Passengers on final approach to Des Moines International Airport from the south can look down at Norwalk – it’s not far from the airport at all – and see a strip of commercial buildings along Iowa Highway 28, right through the middle of town, some housing developments on either side, and vacant land. Lots of vacant land.

“It’s a blank slate,” said Chris Nosbisch, the suburb’s development services director. The city was founded in 1900, but it didn’t grow in the typical pattern. Rather than being filled in evenly, one solid block next to another, Norwalk looks more like the halfway point in a game of checkers. Some spots are occupied, and others remain empty.

The city announced a “Billion-Dollar Vision Plan” a few years ago, and although that idea has been tweaked since, the decision to court development has stayed intact. Drive through Norwalk now, and you’ll see signs everywhere advertising land for sale.

Go west from the Highway 28 intersection with Beardsley Street, and you’re in the middle of the 500-acre mixed-use Legacy development. The essential infrastructure has been in place there for several years, including the major streets. “Some ‘backage’ roads aren’t in yet,” Nosbisch noted. “Those will depend on the building lot sizes.”

East of that intersection, the city is itching to crack open a 152-acre parcel known as Holland Farms.

The key to that plan is an extension of Colonial Parkway, and Nosbisch said in March that the city hopes to receive this year a grant of up to $1.5 million from the state’s Revitalize Iowa’s Sound Economy (RISE) program, which would go toward that project. The long-range plan calls for linking the main highway to 80th Street, about a mile east, with a four-lane roadway.

Federal stimulus money provided about $300,000 for lights on Colonial Parkway in both the Holland Farms and Legacy developments.

Other pieces of land also rank as potential development sites, but aren’t on the market at this point. They include a 160-acre parcel south of Holland Farms and “some beautiful development ground along the entire north shore of Lake Colchester,” Nosbisch said. The lake lies at the north end of Norwalk, and sewer lines are in place along its north shore “all the way to the western city limit,” he said. Water mains and streets have not been installed yet, but “that has been identified as an extremely important piece of property” adjacent to the Iowa Highway 5 bypass, he said.

With the hope of learning from other cities’ missteps, Norwalk intends to establish an efficient grid of major streets crisscrossing the city as it grows and fills in. When current plans have been completed, “we’ll have three major north-south roadways and three or four running east and west,” Nosbisch said.

Looking further into the future, he said, “We’ve got a ton of space that we can serve. There’s more than 2,000 acres on the west side of town, and we can go (south) to the North River and beyond.” A MidAmerican Energy Co. substation in southern Norwalk beckons to companies that require lots of electric power, he noted.

The city maintained a low profile for many years, but Nosbisch said, “Norwalk has come to the realization in the last 10 years that growth is going to happen.” Although the population has increased 30 percent in that period, he said, “with the acres we already have inside the city limits, our population could be three times bigger.”

The resident count stands at just under 9,000 now and is closing in on a magic number. Real estate broker Craig King pointed out: “They’re just now approaching 10,000, and that’s a good number for retailers to look at.”

King handles several listings in Norwalk for CB Richard Ellis/Hubbell Commercial, and said about 60 acres are available for commercial buyers. “We have had several companies that have made a run on a couple of the properties,” he said in March. “It has been the current economic environment that has made them extend a current lease or downsize or hold off expansion; it has had nothing to do with whether or not they thought the location would be right.”

King said that the suburb is “on everybody’s radar right now. Norwalk is a community committed to growth.”

Nearby Cumming also has growth on its mind, and an Interstate 35 interchange to fuel it. That’s good news to Nosbisch. “Any growth on the south side (of Des Moines) is beneficial; everybody brings something different to the table,” he said.

Norwalk’s contribution is not likely to be the kind of explosive commercial development that has changed the face of West Des Moines. “Our commercial corridor will be Highway 28, with pocket commercial areas to service various subdivisions as we go along,” Nosbisch said. “We understand that we won’t have a Jordan Creek (Town Center), and we’re OK with that.”