Developer's hoop dreams are under construction: A national basketball destination in Waukee
Dickson Jensen has a penchant for turning his passions into destinations.
An avid golfer, Jensen opened The Harvester Club, an 18-hole golf course midway between Des Moines and Marshalltown, in 2000. Golf publications rank it among the best in the United States, and it is becoming a mecca for those serious about the game.
“Our course is 30 minutes outside of Des Moines. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and we literally have people from all over the United States (who) are members at the club," Jensen said. "In fact, two-thirds of our membership is outside of Iowa. They come from New York. They come from Dallas. They come from Denver.”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that another of Jensen’s passions ― coaching young people in basketball ― is spawning another destination development that's expected to open late next year.
When completed, the $40 million Kettlestone Central Sports Complex in Waukee will have two buildings housing 12 full-sized indoor basketball courts, an outdoor court, stadium-style seating and parking for 1,000 cars.
“A year from now, we hope to be dribbling basketballs in there,” Jensen said.
It's why Jensen is one of the Des Moines Register's People to Watch in 2024.
As with The Harvester Club, his vision of the Kettlestone complex extends far beyond the boundaries of Iowa. His plan is for the complex to attract national-scale basketball tournaments as well as host other sporting events, such as wrestling, gymnastics and volleyball.
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“I will be shocked if there’s not 30 to 35 weekends a year of the complex being a full house, and when I say a full house, that’s Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with thousands of people,” he said.
Greg Edwards is a believer. President and CEO of Catch Des Moines, central Iowa's tourism bureau, Edwards said Jensen has established relationships throughout the basketball world, including with shoemaker Nike, and has the contacts and experience to attract big tournaments to central Iowa.
He believes it because he has seen Jensen do it.
“A great example from our end was toward the end of COVID, when there was nothing going on," Edwards said. "He was kind of a savior because he brought in this big national Nike Tournament of Champions, which ran for three weeks at the Iowa Events Center, with different teams coming in each week. And then the next load would come in the following week, and it really, really helped spur our economy and especially helped the hospitality industry.”
Famous venues inspire style of Kettlestone complex
A developer with projects throughout central Iowa, Jensen said the Kettlestone complex will be modeled after two iconic basketball venues: Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University in North Carolina and Allen Fieldhouse at the University of Kansas.
Jensen’s development further pays homage to another legendary basketball venue. Between the two buildings will be a green space modeled after New York City’s Rucker Park, home of the Entertainer's Basketball Classic streetball tournament, with a full-sized outdoor basketball court surrounded by trees and benches for spectators.
Finishing the project will be his focus for 2024, he said.
“All the roads are in around it. All the dirt work is done, and all the underground pipes are done," he said. "The building is all designed and approved. It’s just a matter of now putting it all together, and that’s why I think that it will be completed in 2024.”
Jensen also anticipates construction of an apartment complex at Kettlestone with about 150 units in 2024, with another 150 coming in 2025 on adjoining land, as well as starting construction on three larger, four-story apartment buildings and some townhomes.
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While the sports complex may be the centerpiece, Jensen said full development of the Kettlestone area will likely take place over the next decade. Decisions are expected in the next year for future projects there, including additional residential and commercial development.
“We are on the drawing board for trying to figure out exactly what types of commercial entities to go around there, whether that be restaurants, a little retail, some more office, some potential hotels," he said. "I have a lot of drawings on my table, but we have nothing solidified. I think you will see some of that being solidified in 2024 and probably starting to be built in '25.”
Dickson Jensen, wife found youth basketball program that helped train Caitlin Clark
But it is coaching young people in basketball that brings Jensen the most satisfaction, and for which he takes the most pride. He created All Iowa Attack in 2004, a statewide youth basketball program that has drawn more than 300 participants a year, including a then-budding Caitlin Clark, now the superstar of Hawkeye women's basketball.
