Real estate and land ownership dictate the economics and business diversity within a town. Publications across the U.S. have jumped on investigating and reporting on real estate owners within their coverage areas with the increase of corporate interest and ownership over several years. In places like Iowa City, corporate ownership could increase rent prices and drastically impact the university community and local business owners.

Taking a zoomed-in look at the ownership within this quadrant of Iowa City and the Iowa City Downtown District, The Daily Iowan wanted to paint a picture of local ownership versus out-of-state ownership and answer the question: Who owns downtown Iowa City?

The investigation wasn’t simple, and there were several hiccups in understanding the role of LLCs and LLPs and how the process of applying for them actually has a loophole. A filer of an LLC or LLP in the Secretary of State’s Business Index doesn’t have to be the owner but can be the owner’s attorney or manager. Therefore, we, with 131 parcels to investigate, could not accurately identify owners without some on-the-ground-work where we prioritized owners of multiple land parcels identified by the colors within the parcel list.

The City of Iowa City owns about 9 percent of the property within the allotted boundaries, with Tracy Barkalow, a local developer, trailing behind with 5 percent of the property. The third-most properties owned at 4 percent within this section belong to another local developer, Marc Moen.

This section of Iowa City is made up of 74 percent commercially-zoned buildings, 12 percent zoned as residential but formerly Medium Density Residential, and the remaining 6 percent as just residential.