Hubbell Realty Co. hopes to start building flex office space at the Riverpoint West site in the fall of 2008, but it’s still not certain whether the company will have 10.5 acres to work with or 23.

The city of Des Moines is still fine-tuning an overall plan for Riverpoint West, the area bordered by Fleur Drive, Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, Southwest Ninth Street and the Raccoon River. The plan calls for mixed-use buildings on the north, townhomes and condominum buildings on much of the rest of the site and commercial structures along Southwest Ninth.

Hubbell purchased the land bordering Southwest Ninth about 16 months ago. If the city’s overall plan is adopted, Hubbell would construct three buildings on the south half of its property. However, Hubbell also has drawn up plans for 10 buildings spread over the entire 23-acre parcel.

“We’re confident the city plan will be built,” said Casey Port, a senior project manager at Hubbell. “But our commitment is strong enough that if the city can’t bring other developers in, we’re ready to do this part of it.”

However, he noted, construction would start in 2008 only if the company saw sufficient demand from potential tenants.

The Hubbell site was most recently occupied by a Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel fabricating facility, and previously had been used for sawmill operations, petroleum storage and, long ago, a blacksmith shop. Hubbell hired Terracon Consultants Inc. to evaluate the soil and water contamination that resulted from those operations, and the engineering consulting company has recommended a remediation plan designed to bring the site up to Iowa Department of Natural Resources standards in one to two years.

According to Dennis Sensenbrenner, an environmental department manager at Terracon, the remediation would cost $1 million to $1.2 million. Some contaminated soil would be intermixed with uncontaminated soil and disposed of by Metro Waste Authority. Water would be collected in trenches and treated by several means to remove petroleum.

The DNR has approved that plan. Now the city is waiting for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval. The city has access to about $1.5 million in grants from the EPA and would lend $1 million to Hubbell to be used in the environmental remediation.

The city is also working on a financial package for Riverpoint West L.L.C. That entity – the managing partner is Minneapolis developer George Sherman – would buy parcels now in the hands of various owners, remove the existing buildings and sell parcels to Sherman Associates – Sherman’s development company — Rottlund Homes and another developer still to be determined.

The city’s Urban Design Review Board is expected to meet with Sherman Associates in early May and discuss the Riverpoint West plan in detail. Ellen Walkowiak, the city’s economic development coordinator, said elements of the plan probably will be presented to the City Council in May.

The Riverpoint West concept began in about 1999. One of the first steps was an EPA-funded study to determine the amount of contamination on the site and the feasibility of developing it. Since then, Walkowiak said, the city has worked with several developers on ideas for the site.

The current overall plan calls for 642 townhomes and condos, 384,000 square feet of office and retail space and 143,000 square feet of flex space. It’s anticipated that 11th Street will be extended south through the Hubbell property to connect with MTA Lane. The Des Moines Metropolitan Transit Authority headquarters is on the south side of that street, and the organization plans to expand onto land it owns just west of the Hubbell parcel across a railroad line.

Hubbell has already built office space at Riverpoint on the east side of Southwest Ninth. “Based on the success of Riverpoint, we had an interest in building additional flex office space,” Port said. “Hubbell sees this as a great piece of land.”

“I’ve never worked on a more complex project than this one,” Walkowiak said. “For many of us, it has been a grand learning experience.”