Years ago, parts of King Irving were in a downward spiral.  Now, people are commenting that they are seeing the King Irving neighborhood in an upward trend.
New houses are going up, and have been build and sold under the King Irving Neighborhood Plan.  King Irving & Mondamin Presidential, the adjacent neighborhood to the northwest, have been selected as one of four areas in the nation for an intense neighborhood effort by Habitat for Humanity, working with a $1 million grant from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.  When the Thrivent grant is leveraged, it will lead to about $10 million of investment in the two neighborhoods. 
King Irving has turned around enought that builders are coming in to remodel existing houses and resell them.  Neighborhood leaders and residents are particularly proud that during the recent past, families are actually beginning to build houses for themselves in the area, something that has not happened for many years.
Other revitalization projects changing perceptions of the neighborhood include remodeling and expansion of the Forest Avenue branch of the Des Moines Public Library,a $450,000 project ot improve Evelyn Davis Park and a multimillion-dollar remodeling of King elementary school.
A tree planting project, funded by the U.S. Forest Service generated good will for the neighborhood association.  Mayor Frank Cownie planted the 200th.
The neighborhood is almost a textbook example of the success that can be achieved when different organizations cooperate.  The tree-planting effort succeeded nly because about a dozen groups worked together.  The new housing project, led by the city's Neighborhood Development Division, is now beginning to show results.  This project requries the coordination of so many different organizations working together that someone in King Irving referred to it as "a remarkable dance of competence by municipal government."

Boundaries:
North-College to 18th to Clark to 13th to Spring
South- University Avenue
East- 9th Street
West- Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway