into a national leader in energy efficiency and building security, not to mention creating high-quality learning spaces. Those projects were primarily funded by state SAVE tax revenues, which are earmarked for capital improvements by law. Many elementary schools sport new gymnasiums (in part to eliminate the inefficiencies of gyms doing double-duty as cafeterias), but as Superintendent Dr. Tom Ahart noted at the unveiling of the stadium plans, 21st century capital improvements with a collective price tag in excess of half a billion dollars haven’t included any secondary school athletic facilities. Now, the opportunity is there for a collaborative project to build one for local students that’s “as good as any place in Iowa,” Ahart said.
Considering that the proposed stadium will serve all ten middle schools and five comprehensive high schools, the district’s $15 million contribution to the cost of construction averages out to a million dollar investment per school in a first-class extracurricular venue at a site that subliminally suggests college as an option post-high school to the thousands of DMPS students who will set foot on the Drake campus each year.
A partnership like this is a win-win. Drake President Dr. Marty Martin even described it as “overdue.” After all, as Dr. Ahart noted, the relationship between DMPS and Drake goes back more than a century. So, how did this project finally come about?
If you ask Good, he just smiles and says, “It was our idea,” meaning Drake’s and DMPS’s, together. Certainly, Wednesday’s big announcement was the culmination of talks that took place over a period of several months and involved many officials from both institutions.
But Good also says the vision on display in the form of a slick video and artist renderings that stands to be fully realized in less than two years is one he’s imagined for years. DMPS first started looking at options for a new stadium seven years ago, and Good is passionate about providing students with state-of-the-art facilities in all areas, from academics to the arts and now athletics.
“In all of our discussions,” said Hardin, “Bill always framed this project as a chance to change the quality of opportunities for the next generation of students in Des Moines.”
Martin mentioned that one of the things he likes to hear when he strolls the campus during the afternoons is the sound of outdoor play coming from the Burt Boys & Girls Club, located right across the street from the proposed site for the new stadium.
“It’s a beautiful sound, kids playing,” he said. “And I look forward to hearing a lot more of it when the Des Moines schools start playing football and soccer here.”
That will be music to lots of ears.
For more about the proposed stadium visit stadium.dmschools.org.
