Angie Jordan believes every neighborhood has doers. But Iowa City’s South District is chock full of them.
“This is a daily grind,” said Jordan, president of the South District Neighborhood Association.
“This isn’t something one person did or one organization did. This was a forever commitment that started in the neighborhood with those who wanted change.”
Jordan was born in Iowa City, and like a “true Iowa Citian” she left and came back several times. In 2015, she settled in the South District where she began getting involved in different community organizations, like the Grant Wood Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) and later the Alexander Elementary School PTO, which she co-founded. Three years after Jordan moved to the South District, Iowa City Neighborhood Outreach Coordinator Marcia Bollinger suggested Jordan join the neighborhood’s new association, which had just started to coalesce.
The South District Neighborhood Association (SDNA) was formed in 2018, when four neighborhoods on the city’s southeast side — Pepperwood, Wetherby, Grant Wood and South Pointe — banded together to share resources and work together. The neighborhood association is a volunteer-run, no-dues organization that helps residents, business owners, nonprofits and others stay informed about their community and work towards common goals to improve it. The group hosts events like National Night Out, the Fall Harvest, winter gear drives and neighborhood clean-up efforts. SDNA also organized efforts to paint community murals and plant Little Free Libraries.
“We have our ideas, and we express them, and we create action around them. But we weave them together, so that anytime we’re working on one thing, we’re actually working on all the things in the neighborhood,” Jordan said.
Jordan and Jessica Bovey are co-founders of SDNA. It has four current committees — leadership, neighborhood engagement, arts initiative and neighborhood event — with three others planned for the future.
“Our goal is really to be a vehicle of information exchange. And that’s between the residents, but it’s also between anyone who lives, works or plays on this side of town,” Jordan said. “We want to make sure that information goes both ways, that folks are learning about different resources and opportunities and exciting cool things happening throughout Iowa City and Johnson County. But we also want our residents to become comfortable and confident in sharing their ideas and sharing their feedback.”
The South District is changing, with new developments like the Diversity Market, the Self-Supporting Municipal Improvement District (SSMID) and the change to a form-based zoning. But for years the southeast side has carried a reputation for violence and crime.
“You look back and you Google ‘Southeast side of Iowa City.’ It’s all crime, and it’s not safe,” Jordan said. “That narrative has been so challenging to shed.”
Tasha Lard, owner of JD Beauty Supply in Pepperwood Plaza, believes that SDNA is changing the narrative and bringing a positive light to the South District. Lard, along with Jordan and Marlén Mendoza, helped pilot the Diversity Market, a pop-up outdoor market that began last summer. The market brought eyes to around 30 minority-owned and women-owned businesses, featuring food vendors, products, services and family friendly activities.
This year’s Diversity Market won’t change much from last year. It will just have more. The market will move locations from Kingdom Center to Pepperwood Plaza for more space and visibility, operate for 10 weeks instead of five and have double the vendors from last year.
“This allows all of those small business owners in the area, those entrepreneurs, those BIPOC owners, to come out and show the world, and show Iowa, who they are and what they stand for,” Lard said. “We are changing the way the foundation has been for years.”
Lard moved to Iowa City eight years ago from Illinois. While she doesn’t live in the South District, JD Beauty Supply has been a staple of Pepperwood Plaza for the past two years. Her store is also known for the “business corner,” where other small entrepreneurs can display their business cards and promote themselves.
“I feel like the South District has grown significantly. I also know that the South District has changed, and is changing, in a great direction,” she said. “It takes a village, and I want people to know that the South District is a village. And we’re helping each other to grow in every avenue, in every aspect.”
Lard also helped with the creation of the SSMID, a self-imposed taxing district that collects a dedicated property tax and reinvests the funds to support marketing and business retention, improve livability and infrastructure and to hire an executive director.
The SSMID, which covers Pepperwood Plaza and the surrounding area, levies a tax of $5 per $1,000 assessed taxable value, or around $104,000 annually. The Iowa City Council unanimously approved the SSMID last January. It will begin at the start of the new fiscal year in July and will last for the next five years. The city council may renew it after that period.
