WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — West Des Moines has a plan to deal with a busy, controversial piece of Ashworth Road when it begins a complete renovation of the busy east-west corridor next year.

For the last two years, the city has been talking with homeowners about what to do with the section of Ashworth between 19th and 22nd Streets, where traffic flowing north and south mixes into clog lanes at busy times of the day.

While the rest of Ashworth will feature one lane of traffic in each direction and a center turn lane, this three-block portion used heavily by drivers connecting to Interstate 235 to the north and EP True Parkway to the south, will need to remain in its four-lane form.

“We’ve got to get those turn lanes in there,” said West Des Moines City Engineer, Brian Hemesath, “so that people can make turns and the thru traffic can still get through.”

The problem is, all of Ashworth’s new lanes will need to be widened to comply with the city’s current design standards, meant to improve traffic safety.

“If we have any issues with accidents or anything like that,” Hemesath said, “we build a road that doesn’t meet design standards we could potentially have liability for the city.”

The city had proposed widening the four lanes from 19th to 22nd Streets from nine feet to 12 feet apiece, but that upset neighbors on the south side of Ashworth. That would have meant widening the entire street and encroaching into their lawns by some 11 feet.

Neighbors rallied and pushed back, and this month, West Des Moines approved a compromise: lanes in the disputed section of Ashworth would be widened to 11 feet instead of 12, and lawns would be encroached upon by only seven feet instead of the initially-proposed 12.

The decision didn’t impress any of the homeowners we spoke to.

“I would say we had mixed emotions about the compromise,” said Michaelyn McClinton, who will begin losing part of her lawn when the project begins next year. “We figured there would be one but in reality we felt there was still more that probably could be done.”

None of the neighbors said they thought the city listened to them very closely.

“The city engineer (Hemesath) already had his mind made up,” said Greg Farres, who lives two doors to the west of the McClintons. “The very first proposal they came up with he basically had his mind made up and didn’t really change it the whole time — the whole two years we’ve been going through this.”

While the expansion will mean removing utility poles along the south side of Ashworth, they’ll be put back in place as soon as possible. Much to the chagrin of the homeowners, Hemesath says burying the power lines is cost-prohibitive for the city.

“MidAmerican Energy owns those lines,” he said, “and they’d charge us a lot to bury them. It’s not money that we have in our budget at this point.”

More than the power lines, the Ashworth neighbors worry about what the imminent loss of property will do to the appeal of their houses.

“We feel it’s going to reduce the value of our home,” McClinton said. “And it’s going to make the front of our access different.”

The city will spend the remainder of 2025 acquiring right-of-way from the homeowners and planning with utilities. Construction will begin in the spring of 2026 and is expected to take a decade to complete.

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