Merle Hay Mall intends to move ahead with plans for a sports arena to serve other programs and events, Elizabeth Holland, the CEO of the group that owns the mall, said after the Des Moines Buccaneers withdrew from negotiations to move its games to the mall.

Holland was notified about two weeks ago of the Buccaneers’ decision in a letter that she said she was “shocked” to receive.

She said as recently as May both sides were exchanging proposed changes to a lease agreement, and that the mall had received a response back in mid-May that had a lot of changes in it.

“But [it] was nothing we haven’t seen,” Holland said. “Real estate is complicated; we understand that. And we replied back to it, accepting many of the terms, rejecting some, and we were prepared to move forward.”

Negotiations with the Buccaneers began in November 2020 when Holland announced that former department store space would get new life as the home arena for the Buccaneers and other activities.

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 ceremony was held. Urbandale, Des Moines and Polk County officials began meeting regularly to discuss development-related issues.

There were hiccups along the way.

What had started as a proposal for the hockey team to own the arena shifted to the mall owning the arena and leasing space to the team. That was after it was announced the Bucs had missed an internal deadline for financing.

Holland said she and the Buccaneers’ ownership went back and forth, tweaking details of the proposed lease agreement as they tried to find common ground that would allow the project to move forward.

As things stalled, officials with Urbandale, Des Moines and Polk County gave the owners of the mall and the Buccaneers until Dec. 31, 2023, to finalize an agreement or risk losing the funding awarded by the IEDA.

In January, the IEDA board extended the deadline to finalize a lease agreement until June. That extension came with a stern warning from IEDA executive director Debi Durham.

“How long do we push this out?” Durham said at a January meeting of the IEDA board. “There’s still a lot of moving parts. I don’t know that we should extend this for months. … We have to [see] substantial progress being made [by June].”

If there is little or no progress, “hard decisions” will need to be made, Durham said.

Attempts to reach officials with the IEDA on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

As recently as November 2023, officials with the Buccaneers expressed interest in moving to a new arena and training facility in the mall.

“We are hopeful that this project comes to fruition,” Michael Devlin, part of the team’s ownership group, told the Business Record in an email at the time.

On Tuesday, Nate Teut, the president of the Buccaneers, declined to comment for this story.

Derek Zarn, director of marketing and communications for the city of Urbandale, said the outcome was not what had been “envisioned or desired,” and that the city is working with Des Moines, Polk County and the IEDA to see how the Buccaneers’ decision could affect the Iowa Reinvestment District Program funding.

“The two cities and Polk County remain committed to exploring future opportunities that assist with bringing new investment, growth and vitality for a thriving Merle Hay Mall campus for the surrounding neighborhoods and the central Iowa region,” Zarn said in an email.

Holland said the mall has held up its end of the original redevelopment agreement, which included, among other things, razing the old Sears store, the relocation of Kohl’s to a new building that faces Merle Hay Road, the addition of Kids Empire, an indoor play center on the west side of the mall, and the opening of Dinks Pickleball in space that had previously been occupied by Kohls.

Despite the disappointment that a deal with the Buccaneers could not be reached, Holland said she is optimistic about the future of the space.

“While we may not be moving forward with the Bucs, at their election, we still believe we can fill the 30 home games a year [that the Buccaneers would have played] in that arena with other uses, hockey possibly,” she said. “We are looking at other hockey programs. We continue to lean very heavily into sports and entertainment as uses for that western third of the mall.”

Holland said she is working with the IEDA on an amendment for the Reinvestment District Program funds because “the plan has shifted dramatically from what they approved.”

“We’re going to move forward with a planned amendment and program an arena there,” she said.

“Dinks Pickleball has killed it there, they’re doing great, so we continue to believe sports and entertainment, particularly youth sports, is the way to go,” she said.