(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Transportation is pulling its motor vehicle offices out of malls across the state. Customer Services Bureau director, Darcy Doty, says some of the 18 offices where people get driver’s licenses were unreachable in closed shopping malls during the pandemic.

“We don’t want state government to stop. So we wanted to be able to be operational at all times,” she says, “so we made the strategic decision to say, you know, we need to have a direct door access for our customers to be able to enter so we can continue services at any time whether a mall is open or not.” This year locations in Iowa City and Muscatine are moving.

“We decided that as leases were coming up in those particular areas that we would make the decision to leave those particular areas where we don’t have a direct outside door for the customer to come into,” she says. The offices in Waterloo and Council Bluffs will move once their lease is up. The D-O-T is shifting the Iowa City mall office location to Coralville.