Inyoung Choi|Des Moines Register
Valley West Mall hasreversed course on a planfor redevelopment of the mallthat calls for demolishing the building that houses its J.C. Penney store.
The proposal for the $278 million redevelopment project, unveiledFeb. 26 by the city of West Des Moines, proposes toreconfigure the site of the struggling mall with a mix of apartments, a hotel, an entertainment center and offices, as well as public gathering space and two ponds surrounded by walking paths. The work is projected to occurover thenext five to 10 years.
Included in the plan: removal of the J.C. Penney building to make way for about300,000 square feet of office and retail space with under-building parking.
But mall and city officials now say the plan is for the store to stay.
Last year, J.C. Penney filed for bankruptcyand announced plans to shut down over a quarter of its store locations, including two in Iowa. But the store at Valley West has remained open, even amid speculation that the mall's other remaining anchor, a Von Maur department store, will close once the chain opens a new store at Jordan Creek Town Center, just five miles away.
The mall's Younkers store closed in 2018 when that chain liquidated, and that building remains slated for demolition in the redevelopment plan.
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Trisha Barton, Valley West director of marketing,said this week that when the mall's managers originally submitted the plan for redevelopment, they were "under the assumption that (J.C. Penney) would no longer be around."Now, Barton said, the store is "looking to the future" and "are definitely wanting to be part of (Valley West Mall's) redevelopment."
As for whetherJ.C. Penney will stay in its current store location, Barton said that it's"definitely something that the ownership will be discussing with them on whether or not they want to participate in maybe redesigning or redeveloping a location for themselves." But at this time, the mall does not plan to take down the building "until J.C. Penney actively would like to be moved somewhere else," Barton said.
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Sarah Meche, aspokesperson for Texas-based J.C. Penney, referred to a list of closures which did not list the Valley West location and said in an email that "there are no additional closure announcements to share at this time."
Clyde Evans, community and economicdevelopment director for the city of West Des Moines, said Valley West'sownerare "revising" their plans with J.C. Penney in place in the redevelopment.
"Right now, it looks like J.C. Penney is still a part of the equation, at least based on the information I got from mall ownership," Evans said.
The store will "most likely" remain in its current location "until they decide they no longer want to keep the store open (or)they move to a different location," he added.
Minneapolis-based Watson Properties, which owns the mall, would invest about $262 million in the project, and the city is seeking$30 million in state assistancethroughthe Iowa Reinvestment District Act. It allows cities to create special districts where a portion of sales and hotel/motel tax can be set aside to help fund projects that spur economic development.
Across the country, shopping malls have experienced growing vacancies and decreasing customer traffic, in part because of the growth in online shipping.The COVID-19 pandemic hasaccelerated this trend.
Evans said that in response, many malls nationwide are seeking to reconfigure their mix of businesses, adding restaurants and entertainment options. A Valley West competitor, Merle Hay Mall, is among them, seeking funds from the Iowa Reinvestment District Act to turn a vacated Younkers store into an arena for the Des Moines Buccaneers hockey team.
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Merle Hay already has added Gameday, Gameday Lanes bowling, Selfie World and Flix Brewhouse (currently closed because of the pandemic) as tenants.
"With a lot of department stores closing, then those were big the draws to enclosed malls," Evanssaid. "And if you don't have those draws, then where do you get your foot traffic?I thinkby doing entertainment-type of things and eateries and different things like that, that tends to bring that foot traffic back to that site."
Even prior to the pandemic, Valley West Mall leadership had been planning for redevelopment that would add restaurants or entertainment venues as part of a "mixed-use" complex.
