A view of a proposed urban park looking from Seventh Street to the west. The park is planned where the former Younkers department store was located. Architectural rendering by BBS Architects|Engineers

For a number of years, Des Moines officials have looked for downtown sites on which to develop a recreational park.

EMC Insurance Cos.’s recent proposal to transform a nearly half-acre site at 701 Walnut St. into an urban recreational park is an important step toward creating an amenity that downtown Des Moines has been lacking, Carrie Kruse, an economic development administrator for the city, said during the Des Moines Downtown Chamber’s annual discussion on downtown development activity.

Providing urban recreational areas “is a category where we certainly have room to grow in order to compete with our peer cities,” Kruse said. “We have a lot of really exciting projects to help make progress in that category.”

The park is planned at Seventh and Walnut streets on a site that once was home to Younkers department store. EMC acquired the property in 2018, four years after the building that housed the department store was destroyed in a fire. The building’s remains were demolished, leaving an unsightly hole on the property, which has been vacant since the fire.

Redevelopment of the property will allow the reopening of Walnut Street, which has been closed since the fire, Kruse said. “The potential is huge, and we’re really excited about it.”

Restaurants, breweries, various kinds of parks and pop-up events all help to create foot traffic downtown, said Tim Leach, senior vice president of downtown development for the Greater Des Moines Partnership. In July, downtown foot traffic briefly returned to pre-pandemic levels, he said. Since the emergence of the delta variant, foot traffic has again dropped.

Still, the short-lived return of foot traffic during the summer “does show the power of downtown neighborhoods,” Leach said. “That’s what we’re trying to do – drive traffic to things on Main Street that make a place.”

Development of a 6,300-seat multiuse stadium and plaza on a 43-acre site on the southwest edge of downtown will attract thousands of people, as will improvements to Principal Park baseball stadium, located near the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers, Kruse said.

Development opportunities around the baseball park are being sought, although there are challenges associated with being next to a flood plain, she said.

“You see development [around stadiums] in other cities all across the country.” Kruse said. While the flood plain around Principal Park “doesn’t mean it’s impossible to develop around it, it certainly creates some additional challenges and considerations.”

Providing new downtown residential projects with an array of amenities – as well as being close to amenities such as trails and parks – will help attract more people to downtown, said Jackie Nickolaus, senior developer for Sherman Associates, a Minneapolis-based developer with several projects in Des Moines.

“If you’re a downtown resident and you go out your front door, if something is a mile or less away, you’ll walk there,” she said. “That’s why I continue to be bullish about downtown; there continues to be opportunities.”

Downtown residents want to live in places where there are things to do, Nickolaus said. “As developers, we need to make sure we’re communicating about amenities and taking advantage of amenities the city builds.”