This is the second SSMID in Iowa City. The Iowa City Downtown District has had their own SSMID since 2012, which successfully pushed for first-hour free parking, a grant program for building renovations, public art and increased lighting. It also allowed small businesses to collectively bargain for group rates on core services, essential goods, marketing and joint investments.
The first meeting to begin forming the South District SSMID board is April 18. The board will have 11 voting members with spaces for property owners, business owners, nonprofits and local residents. Other organizations can join the board as non-voting members.
“I’m personally really excited about our South District SSMID,” Jordan said. “For a successful SSMID to work, it requires everybody who it touches — the commercial property owners, the businesses, the churches, the schools — it requires all of them to have to play a role.”
Funds generated by the tax could be used for creating and maintaining a market plaza space, an open-air market structure for events like the Diversity Market or improving the streetscape with public art, greenery, painted crosswalks, lighting, signage and public furniture. The SSMID could also bring more entertainment to the south district, Jordan said.
Elly Hofmaier, marketing coordinator for the Englert Theatre, said that the SSMID might help people discover businesses. While she isn’t a resident of the South District, she followed the SSMID’s progress closely, even speaking before city council in December about the visibility it would bring to local restaurants in Pepperwood Plaza.
“When I was in college, you know, I probably just went to Taco Bell for all my tacos. And then it wasn’t until a year or two post-grad, then it’s like El Paso, Acapulco, real tacos,” Hofmaier told Little Village. “So yeah I’m like, ‘Wow, maybe if I had known about this sooner, I would be much more woke on tacos,’ and that’s where the SSMID might come in. Help people get woke on the good tacos in town. That’s all I can ask for in this whole city.”
Hofmaier first learned about SDNA and the SSMID last June, when she interviewed Jordan and Mendoza for the Englert’s Best Show Ever podcast.
“Angie and Marlén and Tasha Lard, I just think are the role models like everyone would want their child to have. Just so positive, so hardworking, so selfless. The community building that they are doing together is so inspiring to watch,” she said. “What they’re doing is totally the blueprint for what community building can look like.”
SDNA began working on the SSMID in 2020 and workshopped their proposal with residents in the South District, as well as the Iowa City Downtown District.
“I’m very grateful for the residents that live in the South District that came forth and just created an opportunity that is now a reality,” said Mayor Bruce Teague. “I’m just super excited to see what will come out of our South District.”
All eyes are on the South District with hope and aspiration, Teague said, partly thanks to Jordan, who he has known for at least 15 years.
“She has the heart of an angel. She loves to work and uplift people, give them motivation and help them realize their potentials,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing all the great things that she will continue to do within this community. She’s phenomenal. She is what I would call awesome and amazing.”
In addition to the SSMID, Teague is looking forward to seeing how the form-based zoning for the South District the city council approved in October will reshape the area. Unlike traditional zoning which focuses on the use allowed for sections of land, a form-based code prioritizes the physical character of a community.
Because form-based codes emphasize how a building fits in, rather than the use of the building, it offers more flexibility for mixed-use zones, which can lead to more corner stores and local businesses within walking distance, instead of isolated suburban neighborhoods. Traditional zoning tends to discourage walkable communities and alternative forms of travel, like biking and public transit, in favor of auto-oriented travel.
Since the 1940s, traditional zoning codes have prohibited building multi-family housing types — like duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, etc. — within single family or transitory neighborhoods. The form-based code will allow for these “missing middle” units, which will give future residents more housing options.
“Our population on this side of town is gonna double,” Jordan said. “There’s gonna be a lot more people on this side of town, and I’m always excited. I love meeting new people, helping folks feel like they belong in a community.”
The form-based code will include around 900 acres of undeveloped land just below the South District. Half of that land is in unincorporated Johnson County, but Iowa City plans to annex it.
“The form-based code provides for a mix of types of buildings, all at good neighborhood scale. So that means walkable, pedestrian friendly, bikeable connected neighborhoods,” said Councilmember Laura Bergus. “It provides kind of templates for a scale of development that is neighborhood oriented, and should therefore mean that it can be relatively smaller homes, relatively higher density. And those are both things that are really important for affordability in housing.”
