The city of West Des Moines is undertaking what could be described as a revamp of a 650-acre commercial area to better meet the traffic patterns that drive development today.

The city’s approval of a site plan for a new Kwik Star on Westown Parkway earlier this year was a test run that set the stage for the larger effort that the city council will take up at a work session scheduled for May 4.

The area the city is studying is bordered by 22nd Street to the east, 50th Street to the west, University Avenue to the north and Interstate 235 to the south.

“I think the first set of buildings here were done in the 1960s,” said Linda Schemmel, a development coordinator in the city’s development services department. “A lot of development was done in the 1970s, and then we had another bump in the 1980s, and then another bump in the 2000s. So, it has over a 50-year history. When we started looking at the district, there are a lot of buildings that are starting to get functionally obsolete and the patterns that drove development then are different than they are now.”

Schemmel said the area is predominantly made up of single commercial or office space users with large parking lots and buildings that have large setbacks from the road.

“That really is not the pattern that we’re seeing for current development,” she said. “Aging buildings, to a certain extent aging infrastructure, and things like big regional malls just aren’t the way people are doing business right now.”

The city is trying to be proactive and “get something in place rather than waiting until we have further decline,” Schemmel said. “That’s the big reason this has come to the forefront.”

“We’re really trying to look at what current models are for office and commercial and in, not necessarily mixed-use, but multiple use development,” she said. 

In part because of the COVID pandemic, large corporate office space is no longer needed, and retail is becoming fickle, Schemmel said. 

“It’s probably a 20-year cycle and just trying to keep up with that,” she said. “The large malls, like Valley West Mall, are really not the way retail is provided. Now, people are looking for the experience.”

Schemmel said that when the city updated its comprehensive plan a couple of years ago, it asked residents and business owners what they wanted.

“They said they want to be able to walk down to the local bar or ice cream shop from their house, but they’re still not going to give away their car,” she said. “What we have now are these huge areas that really are not walkable. So we have to increase walkability, but still provide services and stuff that they need within a 15-minute radius.”

The city is working to help developers change their tenant spaces to provide flexibility for more uses. That effort will be addressed through rezoning to address flexibility on uses and setbacks.

Another aspect is the Urban Renewal Plan that was approved by the city council last fall that allows the use of tools, like Tax Increment Financing to be used for redevelopment. That designation only covered 74 acres, including the Valley West Mall site and a few blocks to the west.

Several years earlier, the city created an Urban Renewal Area for the rest of the area that is being targeted, but has not activated TIF districts for the entire area.

TIF districts have been “turned on” incrementally as development happens, said Ryan Moffatt, director of community and economic development for West Des Moines.

He said his department is working in tandem with development services to address the changing needs in the area.

Schemmel said the city is trying to structure requirements and regulations for 650 acres to get ahead of those changes.

“If people are comfortable with it, this whole area needs to be as established as one large PUD [Planned Unit Development],” she said. “That has not happened yet. It’s just that one pilot block that has happened.”

If approved by the city council, existing buildings would not be affected. It’s only when some type of redevelopment happens that the new requirements would be triggered, Schemmel said.

“It could be something as simple as a refresh. It could be something where they do building additions. Any new construction would have to follow the requirements,” she said. “It could be a full tear down and replacement, then all those criteria would apply.”

Moffatt said he believes the changes would provide property owners some flexibility that doesn’t currently exist.

“It was a suburban, prototypical zoning district that exists today, and we’ve run into that before with some of these sites,” he said. “As we’ve contemplated redevelopment, developers have kicked the tires on projects and have run into all sorts of hurdles to have 100-foot setbacks from the property lines and suburban parking requirements.”

He said while the current zoning has created some hurdles, “I don’t think it’s really killed a project per se.”

Schemmel said it’s important for the city to have this conversation now to keep the area vibrant and attractive for future development.

“We know this area will have to change, and if we can have something in place ahead of time, we can guide it into a much better product than just letting it happen,” she said. 

And that will take time and a lot of work and studying, Schemmel said.

“It takes preparation and it takes the council determining what they would invest in versus what [they] would expect private development to invest in. If that’s not in place prior to development pressure happening, it’s not going to happen for the district. So, it’s really incumbent on us to have our act together before we have a lot of desire to redevelop.”