Regents approve development plan for six more CyTown buildings

The Iowa Board of Regents approved site development lease proposals for six buildings in the CyTown development at the Iowa State Center during a special meeting Dec. 3. The approval clears the way for the developer, Goldenrod, to sign tenant agreements for the two office and retail buildings, two suite buildings, a food and beverage anchor building and an amphitheater. A proposed seventh building project, a hotel, still is in the design phase, and the eighth building, McFarland Clinic, is under construction.

For each building, the proposal includes building plans, financing structure and revenue projections. According to those projections, the CyTown development would generate $184 million in net revenue for the university over 30 years.

Regents Robert Cramer and Nancy Dunkel, who represent the board on the CyTown Management Committee, both spoke to the proposal's reliability.

'We're very pleased with the depth of the pro forma and the results of what they're projecting," Cramer said. "We feel the projections are conservative, we feel good about that."

Dunkel, a retired banker who speculated that she landed on the committee because of all of her questions about the project, said the committee thoroughly vetted the data provided in the site development proposals. 

"I feel they're as good a budget projection as you can get," she said. "It's been a very open process, and I feel really good about what's going to happen at Iowa State with this CyTown project."

In response to a question from regent Chris Hensley about what happens if deadlines or projections aren't met, Cramer said Goldenrod carries a lot of the risk and so is motivated to find reliable tenants for the buildings and to keep the buildings fully occupied. In one case, Cramer noted, Goldenrod negotiated with a tenant to take a smaller space "because they have a really good idea of how these developments work and which businesses are going to thrive here.

"We have a developer who's very motivated to make it work," he said.

New board leaders

Board members elected Cramer to serve as president and Kurt Tjaden to serve as president pro tem through April 30, 2026, completing the leadership terms of Sherry Bates and Greta Rouse, respectively. Bates resigned from the board earlier this week, effective Dec. 4, and Rouse announced she would step down from her leadership post on the same day, though remain a board member.

Cramer said his three goals are to keep education affordable, provide academic excellence "top to bottom" through merit and hard work, and ensure the regent universities offer "a fair, balanced place for vigorous debate, especially for our students."

"We can flip the narrative on higher education," he said. "That here in Iowa, a degree from one of our public universities is a great investment and is going to help our students for the rest of their lives."

Two of the nine board seats now are vacant. David Barker left the board in October for an appointment in the U.S. Department of Education.

In other action, the board:

• Approved Iowa State's request to designate President Wendy Wintersteen as president emerita, effective on her Jan. 2 retirement date. Because of her many years as a tenured professor in good standing and per the Faculty Handbook policy, it is the university's practice to grant the honorific emeritus status to university presidents when they retire as sitting presidents. Former presidents Hughes, Friley, Hilton, Parks and Geoffroy also were granted the title when they retired from the presidency. Wintersteen also will receive professor emerita status.
• Directed its investment and finance committee, chaired by Tjaden, to lead a comprehensive review of additional revenue streams and cost efficiencies across all regent universities and outside the "normal funding sources," give regular progress updates to the board and make recommendations to the board. Bates said this will be comparable to board efficiency studies during the COVID pandemic and a decade ago in its TIER (Transparent, Inclusive Efficiency Review) project. Tjaden said the effort will involve university staff and external experts.