Marquas Ashworth is an entrepreneur who wants to help other entrepreneurs.
Ashworth, founder and owner of Ziad Rye whiskey, is also a musician and the co-developer of a building designed to empower other entrepreneurs.
“How can I make it easier for the next person behind me?” Ashworth said standing in the new development Center at Sixth. “That was the point of this, to be like a Swiss army knife for entrepreneurs, so that you can come in, start, launch, grow your business without necessarily having to risk homelessness and starvation, which is real.”
The Center at Sixth, located in Des Moines’ Sixth Avenue corridor, is a new business incubator. It includes a makers market with 23 artists, a food hall with space for five new restaurants and six live-work apartments on the second floor.
“It will really make a substantial impact on the for-profit business presence along the corridor,” said Susan Fitzsimmons, vice president and general counsel at Christensen Development and co-developer on the project.
The resources for entrepreneurs in the space include a reduced less-than-market rent to stand up their operations, a retail space to test-launch products, access to a kitchen, networking, mentorship and expanded services, co-developers said.
The goal of the incubator is to see businesses outgrow it, Ashworth said.
“I want to see [them] come in, become too big, become so successful and just graduate,” and then mentor the next line of entrepreneurs, he said.
Fitzsimmons and Ashworth said they haven’t started leasing yet – the building is scheduled to open later this summer.
The building construction cost is $6.9 million, with a total project cost of $8.5 million. It received funding from the state of Iowa, the city of Des Moines, Polk County, Wells Fargo Foundation, Prairie Meadows, the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines and private donors.
The nonprofit 6th Avenue Corridor, which supports economic vitality on and around Sixth Avenue, contributed the land. A separate nonprofit called Center at Sixth was created and owns the building.
Fitzsimmons said they are still raising money for the capital campaign that will finance the remaining debt on the building. Further revenue will come from the rents that come from the rental units, all the commercial tenants and the proceeds from the makers market.
“I think in this initial stage, making sure [we are] delivering this building to the nonprofit as a debt-free asset, is the clear cut thing that we want to do right now,” Ashworth said. “Because once we do that, the nonprofit is able to self-sustain. So then we can truly focus on building robust programming.”
Fitzsimmons said it shouldn’t take more than three years to deliver the building debt-free to the nonprofit.
On the first floor of the 12,000-square-foot building is the completed Center at Sixth Makers Market.
The Wells Fargo Foundation donated $700,000 in 2023 to fund the creation of the makers market. The foundation also awarded the project a $50,000 grant, which was used in part to cover the inventory expenses of the first tenants of the makers market, according to a press release.
The market features artists and makers from around Central Iowa, including Jill Wells and her inclusive art, Basi Affia’s comic books, candles, jewelry, art from artists from the Momentum arts program and ArtForce Iowa.
“It’s a lot of farmers market favorites and a lot of artisans that sell at festivals and locally,” Fitzsimmons said. “And it’s nice to just have a space where you’re not seeing their products between vegetable stands. They’re all here complementing each other.”
Tiffany Rohe, founder of Nixon & Norman, where she makes felt play sets for kids, is one of the makers featured at the market.
She said when she saw the makers market for the first time, she felt “it was just so cool to see such a diverse group of makers and creators and artists in one space.”
“It was just honestly such an overwhelming feeling, because I just know how hard it is to be a small business. I know how hard it is to get your things out there and to find connection and community too.”
Rohe said what new entrepreneurs need to succeed is to believe in themselves and to make and create.
“It’s kind of the most vulnerable thing you can do, but then you have to put yourself out there, and I think it’s really scary, and it’s hard to do that. But until you’re doing that, that’s when you’re finding your community, that’s when you’re seeing what your products can do,” she said. “That’s when you’re getting your feedback.”
Outside the makers market, there’s a space that will be used as overflow seating for the restaurants, plus organizers will be able to do some pop-up events with the makers, Fitzsimmons said.
“We could take our toy maker and our lemonade stand and our children’s book author and have an event,” she said. “Maybe we’ll get somebody to face paint and have it lift up those entrepreneurs and bring business into makers market and to the rest of the building.”
Next to that room are five spaces for food tenants with a commercial kitchen in the back.
“They’ll have a two-year lease, and they’ll have very affordable rent, so that they can have the little runway to getting their own bricks and mortar. … So they can take that step between farmers markets and brick and mortar locations to build their business in that interim space,” Fitzsimmons said.
The tenants include two anchor tenants — a coffee shop and a restaurant — and three incubating restaurants. Anchor tenants have long term leases and pay market rent. Incubator tenants have one-year leases with an option to renew one year and pay a reduced rent, Fitzsimmons said.
Upstairs are the six live-work spaces.
“You’re an artist, you’re a therapist, you’re a small entrepreneur,” said Ashworth, a member of the 2023 class of Forty Under 40. “Each unit that you rent [has] an apartment in the back.”
Four of the six units are affordable and have income guidelines, Fitzsimmons said. The other two are market rate.
“There’s a ton of interest,” Ashworth said. “It’s just making sure we have the right mix of entrepreneurs and there’s a good ecosystem up here, feels like they’re not replicating. Like, we can’t have two painters.”
Ashworth said part of the inspiration for the name Center at Sixth was a harkening back to Center Street, which was a thriving hub for the city’s Black community before it was displaced by the construction of Interstate 235.
“And most of that [Black and brown] community ended up in the Sixth Avenue corridor,” he said. “Center at Sixth, it’s just a reckoning back to what we lost.”
Center at Sixth now provides opportunity for small businesses to grow on Sixth Avenue and spur economic development along the corridor, he said.
“And it’s awesome because we didn’t tear anything down or displace anyone in building this. It was open land and we merely added to the community,” he said.
Jasmine Brooks, executive director of 6th Avenue Corridor said she’s “very excited to be bringing all of the small businesses to the district.”
Before Center at Sixth, the district consisted of a lot of nonprofits and services, she said, and didn’t have amenities like restaurants.
“You would have to go elsewhere, or you’d have to go further up to maybe Highland Park,” she said. “This is really bringing some of that excitement and some of those products and businesses directly to the heart of Sixth Avenue, so that folks that are in 50314, and those around, Sixth, Seventh [and] Eighth streets can really come and have a place to go, rather than leaving and going to another neighborhood to have some of those things.”
Brooks said attracting more businesses is among her goals for the 6th Avenue Corridor. A mixed-use building that would include a food hall, private event space and apartments is also planned along Sixth Avenue.
She’s also hoping in the next five years to have additional housing. She wants to consolidate some of the nonprofits and services “so that we still have them, but they’re not entirely encompassing the corridor.”
“So really making it a diverse neighborhood, not only in terms of racial and ethnic ethnicities, but also in terms of businesses and economic vitality,” she said.
The Center at Sixth is already a catalyst for some of those goals, she said.
“It truly already is the conversations that I have on a daily basis surrounding that momentum,” she said.
Past coverage: $10 million multiuse project planned north of downtown Des Moines