Bergus is a longtime resident of the South District. She grew up on Regal Lane and attended Grant Wood Elementary. In 2003, she bought a home in South District where she has continued to live and raise her kids.
While the South District remains a working class, lower-income community, demographics have shifted as more students are moving into The Quarters, which was formerly a multi-family apartment complex called Rose Oaks, Bergus said. The opening of Alexander Elementary, as well as improvements to parks and green spaces, have been welcome developments.
“It’s changed a lot over my whole, you know, four decades plus,” she said.
Bergus first met Jordan at a Grant Wood Elementary PTO meeting. As one of the relatively few white families at the school, she didn’t know the best way to connect with other families. But Jordan offered her a hand.
“I always credit Angie with being someone who very gently, very kindly, helped challenge sort of what a PTO could be, should be,” she said. “When Angie works on something, it is given an energy, and a light, and an excitement, that is unlike just about any other community organizer I’ve ever met.”
The SDNA has been “a force of positive change” in the South District and Iowa City over the past four years, Bergus said.
“The South District Neighborhood Association has consistently held events to bring neighbors together, to clean up the neighborhood, to help people feel connected and be connected,” she said. “Show me another neighborhood in Iowa City that gets that kind of really just grassroots, honest engagement from people.”
Bergus said she wants to see more grassroots neighborhood associations like SDNA throughout Johnson County.
“Not everybody has an Angie, but you know, put enough people together and you do,” she said.
Jordan feels deeply rooted to Iowa City. Her husband of 12 years is a first responder for the Iowa City Fire Department. Her sister and parents all live in the area, too. She’s also a mother of two: a third grader and a fifth grader. Oftentimes, she’s worried not just for her family, but the people around her.
“My motivation is I’m scared. I’m scared that those kids crossing this street are going to get hit by a car. Why isn’t there a stop sign there? Or I’m worried that everybody thinks this side of town is shady, and they’re not going to shop here. And we need to have thriving businesses,” she said. “When I engage my fear, I like to do it in a way that is supported by my curiosity, ’cause in my curiosity I feel powerful.”
“I fail a lot. I fail most of the time, and in that failure, if it’s coupled with my curiosity, I get to learn all the time constantly about the world around me and myself,” she said. “Continuing to be really aware of my inner compass, my fear that says something is not right, because that activates creativity and energy. And that’s personally how I have always gotten through my life at a very young age.”
Jordan is a doer, but she sometimes wants to do less and enjoy the little things in her neighborhood. She believes the entire community has to carry the load, not just one person or one organization.
“This is no one’s job. Everyone part of this is volunteering, so that balance of managing, dreaming and action with reality, that in itself has been a challenge,” she said. “It’s important to span out and see that we’re just part of the web and the network that we created. And the other piece to that is, how do you maintain that network?”
Jordan recently founded Banjo Knits Empowerment, a knitting instruction business that she uses to help contract some SDNA work. Transitioning from volunteer to businesswoman is “a work in progress,” but she needs a sustainable structure to hold herself accountable and prevent burnout.
“It can be challenging. It’s also a lot of fun, so much fun, to do community developing and organizing … I also love gardening and knitting and being in my backyard. That’s my happy place,” Jordan said. “For me a lot of times, it doesn’t feel like work because whatever it is that I’m hoping to create, or I’m a part of a team creating, I benefit from. My family benefits from. My extended family benefits from. So, it feels like, you know, those things aren’t necessarily chores. They’re creating access to opportunity, and I think it’s fun.”
But when the “daily grind” restarts — the behind-the-scenes routine of waving at neighbors, helping them shovel snow, clean-up efforts, grant writing and mural painting — the neighborhood could use a few more doers.
“We need all the help we can get,” she said. “And we need the folks who live here to feel like this is their home, and that when they speak up and say something, they will be heard.”
Adria Carpenter is a multimedia reporter at Little Village. This article was originally published in Little Village issue 305.
