To bring short-term, affordable housing to Clive, Iowa, developers Tina Smothers and Jason Grove started by acquiring a former Marriott extended-stay hotel complex along Interstates 35 and 80.
Twelve buildings on the site at 11428 Forest Ave. have been converted to 112 workforce housing units, with 84 studio apartments and 28 two-bedroom units. The adaptive reuse project earned a CoStar Impact Award for best redevelopment project of 2023 for the Des Moines region, as judged by real estate professionals familiar with the market.
Units are available for lease terms as short as three months.
Work on The Vibe at 8035, as the property is now called, began in February 2022, and within a few months initial residents were moving in. The complex is now 98% leased.
The developers invested about $1.7 million in interior and exterior renovations, including removing an outdoor pool and replacing it with a lifestyle patio. Former hotel offices have been converted into a clubhouse with a community room, laundry room, fitness center, bike storage and meeting rooms available to residents 24 hour per day.
About the project: Old items were donated to local nonprofit organizations or shipped overseas, including 80 mattresses sent to Africa. Other donated items included more than 200 televisions and boxes of soap and shampoo. Items such as light fixtures and ceiling fans were reused.
What the judges said: “Developers saw a need and a way to meet that need,” wrote Judge Cary Halfpop, director of commercial real estate at the Polk County assessor’s office. “They jumped through many hoops to bring the new short-term rental community to reality.”
They made it happen: Tina Smothers of Optimum Real Estate Management, Jason Grove of Grove Holdings, Mandi Borst and Zach Spaulding of ARTISAN Management Group, and T.J. Jacobs of CBRE.
