Michael Crumb | Oct 27, 2025 | 4:02 pm | 

7 min read time| 1,646 words| All Latest News, Arts and Culture, Economic Development, Real Estate and Development| 

Organizers behind the proposed construction of the Pro Iowa Soccer Stadium and Global Plaza near downtown Des Moines say they remain optimistic about the project’s future despite recent questions about funding.

The nonprofit Iowa Soccer Development Foundation has proposed a 6,300-seat stadium on the former Dico Inc. site, a superfund site south of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and east of Fleur Drive, with plans to bring a United Soccer League franchise to the city. 

A feasibility study by Johnson Consulting estimated the stadium and the associated Global Plaza development would generate $8.8 billion in revenue over 20 years and create 2,000 permanent jobs and 6,800 part-time jobs. It would represent an investment of $500 million in downtown Des Moines.

For business leaders, the development would add to the vibrancy of downtown Des Moines and be an economic driver that draws workers to the region.

“I think it’s a tremendous asset for people to live here,” said Jeff Lorenzen, CEO of American Equity Investment Life Insurance Co. and president of the Iowa Soccer Development Foundation, the nonprofit behind the stadium project. “The stadium itself has the proximity. The more you can have activities downtown, the more draw you get to people who want to live downtown. The demand for downtown housing is fairly high, and in order to retain people down here, you have to have things to do.”

But the stadium project, initially estimated at $95 million, has faced an ongoing funding gap that now stands at about $22 million, leading to work to “value-engineer” the design to try to accommodate the funding that is available.

That process is “always evolving,” Lorenzen said.

“We have a gap we’re trying to fill, and we have a desire for some additional dollars that are coming from IEDA that we’re working through to try and find a way to capture those dollars. “And we have three or four other strategies we’re working through, and between Krause+ and ISDF, we believe we’ll close that gap,” Lorenzen said.

Krause+ is the property development arm of Krause Group, which owns 15 properties in the John Pappajohn Sculpture Park neighborhood, from the redeveloped Crescent building on Ingersoll Avenue going south toward the site of the proposed soccer stadium. In all, it totals about 1 million square feet of space…

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