Everybody at the moment is understandably fixated on the several square feet of the voting booth, but let me shift focus for a moment to the 35,000 square feet of Wells Fargo Arena in downtown Des Moines.

A landmark for nearly 20 years, “the Well” next summer rebrands as Casey’s Center, after the name of one of the Midwest’s most ubiquitous convenience store chains.

Casey’s, with more than 2,600 stores across 16 states, spent $18.3 million for a decade of naming rights to begin July 1, 2025. Going forward, you’ll probably be able to scarf Casey’s beloved breakfast pizza in the arena while you sit and listen to Jelly Roll, who is a superstar singer, not a dessert.

Trying to keep up with pace of change can be dizzying.

cars parked on roadside near buildings during daytime — Wells Fargo Arena (soon to be Casey’s Center), at the upper left of the frame, looks over downtown Des Moines. (Photo by Niko Vassios on Unsplash)

The 17,000-seat arena, owned by Polk County as part of the Iowa Events Center complex, was christened by the late Tom Petty, the first music headliner who played the arena on July 18, 2005, with support from the Black Crowes. Paul McCartney also performed Oct. 27 that year, marking the Beatle’s belated debut in Des Moines.

Writing as The Des Moines Register’s music critic, I called the 2005 McCartney concert the most significant in our capital city since a 1977 appearance by Elvis Presley.

That may have been hyperbole in service to the rock music patriarchy, but music critics love nothing more than occasional hyperbole.

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At the same time Wells Fargo Arena was under construction, a new grassroots organization formed to support the local music scene: The Des Moines Music Coalition (DMMC) launched in the summer of 2004 and officially incorporated as a nonprofit the following year.

DMMC produced its first local music festival in 2006 in Hotel Fort Des Moines. But it came into its own with its signature two-day fest featuring national acts: 80/35 Music Festival debuted in July 2008 with an audience of 13,500 ticketholders and a total estimated crowd of 30,000. The Flaming Lips, the Roots, and other performers filled green space in the Western Gateway that later became Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

Last week, DMMC announced it was dissolving. This year’s 80/35 (relocated to Waterworks Park) drew a meager crowd, while the org reportedly struggled financially in the pandemic era.

The DMMC goodbye statement noted that “many other music-related organizations and businesses in central Iowa are well-positioned to continue the work to foster our local music culture, and strive to position Des Moines as a nationally-recognized music city.”

There’s ample evidence of how Des Moines has thrived in the last 20 years—culturally or otherwise. Pappajohn Sculpture Park is just one of numerous attractions, hangouts, and venues that have proliferated throughout the metro.

Lauridsen Skatepark, the nation’s largest public skatepark, opened in 2021 across the street from Wells Fargo Arena.

An impressively diverse range of music acts from around the globe now flow through the metro on a weekly basis—whether a small club such as xBk Live or a spendy suburban palace like Vibrant Music Hall in Waukee, where you can pay $15 or even $25 to park within eyeshot of a corn field.

Meanwhile, much of rural Iowa has struggled to maintain basic infrastructure, let alone arts and entertainment.

Urban Iowa is growing as rural Iowa shrinks. In the words of the Iowa State University report: “The urban core has boomed over the last 10 years, even during COVID, surpassing the U.S. growth rate. In short, COVID only temporarily slowed persistent rural population decline.”

In a sense, this makes Casey’s Center even more fitting for the name of downtown Des Moines’ arena, considering that a Casey’s is the main gathering spot in so many small towns.

I’ve witnessed it in my journalism travels: There may be no café or even chairs in a Casey’s, yet a group of farmers gathers there each morning, sipping coffee and swapping gossip while loitering near the bottles of motor oil and windshield wiper fluid.

Casey’s and similar convenience store chains by default have become rural hubs with reliable operating hours. The company four years ago scrubbed the old-fashioned “General Store” from its name, but in some ways these convenience stores have become only more general and central to their communities. Iowa folksinger Greg Brown in 1988 captured some of this essence with his song “Walking Down to Casey’s”:

We are walking down to Casey’s
To get a Diet Coke for Mom.
I bet Larry will be there.
He’ll be doing wheelies on his new bike.
We are walking down to Casey’s,
Me and my brother and Champ.

So, Iowa’s largest city and scores of our smallest towns now will have at least one thing in common: Their main venue is a Casey’s. When basketball and wrestling teams flock to Des Moines from every corner of the state for championship brackets, all the more appropriate that they’ll trek from their quaint rural Casey’s to visit the Casey’s urban king.

Shifting focus back to the several square feet of the voting booth, our downtown arena almost becomes a looming symbol when we consider all the polarization in fortunes and political attitudes now straining our democratic institutions. As shiny and spectacular as things may look from the vantage point of the one giant Casey’s in the middle of the city, we have a representative democracy and Electoral College where we still must reckon with how to improve the view from all the small Casey’s speckling a sparser rural landscape.

Please be engaged in your communities and in our democracy. Please care for your neighbors and extend grace to them whenever possible. Please spend time helping to improve our civic institutions rather than fueling cynical agendas that would prefer to tear them apart to grab power. Please support a common set of facts and a healthy free press rather than stoking the fires of partisan propaganda and vacuous viral content.

Please go walking down to the voting booth.

I would like to feel more confident we’ll maintain a healthy democracy for the rest of the year, let alone for the next decade of arena naming rights.

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Iowa Writers Collaborative Holiday Party

The Iowa Writers Collaborative will host a party at the Harkin Institute on the Drake University campus in Des Moines. The event will include appetizers and a short program. It’s a great opportunity to meet some of your favorite writers and visit the state-of-the-art home of the Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement.

Please become a paid subscriber to any of our columns, such as this one, and RSVP here. A donation will be accepted at the door for spouses or guests. If you’re traveling, see hotel information on the RSVP form.

Details
When: 5-8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13.
Where: Harkin Institute, 2800 University Ave., Des Moines.
What: Appetizers, a short program, great conversation.

Available for iOS and Android

The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative roster

The Iowa Writers Collaborative has grown to include more than 50 members and a Letters From Iowans column. Each member is an independent columnist who shares two things in common: They have made a living as writers and are interested in the state of Iowa. Subscribe to the main account for a convenient way to be notified each Sunday about most posts by most members. You can support individual members according to your unique interests by becoming a paid subscriber to any newsletter. We are also proud to be affiliated with Iowa Capital Dispatch, where some of our content is regularly republished.

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Walking down to the voting booth