With the new year stretched out before us, local business experts are hoping to soon see the commencement or completion of several projects aimed at increasing the economic vitality of the tri-state area. Here’s a look ahead at what the Telegraph Herald anticipates will be some of the biggest business stories to watch in 2025.

Developers turn eye toward tourism

Various tourism-based projects are expected to pick up speed in 2025, including the opening or construction of several new hotels.

Construction is expected to be completed this year on the Key Hotel, a seven-story boutique hotel currently under development on Chaplain Schmitt Island in Dubuque. The $47 million hotel, which is part of Hilton Hotels & Resorts’ “Tapestry Collection,” will include 90 rooms and a rooftop restaurant.

Additionally, Kinseth Hospitality Cos. this year intends to begin construction of a Marriott hotel complex in the Port of Dubuque. The $30 million, 160-room complex will include two hotels — Courtyard by Marriott and Residence Inn by Marriott — in one building expected to open in late 2026.

The goal is to fill those rooms with the myriad tourists drawn to the tri-state area by current and future attractions, said Travel Dubuque CEO Keith Rahe.

“It’s very exciting to see the continued involvement of everything in Dubuque and Dubuque County,” Rahe said. “I think everyone can agree that we’d like to see that excitement continue to grow.”

Between its various amenities, Rahe said the tri-state tourism scene already acts as a significant economic driver. In 2025, the new hotels are just a few of the projects aimed at capitalizing on that trend.

Additional work is underway this year on Chaplain Schmitt Island, for example, to construct a new outdoor amphitheater and indoor PinSeekers golf complex. Both are anticipated to open in 2026, although significant progress will be made during the upcoming construction season.

In Dyersville, Iowa, project leaders hope to make similar progress on several planned improvements at the iconic Field of Dreams movie site.

Local nonprofit Dyersville Events Inc. purchased the site in September and intends to work this spring to ramp up construction of a permanent stadium adjacent to the site and on a nearby youth sports complex.

Both projects are expected to be completed in 2026, but the site meanwhile will still be home to an annual youth baseball tournament that brings hundreds of teams to the Dyersville area each summer. Last year, 453 teams participated. Rahe said the goal this year is to top 500.

“Those tournaments really bring so much activity to the entire area,” Rahe said. “We have people in Dyersville, but we also have people in Farley, Peosta and Dubuque who can come and see what we’re all about (in Dubuque County).”

National agricultural trends to cause local ripples

This year is shaping up to be another tumultuous one for local and national agricultural markets due to declining crop prices and political uncertainty.

The past two years have been marked by an ongoing decline in agricultural revenues from the record levels reached in 2022. Looking at 2025, U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts another year of declining prices for corn, soybeans and other crops.

Nevertheless, University of Wisconsin-Platteville agribusiness professor Kevin Bernhardt projected that grain farmers can expect a roughly break-even year in 2025 buoyed in part by decreasing production costs from lower oil prices and declining interest rates.

“Things can change by the week, but the general consensus right now is that there actually might be a little profitability (in 2025),” he said. “With some of those costs coming down, folks can expect to break even or even see some slight profit (for grain operations).”

Projections are sunnier for livestock operations, Bernhardt said, given the decrease in input costs that accompanies lower prices for corn, hay and other feed crops.

The success of farmers across the board, however, will depend in part on regulations and policies implemented by the incoming presidential administration. A change in administration always comes with a degree of uncertainty, Bernhardt said, and it appears this year will be no different.

President-elect Donald Trump has pushed for tariffs on imports from America’s largest trading partners in an effort to bolster U.S. manufacturing — a move that some economists worry could result in retaliatory tariffs that hinder international exports of U.S. agricultural commodities.

Bernhardt said it is hard to know just how much of an impact there will be on agricultural markets until the scope and scale of those tariffs are revealed, but he said it is a topic many farmers are following closely.

“Markets don’t like uncertainty,” Bernhardt said. “But with a new administration coming in, there’s automatically a lot of unknowns. … Until that settles out a bit, I think markets are going to be right on the razor’s edge.”

Air service still a top priority

After more than two years without regular air service, the Dubuque Regional Airport snagged a major win in 2024 with the resumption of daily flights to and from Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Denver Air Connection on Nov. 4 launched its first flight between the two airports — marking the first regularly scheduled flight out of Dubuque since low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines made its last flight in April and ending the drought for daily service that began with American Airlines’ 2022 departure.

Now that daily service has resumed, however, Dubuque Regional Airport Manager Todd Dalsing said the focus has shifted to maintaining and strengthening what is considered by many to be a crucial amenity.

