Assemble a dream parcel of land: a nine-hole golf course plus 35 acres of farmland, situated between an interstate highway and a huge shopping mall. Suspend a few zoning laws. Now turn loose a planning team led by a guy who has designed “village centers” from Miami to Dubai to Ho Chi Minh City.

It’s not a developer’s fantasy; it’s the backstory of the Village of Ponderosa project. It also gives you an idea why this project is seen as a chance to set a new standard for Central Iowa suburban development.

Earthmovers are busily reshaping 95 acres north of George M. Mills Civic Parkway and east of South 60th Street, not flattening the natural hills and hollows but rearranging them. The goal is to create the perfect topography for an assortment of big houses, apartments, narrow streets and a village center set on a crescent-shaped lake.

When the structures are all in place and occupied, and people are strolling the sidewalks on a summer evening, it should match the picture in Dennis Reynolds’ mind — a picture that owes much more to memory than theory. “When we lived in Downers Grove [Ill.], we would put the kids in a wagon and walk two blocks to the library, go to a one-screen theater, stop at a little grocery store on the way home …” said Reynolds, Ladco Development Inc.’s development design director and the lead designer of Village of Ponderosa.

Reynolds, 50, has taken the image of Downers Grove and other Chicago-area rail-station neighborhoods and spread it around the country and the world. He started as an outside consultant to Ladco Development on this project; three months ago, he became a Ladco employee.

That hiring decision suggests that his concept meshed with what company President Jon Garnaas had in mind. “We started out talking to Bloodgood Sharp Buster [Architects and Planners Inc.] and RDG [Planning & Design],” Garnaas said at a recent meeting of architects, “and I said we have a responsibility to do something truly unique.”

That, in turn, sounded good to West Des Moines’ planners. “This was the city’s chance to make something unique,” planner Lynne Twedt said at that same meeting, “and this plan was exactly what we wanted to do.”

Early plans emphasized a connection with Mills Parkway to the south, but that idea was scrapped in favor of a main entrance on South 60th. At one point, square, one-block parks interrupted the main through street; they were replaced by a large roundabout.

Ladco people sat down with the designers of the adjacent West Glen Town Center to coordinate details. One result was a change at West Glen, where a street was built farther north than planned to join with a street planned for Village of Ponderosa.

The crescent-shaped lake, however, showed up early in the planning and never went away. The curve will make the lake look larger; more important, it provides a reason for curving the main street to create a new level of visual interest.

“We looked at benchmark communities around the country,” Reynolds said. “The county seat model we loved.” With that in mind, the team set out to make a plan that “refers to the historic, but isn’t consumed by nostalgia,” he said.

Reynolds took several of the players to Kansas City, his home now, and led them through the small, old neighborhood of Crestview and the venerable Country Club Plaza, and sat them down with their peers in suburban Leawood Kan., where the same sort of development is taking place.

Back in West Des Moines, Twedt and other city representatives sat in on the planning meetings. “We let Ladco run with it,” Twedt said, “but we sat in so we could rein them in if necessary.” Narrow streets for ambience and traffic calming? Sure, the city said, but remember that our fire trucks are pretty big.

Overall, the goal was to achieve consistency of design without forcing it. For example, the causeway across the lake will include stone that matches the stone to be used on various Village of Ponderosa buildings and the in some neighborhoods’ garden walls.

The plan is virtually complete now. It calls for single-family homes in the half-million-dollar range along the northern edge, where they’ll back up to similar homes owned by people who are giving up a golf course view. Elsewhere, you’ll find four-plexes, three-story townhouses, third-floor apartments in the village center – the 523 dwelling units will be spread among 11 types of housing.

Eight home builders are expected to take part. “They have to use our plans,” Reynolds said, “but this will allow lots of product to go up at the same time.” Ladco plans to start taking deposits from buyers and building residential foundations this summer. “We will build some residences ahead of the market,” Reynolds said. “We anticipate a quick turnaround from now to the sale of the last residential units.”

The plan also calls for 226,000 square feet of office space. “It’s unique to have so much of it in a village setting,” Reynolds said. Ladco is talking to potential tenants in the creative fields, such as architecture and graphic design, and to businesses with an interest in locating near the massive Wells Fargo Home Mortgage campus not far to the west.

And finally, Village of Ponderosa expects to offer 106,000 square feet of retail space. Ladco has already had serious discussions about a Centro Market that would spin off the downtown Centro restaurant, a bank and a medical spa. Last week, discussions focused on other potential retail tenants that would contribute to the ambience planners have in mind.

“We’re on the way to Wal-Mart and the [Jordan Creek Town Center] mall, and we want this to be a great place to stop for breakfast or lunch or to buy unusual gifts,” Reynolds said. “We’re learning about the notion of co-tenancy – the idea that some stores want to be near another store of a certain type.”

While the basic scraping of dirt continues, Reynolds’ design team ponders details that lie well in the future. What should the benches along the lake be like? How about the light fixtures along the streets? And just how wide should the curbs be?

“Las Vegas might seem like a strange example, but out there, if you can touch it, they’ve spent a lot of time and money to get it right,” he said. “If you can touch it, and it doesn’t say good things about quality, it diminishes the big picture.”

Reynolds started working part time on the Village of Ponderosa at Christmastime 2004. “It has taken about a third of my time since then, and right now it’s about 100 percent and will be for the next six months,” he said.

This is all a far cry from his first career plan. “I went to Wheaton College to become a minister,” he said. “But I turned to design, and now I treat that as a way to give back to people. A way to create a quality of life for people.”