Caleb Knutson is the new executive director of Downtown Cedar Rapids, a role he began late last year following a decade of industry experience.
Caleb joins me to discuss the ways that downtown Cedar Rapids is unique, how he approaches his new role and explores some of the strengths and opportunities for growth within the community. He also shares how they’re using AI to track data, how he approaches an elevator pitch to businesses, and why he’ll try anything except jumping out of an airplane.
I learned a lot and I think you will too.
Sponsored by MidWestOne Bank, this is the latest edition of the CBJ’s Real Success with Nate Kaeding and notable Iowa business and cultural leaders.
Real Success with Nate Kaeding was named Best Business Podcast at the 2024 Iowa Podcast Awards.
Nate Kaeding: Talk a bit about how the first four months have gone for you. Where do you see the opportunity ahead here with the organization?
Caleb Knutson: I’ll still call myself new-ish for another 14 months, if I’m being real. But I’m super excited to be here coming from the Des Moines Metro. Cedar Rapids is the second-largest city in the state and it’s considered an innovative place. So when this opportunity came up, I was super excited and I applied and everything went really well.
I’m an urban planner by trade and I found the Downtown Vision Plan online. As a planner, we deal with plans and documents all the time. You could see that a lot of time and effort had been put into it. There was a lot of collaboration and that got me excited. They didn’t just pay a consultant to do this. It’s not just a two-year lifespan. This is a long-term vision. So it was really exciting that the foundation was already set.
Also, when you are in Ames or Des Moines, you can walk around and not bump into anyone, but here, even though it’s the second-largest city, it’s a small town. I can’t walk around downtown or be anywhere in Cedar Rapids without someone waving, honking, or chatting. I grew up in rural Iowa, so I can tell it really has that feel of a small town. It’s really tight knit. I never would’ve anticipated that.
Nate: What has stood out to you already as some of the strengths of Cedar Rapids?
Caleb: I’ll speak as an outsider. When you think of Cedar Rapids, you think of innovation, you think of cutting edge, and you think of the amazing food scene here.
Nate: You mentioned innovation. Talk a bit about that component of downtown Cedar Rapids and the daytime workforce.
Caleb: We’ve got some huge anchor businesses. We’ve got some stalwarts that have been here forever. But what’s really neat about downtown Cedar Rapids is we do have startups. Not many communities have both flourishing anchors and a lot of startups. It’s all about a balancing act in economic development. The fact that a lot of businesses in Cedar Rapids are homegrown is huge. That means leadership is homegrown or leadership has moved here. Once you get people bought into the community, they’re going to care more about X, Y, and Z. They’re going to care more about supporting different community events. You’re not sending an email off to another, larger city. You’re sending an email that’s going to be received and read in this building and in this community. That’s important to recognize.
Nate: What’s your elevator pitch to a business to convince them that headquartering in downtown Cedar Rapids is the right choice?
Caleb: If I only have 60 seconds, I’m coming in hot. Why wouldn’t you want to locate down here? We’ve got space and we’ve got innovation. You can see the success. You can see people want to be down here. It’s not just that you’re moving your business here, but you’re moving your ideas here. Cedar Rapids is known for being innovative and cutting edge. Being able to build upon that is all about regionalism and the rising tide that raises all ships. That’s definitely something that we believe in downtown Cedar Rapids, and we’d love to have anyone down here we possibly could. We’ve got banks who are doing great work. We have nonprofits that are doing great work. We have so many different organizations that are pitching a hand in, and I think that speaks to the livelihood of downtown.
Nate: I know you’re only four months in but can you speak to some of the numbers and trends you’re seeing? What’s the ballpark figure for daytime workforce in downtown Cedar Rapids?
Caleb: So the numbers that I have heard, and I’ll need to double check this, but I think we’re 60-70% back to downtown daytime traffic numbers. That’s pretty good. We can all recognize what Covid did. It sped up the economy 10-15 years for remote work. It was bound to happen, but we weren’t prepared for an overnight shift.
However, what sets downtown Cedar Rapids apart is that we are back to pre-pandemic numbers for visitor traffic. That’s not something very many downtowns can say. That’s not something that very many cities can say. That goes back to the strength of our theaters. That goes back to the strength of our food and drinking establishments. We are situated really well.
Nate: What are your key performance indicators within the organization? What are you tracking throughout downtown that is going to signify whether you are hitting success or hitting certain benchmarks?
Caleb: We’re very fortunate to have Placer.ai software that counts foot traffic. We can take any business downtown and compare it. For example, at Pickle Palace, the average time that an individual spends there is 108 minutes. That is considerably higher because the average time most people spend in a place is less than 90 minutes. So when we talk to businesses or we talk to stakeholders, we can look at what the data is telling us. I’m all about data. Anecdotal is important information, but I want the proof.
Nate: Give me the top three on your wishlist of businesses you’d like to land here in downtown Cedar Rapids.
