A revised plan to redevelop Merle Hay Mall will allow for greater use and expand the number of visitors to the area than the plan that was originally submitted to the state under its Iowa Reinvestment Act program, said Elizabeth Holland, the CEO of the group that owns the mall.

“We’ve massively expanded the universe of potential users for the facility,” Holland said. “The crux of the Iowa Reinvestment Act program is the ability to attract enough people over a period of years to generate sales tax that would diffuse the municipal investment in the building, so by expanding the universe of potential users to a much greater number of people in the region and the state, we feel like we’ve de-risked the project from an economic standpoint.”

The Des Moines City Council approved the revised Iowa Reinvestment Act application at its meeting Monday. The Urbandale City Council is scheduled to consider the revised application at its April 15 meeting. The revised application is then tentatively scheduled to go before the Iowa Economic Development Authority Board on April 18, Holland said.

An email message sent to IEDA officials to confirm the hearing date was not immediately returned.

The mall straddles the border between Des Moines and Urbandale, and the cities, along with Polk County, are collaborating to administer the Iowa Reinvestment Act funds.

The mall initially entered negotiations with the Des Moines Buccaneers in November 2020 for the hockey team to make the former Kohl’s department store space its new home. The project received a boost when it was awarded $26.5 million from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Iowa Reinvestment District Program. A groundbreaking was held and Urbandale, Des Moines and Polk County officials began meeting regularly to discuss development-related issues.

But plans had to shift after the Buccaneers announced last summer that they were ending negotiations with the mall to make the new arena their home.

After that, Holland said, mall officials “put on our thinking caps” to determine who other local partners could be.

She said that also resulted in a change in design for the project.

Instead of four sheets of ice, including a 3,500-seat arena, the revised plan includes only the single sheet of ice in the 3,500-seat arena, and the arena could be converted to other uses, including indoor soccer, Holland said.

There will also be 13 pickleball courts and eight permanent volleyball courts in the league practice and training facility. The user of the volleyball space has not been announced yet, Holland said.

The ice arena will be home to the Drake University hockey team and the Iowa Demon Hawks, a soccer club based in Des Moines that has both men’s and women’s teams.

“We feel like we’ve very much maintained our love of hockey and use hockey as a base activity in that building, but we’ve very much expanded the potential users for the facility,” Holland said.

She said data from the tourism visitor tracking app Placer.AI shows that between November 2023 and November 2024 more than 60,000 people visited Dinks Pickleball in the former Kohl’s department store space during its first year of operation. The data showed that Dinks drew more than 17,000 unique visitors during that time.

Those visitors may also visit other stores and restaurants in the area, Holland said.

She said with the expanded scope of the plan, she sees even greater potential for visitors to area businesses and hotels.

Holland is hopeful construction on the arena and other amenities included in the revised plan could begin by the end of this year and be completed by the summer of 2027.

“It’s been hard for this project to be delayed as long as it has,” Holland said. “A lot of things have gone into that. We went before the Iowa Legislature in the spring of 2020, and you think about what that session was like [with the COVID-19 pandemic]. We’ve pushed through some pretty historic world events, and we’re not going to stop now.”