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“That’s what I enjoy the most. The core of all this is my relationship with helping kids," Jensen said. "I started coaching, and it certainly had nothing to do with development, nothing to do with that avenue of it, but it had to do with young people that needed some guidance and an example.”
He, his wife, Luann, and their adult children own the nonprofit Iowa Youth Athletic Foundation, which supports the All Iowa Attack basketball teams, for which Clark and former Iowa State University star Ashley Joens played.
Their son, Blake, runs the day-to-day operations of the Iowa Youth Athletic Foundation and said it was his mom who got his dad into coaching.
“It was my mom saying, ‘Hey, you need to spend more time with your kids,’ because he was a developer and worked a lot," Blake Jensen said. "I'm the oldest, so I happened to spend a decent amount of time with him. I could go to our golf course where he was developing that, or go to a job site, and my sisters obviously didn't enjoy that as much, and so that's my mom saying, ‘Hey, go spend time with your girls.’”
And so the traveling basketball teams began to evolve for both boys and girls, though they weren't an instant success.
“When we first started, we got smacked everywhere we went,” Blake Jensen remembers.
Dickson Jensen: With basketball coaching, 'we’ve influenced a lot of kids'
All Iowa Attack doesn’t get smacked around so much these days. Dickson Jensen takes pride that All Iowa Attack has become “one of the top five basketball programs in the United States.”
The key to Jensen’s success in coaching is his ability to manage people and to jointly establish expectations with his players, said longtime friend and fellow All Iowa Attack coach Randy Mauro.
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“When they play in our system, and that's because of him, he manages people and in this case we're talking about young kids," he said. "But in his everyday life, he owns businesses and runs very successful enterprises, and he just comes across as somebody who manages people very, very well.
“I don't think there's anybody who questions what their role is, whether you work for him as an employee or whether you play for him as an athlete."
Mauro likens the All Iowa Attack to advanced placement scholastic courses whose participants tend to be high achievers with strong motivation to improve.
“And that’s what (the players) appreciate in the end,” he said.
The All Iowa Attack involves kids from all sorts of backgrounds, with highly involved parents like the Clarks and Joenses to parents who are absent or struggling.
Jensen said he is particularly pleased when his players go on to get college scholarships, sometimes becoming the first in their family to receive a higher education.
“Over the last 20-some years that I’ve been coaching, we’ve ― and when I say we, I mean my wife and I and our family and my fellow coaches ― we’ve influenced a lot of kids," he said. "We’ve taken a lot of kids that go home to households that are in disarray, parents that struggle to be good parents, and provided them a place that they can be loved and challenged and show them there’s a big world out there and they can be really successful.
“And that’s why I really do all this. It’s a complete nonprofit. I’ll spend 20 hours or more a week with basketball, that’s on top of all the development stuff, has nothing to do with that, but just being in the kids’ lives.”
About Dickson Jensen
Age: 59
Hometown: Ames
Education: Audubon High School; Iowa State University bachelor’s degrees in industrial engineering and business administration; master’s degree in engineering valuation.
Career: Owner of Jensen Group, focused on land development, construction and management of homes and rental units.
Family: Wife, Luann, and six children: Zachary (died at age 1), Blake, Ally, Samantha, Mason and Kolby.
About the Des Moines Register's 2024 People to Watch
It's a Des Moines Register tradition to close out each year and open the next by introducing readers to 15 People to Watch — individuals expected to make an impact on Iowa in the coming year.
This year's nominations from readers and our journalists totaled nearly 60 people and posed hard decisions for staff members charged with winnowing them to just 15.
The final 15 include people in business and the arts, those who train the world-class athletes of the future, chefs on the cutting edge, farmers teaching refugees how to run their own farms, and people fighting for representation through cosmetics and medicine. We hope that you are as inspired by reading about them as we were in profiling them.
Kevin Baskins covers jobs and the economy for the Register. Reach him at kbaskins@registermedia.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: What's envisioned as a national basketball mecca is taking shape in Iowa