Caleb: My top three would be a grocery store, a pharmacy, and “retailtainment.” So a grocery store, whether it be something like Fareway or Trader Joe’s or a cooperative, would be fantastic. I think people need to be able to get their medicine and be able to get those quick things in downtown from a pharmacy. Then there’s “retailtainment,” or something like these things that are popping up. You can do an activity and you can shop, but it’s also experiential. Every time you go, it’s different. You might win one time and you might lose next time.
That experience is incredibly important. When people go to Pickle Palace, they’re not just going for the game. They’re going for their entertainment. They’re going for the “Gram.” Once they’re living in the moment through their social media, that just creates the bigger network of excitement for those facilities and for those activities.
Nate: If you could freely go around the country, what downtowns would you want to visit for inspiration?
Caleb: My dream wishlist of downtowns would be Austin, Denver and Boston. There’s also Boise. I think I like the mountain west. I think there’s a lot of cool things going on there that’s been built upon food and drink.
Nate: What are some of the other downtown areas that you look to as peers or similar to Cedar Rapids?
Caleb: So we are considered a micropolitan…
Nate: That’s a new one to me!
Caleb: I’ve been able to use that word twice today professionally. I love it. It’s jargon for “over a hundred thousand.” There are a lot of communities within that. I’ll look at programs that other midwest micropolitans are doing that are addressing vacancies, for example. I look at not just comparable cities in size, but also what is scalable. I’m all about best practices and what can we bring here that makes sense. What might be a best practice for Chicago might not be a best practice for here and vice versa.
Nate: What does a typical day or week look like for you, and how do you balance all of it?
Caleb: For the first four months, my days are just meeting people. My days start with coffee, meeting someone new, hearing about X, Y, and Z that they’re passionate about, and then figuring that out. Then I go back to the office, try and get some admin work done, try and get some research done, try and get some normal executive director work done. Then, in the afternoon, I try and get some more work done. And then it’s a happy hour meeting.
I ran myself ragged doing three meetings a day for two weeks at the end of January. I joked with someone today that, ever since I came to Cedar Rapids, I’ve only had leftovers or a cold meat sandwich three times. I love eating out. There’s so many great places to eat. But it’s just one of those things when you’re new to the community: You’ve got to get out. It’s not just that you’re meeting council members or stakeholders, but you’re meeting business owners. I want the bar managers and the hotel managers to know who we are. We’re here to support you. For me, right now, the role is networking. It’s all about meeting people.
Nate: What could downtown Cedar Rapids look like in the year 2035 that would be markedly different than how it looks today?
Caleb: So if we’re thinking long-term, we will have to look at the vision plan. What are the goals? It’s the activation of different green spaces. It’s collaboration with business and industry and nonprofits. It’s resident and visitor foot traffic. How can we keep them all engaged? When I’m thinking of 2035, I’m thinking of continually building upon what we’re doing.
I think of Mays Island. Mays Island is something that we’re going to work on this year. It is a huge component of the vision plan. We’re working on putting a giant branding sign of Cedar Rapids on there that’s going to be a thing that you can see from I-380. That’s going to be something that people are going to want to take pictures of and things like that. It’ll be a landmark.
My dream is, years from now, that people go there to have lunch. We will have food truck competitions, festivals, concerts, things like that. We’re making it a place where people want to go or if they miss out, they have FOMO, or fear of missing out.
Nate: Talk a bit about the events side of your work.
Caleb: So mission creep is something that scares every economic developer. I think it’s what keeps us up at night. As for events, we are more than happy to help sponsor and more than happy to help collaborate with people. I’m not an event planner. It’s hard work, man. We’ve got an event subcommittee and it’s full of people who care about events and who are event planners themselves. When someone wants to do an event downtown, the subcommittee will look at this. What is the foot traffic that it is going to bring? What was the foot traffic from last year? We’re not just throwing darts at the wall hoping to hit a bullseye. There’s a method to the madness.
Nate: When you’re not running the downtown organization, what’s fun for you?
Caleb: When I think about it, my time is divided between Cedar Rapids and Central Iowa. I am here Monday through Friday. I’ve got an apartment downtown. On weekends or when my kids have activities, I’m back there. A lot of my free time is FaceTiming with my kids, texting with my kids or with our oldest, or it’s playing video games online with them. They won’t always answer a phone call but if we’re playing a game online, we will voice chat and I can be like, “Hey man, how’s basketball?” or “How’s school?” or “Did you study for your driver’s ed?” We can have a conversation.
Before I took this job, our free time was kids activities, trying new restaurants, trying new bars, and traveling. We love professional sports. My wife and I lived in Colorado. We’d see Nuggets and Rockies games quite a bit. I’m a Vikings fan. The last Vikings game I went to was the playoff game two years ago. That was miserable. That was terrible. I knew it was coming.
I’m all about new experiences. I’m all about, “Okay, what is something that we haven’t done? What is something that we haven’t tried?” Growing up, if food was put in front of us that we hadn’t tried before and we said we didn’t like it, my dad would be like, “How do you know? You’ve never tried it. It might be your favorite thing.” So that’s something that we try with our kids. Except for skydiving. I see no reason to jump out of a plane that can land. That makes no sense to me.”
