Mike Whalen said seeing his Shoppes at Prairie Crossing retail development in Altoona come to fruition is the culmination of a vision he’s had for two decades.

The Altoona City Council approved the final plat and site plan for The Shoppes at Prairie Crossing development at its meeting on Monday with no discussion.

Whalen, president and CEO of Heart of America Group, said he is in talks with 13 different companies to fill space in a 250,000-square-foot building that will be built on a 39-acre site south of the Outlets of Des Moines.

“It’s a sizable retail center that will complement the Outlets of Des Moines and Bass Pro [Shops] that will definitely help establish Altoona as a major east metro retail hub and destination,” Whalen said before the council meeting.

He said the total cost of the project is about $80 million.

Among the tenants he’s in talks with are national and international tenants, some of whom have a presence in the western metro and want to expand to the east side, Whalen said.

Others, he said, would be new to the metro.

Whalen said he acquired 230 acres, including the site of the retail center, back in the late 1990s. Heart of America has built a couple of hotels and the restaurants Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse and Burger Shed on the site.

The nearby Bass Pro Shops and Outlets of Des Moines, which are not owned by Heart of America, have boosted activity in the area, and Whalen said his development will spur even more growth on the east side of the metro.

“This is really kind of a culmination of a more than a quarter-of-a-century effort to develop a 230-acre mixed-use project, and I can tell you it will be a catalyst for even more development,” Whalen said.

Heart of America Group, a hospitality and real estate company, also operates the Machine Shed restaurant, along with other restaurants and hotels across six states.

According to city council documents, more than 1,000 parking spaces are planned for the parcel where the center will be built.

Each tenant facade will be finished to match its national branding. The building will be constructed of pre-case panels with the facades along the front being a different color with each tenant space. There will also be horizontal banding around the building with color changes providing additional aesthetic, documents state.

The building and parking lot will face Hubbell Avenue and U.S. Highway 65, with the rear of the building facing the Outlets of Des Moines.

The site is bordered by Prairie Fire Northwest to the south, Tallgrass Parkway Northwest to the east, Bass Pro Drive Northwest to the west and the Outlets of Des Moines to the north.

Whalen said he expects to break ground on The Shoppes at Prairie Crossing in the next couple of weeks.

He described the development as a “dream come true.”

“We stuck to this vision that we’re going to do a high-quality mixed-use development on this large parcel rather than just break off pieces and do some kind of jigsaw puzzle development there,” he said. “It’s just exciting when you see your dream come to fruition. This will be a major catalyst and the last gigantic piece before we get into residential and some non-retail and non-residential uses out there.”

Whalen said he originally had plans for developing the site in 2008 and 2009 before the Great Recession brought everything to a halt.

“I had some big retailers lined up and then the whole thing crashed,” he said. “There were some days when we wondered if we were searching for the Lost City of Gold. But it seems like we’re going to make it happen now.”