“The foot is absolutely not off the gas on this,” Dalsing said. “We are still moving at full throttle … so that we can not only retain (air service), but expand it.”

The partnership with Denver Air was made possible in part by extensive lobbying by local leaders and the approval of a $2 million Small Community Air Service Development grant funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation as well as local public and private partners.

Denver Air Connection has access to that money to ensure its flights meet a minimum revenue guarantee, though the rate at which it depletes those funds depends on the number of people who use the airline’s services.

Dalsing said the focus in 2025 will be on maximizing the number of people who utilize the local service, which will simultaneously stretch out access to those federal funds and prove to Denver Air and others that Dubuque offers a profitable market for air service.

If they can do so, Dalsing said local leaders can leverage that success alongside the federal funding to push for additional flight times or destinations.

“Once these flights start generating revenue, we can start to have those kinds of conversations,” Dalsing said. “… But first, we need everyone’s support, and we need people to (fill the flights we have now).”

Local leaders look to turn tide on housing

In 2025, local leaders hope to make significant headway in the perennial push to bolster the tri-state area’s housing stock.

Dubuque Economic Development Director Jill Connors said she anticipates 2025 to be a “very busy” year for housing development, which she credits to ongoing public-private partnerships and various state and city policies and programs that incentivize new development.

Those developments will help meet the city’s goal of adding 1,100 new housing units by 2030, Connors said, while also supporting the local workforce by increasing the quality and quantity of units available to new and incoming residents.

“We’re working to take a bite out of the additional inventory needed to (address our housing needs),” Connors said. “We’re anticipating being even busier this year than 2024, and last year was already very busy.”

Connors said housing projects anticipated in the coming year range in size and scale from mixed-use developments that will add one or two new units to larger complexes of apartments or single-family homes.

Developers with Union at the Marina, for example, intend to soon break ground on a 201-apartment complex in the former Bowling & Beyond site at Kerper Boulevard and Hawthorne Street. Those units are expected to open in 2026.

Several second-level residential projects also are planned along Dubuque’s Central Avenue, and Habitat for Humanity is in the process of developing a “pocket neighborhood” of single-family homes on Wood Street.

“Some people really want an apartment. Some people really want a house or a condo,” Connors said. “The more variety that we can have, the more options we have to provide for people (coming into the community).”

Additional developments are planned in other parts of the tri-state area, as well.

In Dyersville, Iowa, for example, construction is set to begin this year on 20 townhomes in the 1500 block of Second Avenue Southeast, and officials in Peosta, Iowa, are working to complete a housing study to evaluate the city’s current and future needs.

Small businesses to reap benefits from e-commerce

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, online sales have surged as e-commerce emerges as an increasingly important tool for businesses across different sizes and industries.

Data shows that many of the benefits thus far have been limited to large corporations or national chains, but in 2025, small businesses are expected to push for a bigger piece of the post-pandemic pie.

Already, the Small Business Administration estimates over 73% of small businesses report having their own website, and social media marketing has emerged as a top outreach tactic for the majority of small businesses.

Charlotte’s Coffee House in Dubuque in June launched its own mobile application in collaboration with Brewello, a Denver-based tech startup run by Dubuque natives Ted and Tim Wittman.

Charlotte’s CEO Tim Rusk said the app has proved incredibly successful since its summer launch and that by late fall it outperformed all other online order platforms, such as GrubHub or DoorDash, combined to become the most popular way Charlotte’s customers order ahead.

He said the app streamlines orders and helps the coffee shop compete with larger chains that already had their own applications for online orders.

“Before the app, we were taking most of these orders over the phone and the person would then have to come in and wait in line, but at bigger chains, there were these apps that let you be in and out,” Rusk said. “It just felt like we needed to do something to keep up.”

The app also allows customers to accumulate points with each purchase that can be used toward rewards like free drinks or cafe items, and Rusk said the plan for 2025 is to further promote those rewards and identify ways to further leverage the application’s various benefits to boost business.

Bead and Board owner Amy O’Rourke has carved out her online niche by opening up several online storefronts to complement her brick-and-mortar gift shop in Dubuque and seasonal sales from her booth at the Dubuque Farmers Market.

Bead and Board has its own website, but O’Rourke said she also has storefronts on Etsy and Shop Iowa. By pursuing multiple e-commerce avenues, she said she is able to reap the unique benefits of each platform.

Etsy is a popular online marketplace focused on supporting small retailers, meaning her storefronts there typically have higher viewership. Shop Iowa, on the other hand, doesn’t extract as many fees and focuses solely on Iowa artisans.

“Each site has its advantages and disadvantages,” she explained. “But overall, online sales are huge for me.”