Economic Development The strength of the West Des Moines economy and the city’s sound fiscal management are measured in myriad ways, but perhaps with no greater authority than the coveted triple-A bond rating received in 2005 from Standard & Poor’s Corp. The high credit score removes some of the city’s risk in making large infrastructure improvements, such as the $44 million the city has invested to open the city’s western areas to development. Pivotal in those improvements was the $20 million Mills Civic Parkway interchange at Interstate 35. It provides easy access to the Jordan Creek Town Center corridor, which is growing so quickly that city officials expect an early payoff for some of the tax increment bonds it issued to finance the infrastructure improvements. West Des Moines also invested $16 million in highway infrastructure as part of a package to attract Wells Fargo in a deal that will create as many as 5,900 new jobs at a $150-million plus, 960,000-plus-square-foot multi-building campus located just south of the Jordan Creek Town Center shopping mall. The annual payroll is expected to top $64 million. The city’s proactive approach to attracting such high-quality developments as the Jordan Creek Town Center and Wells Fargo projects speaks to the “partnership” approach to governance that extends not only to other governmental entities, but to the business community as well. That philosophy has helped West Des Moines claim the Des Moines Business Record’s award for “city government most conducive to business” in each of the 10 years the newspaper has conducted its “Best of Des Moines” readers’ poll. Developers doing business in West Des Moines offer glowing testimonials about the city’s ability to manage its growth responsibly and to involve its citizens in government through advisory and strategic planning groups, another hallmark of the city’s partnership approach to governance. Developers feel comfortable spending a little extra money on their buildings because they know the one next to it is going to be just as nice or nicer and their property values will be protected. Growth in the commercial sector has put West Des Moines in an enviable position among Iowa cities. The state’s ninth-largest city in terms of population, West Des Moines ranks fourth in taxable valuation – 55 percent of which comes from commercial developments. The city ranked sixth in taxable sales in fiscal year 2004, the last year for which figures are available, and that doesn’t include sales from Jordan Creek Town Center, which opened in August 2004. It’s not as though West Des Moines needed another sign that it was a good place to do business. The signals have been plentiful, evidenced by the $1.1 billion in building permits issued in the past five years. But when Wells Fargo & Co. decided to locate a $250 million campus for its mortgage lending operations between Mills Civic Parkway and South Jordan Creek Parkway at South 68th Street, it left no doubt that the City of West Des Moines was prepared.