Rules are rules, procedures are procedures, and as a result the owners of Merle Hay Mall are no closer to a redevelopment plan for a stretch of parking lot planted on the Urbandale side of the mall.

Just as significant, the city is more than two decades removed from the development of workforce housing, an avowed goal of the City Council.

The council fell one vote short Tuesday in overriding a recommendation for planning and zoning commissioners to reject a four-story apartment building that would have provided a mix of market-rate and affordable units on a stretch of parking lot north of Douglas Avenue on the west side of the mall.

In December, the Planning and Zoning Commission voted 6-2 to reject a rezoning and creation of a planned unit development necessary to place the apartment in an area zoned for commercial uses per the direction of a comprehensive plan first adopted in 1988, revised in 2003 and reviewed in 2015. Land use in the area of the mall was not amended as a result of the review in 2015.

The commission followed the recommendation of city planners. The summary of the argument was that staff liked the project but not the location, given that it would create two nonconforming uses. The realignment of a street by mall owners in order to build an iHop at the site of a former Montgomery Wards auto repair shop created one of those nonconforming conditions.

The reasoning that led to the Planning and Zoning Commission debate can be found here (start on Page 14 and read through to Page 36).

On Tuesday, the City Council took up the issue and could not generate four votes among six council members to override the recommendation. The final vote was 3-2 to support the project.

Liz Holland, who leads the Chicago-based mall ownership group, attempted to address the concerns of some council members after the vote, but was rebuffed by Mayor Robert Andeweg on the grounds that as a result of the vote, the case was closed.

“We wish that if council members [David] Russell and [Tom] Gayman had questions about the proposed project they had asked them during the hearing when we could have answered them,” Holland said in an email to the Business Record. Council members Mike Carver, Creighton Cox and Ron Pogge voted in favor of the project.

City Manager A.J. Johnson said the issue points out that the council needs to decide whether to make changes in the comprehensive plan.

“The staff was acting on the rules that the council has established” under the existing comprehensive plan, he said.

Anawim Housing had proposed acting as developer but not the final owner of the $9 million project that was billed as a way to bring more retail customers to the mall while providing affordable housing for workers. Under the initial proposal, apartment backers had requested about $150,000 in tax increment financing revenues to defray the costs of moving sewer lines under the proposed site. That request had been dropped from the final request.

Meanwhile, mall ownership continues to rework a development agreement with the city of Des Moines. The mall has been hit by the recent shuttering of Sears and Younkers department stores. Mall owners recently sold the sites of Starbucks and Applebee’s and are attempting to sell the iHop site as it raises capital to purchase the Sears and Younkers buildings. Polk County supervisors have approved a $2.5 million loan toward those purchases.