What can you tell us about Indianola? (Des Moines, West Des Moines: crimes, houses)

[ReloDogs]

We're looking all over the Des Moines area (via the internet) and have gotten great feedback from everyone on this forum about city neighborhoods (primarily Beaverdale) to look into when we get there. We just read about Indianola and are curious about it. Like the look of those old houses with big yards. What can you tell us about that area? Very rural or more like a suburb of DM?

[capitalcityguy]

Not a suburb -- it is too far from the central city to be considered a suburb.

[mofford]

Having been to Indianola many times via Carlisle on the bike trail, I find the people very friendly and a more typical reflection of the general Iowan population as a whole. They have a balloon festival every summer and Simpson College is located there. Indianola has about everything for your basic needs, plenty of fast food chains, a Wall Mart, HyVee, good schools ect. Once in a great while you hear about a bad apple that fell out of the tree, but the town is pretty far removed from the faster urban pace in Des Moines.

Beaverdale is a very well established neighborhood, nice older brick homes with a more sophisticated and cosmopolitan feel to it, more of the wine and cheese type people. Much more diverse than Indianola, but Indianola might have better public schools. Beaverdale probably has alot more property crimes, burglary ect. than Indianola. One of the problems with the very nice beaverdale neighborhood is that you can just about throw a rock into the hood from there. About 10 blocks or so east of Beaver Ave things go downhill pretty quick. Beaverdale has a nice little shopping district on Beaver just north of Hickman.

[El Rhino]

Like Capitalcityguy said, it's too far out to be a suburb. Indianola kind of prides itself on not being a suburb, but realistically speaking it's reasonable to live in Indianola and work/shop/whatever in the Des Moines area. It's about a 15 minute drive to Southridge Mall on the southern end of Des Moines, maybe 25 to downtown and 15-20 to West Des Moines on hwy 5.


Indianola does have a nice downtown/town square area. You will see actual locally owned shops, restaurants and other businesses and it's a pretty good variety of what they have (at least last I checked). They have a nice opera house there and some nice cultural events due to the college there. They also have some pretty sweet figure-8 racing at the county fairgrounds. There's a little something for everyone in Indianola.

[CampbellsChunkySoupra]

Too far to be considered a suburb...however, its only a ~10 minute drive to the metro area. 20min or so to get downtown. Lot's of big highway access. Schools are very good, Simpson College is nearby, many nice houses around the golf courses on the outskirts of the city.

It has a great town square atmosphere and bike nights are cool on Friday nights. Only 3-4 bars in the town that the college kids frequent. All in all, it is a good bedroom community for people who commute downtown or elsewhere in the metro but don't want to deal with all of the people and traffic.

[BenRoethig]

Great place normally, but it becomes an absolute zoo during the Harkin Steak Fry.