Des Moines city staff are recommending the City Council move forward with Heart of America Group's $24 million office building at 401 Robert D. Ray Drive instead of a rival proposal for a $200 million performing arts center on the same stretch of land near the former City Hall. The council is expected to take up the recommendation at its meeting Monday.
The staff position, reported by the Business Record, comes after months of competing visions for the same patch of East Village real estate. Heart of America Group plans a five-story, mass-timber office building on the 0.4-acre site, with the city selling the parcel to the company for $1 million. The project carries estimated construction costs of $24 million, and Des Moines has agreed to kick in $3.95 million in tax increment financing incentives, with completion anticipated in 2028.
That plan has been moving through the city's approval process for months. The Des Moines City Council approved preliminary terms of an urban renewal development agreement with Heart of America Group back on Sept. 14, which triggered a 30-day competitive bid period meant to test whether anyone else wanted a shot at the site.
A Nonprofit Jumps In With a Bigger, Slower Vision
Someone did. The Des Moines Metropolitan Center for the Arts filed its own proposal with the city on Oct. 13, pitching a plan that would connect to the former City Hall and span Robert D. Ray Drive itself. According to the Business Record's coverage of that filing, the performing arts center would total just under 110,000 square feet, folding in the 44,000-square-foot former City Hall building alongside a new theater seating up to 1,200 people across a lower bowl and balcony.
The arts center's price tag dwarfs the office project's: organizers say it would require raising roughly $200 million, including an endowment as large as $25 million, the same report noted. Construction wouldn't wrap until 2030 at the earliest, under a four-year timeline the nonprofit's organizers laid out, and the Des Moines Metropolitan Center for the Arts project now targets 2029 for the start of construction.
Organizers floated a long list of potential tenants, including Ballet Des Moines, the Des Moines Symphony and the Des Moines Metro Opera, and the nonprofit cited outside studies estimating the facility could be used 230 times a year and generate $100 million annually in economic impact. DMMCA organizers also argued the arts center could spur additional redevelopment nearby, suggesting Heart of America could simply build on an adjacent city-owned parcel instead — a swap that would let both projects coexist, according to the Business Record's reporting on the nonprofit's pitch.
Why Staff Are Leaning Toward the Office Tower
City staff didn't buy that framing wholesale. Per a staff report cited by the Business Record, staff said Heart of America's proposal demonstrates a plan for financing, and that proposed property acquisition terms are already in place, along with a near-term construction schedule, private investment, a return of city property to the tax rolls, and publicly accessible plaza improvements. Staff added that the office project could generate tax and parking revenue relatively quickly.
By contrast, staff described the arts center's proposal as an aspirational vision with potential long-term city and regional benefits, but said it lacks a financing and support plan. The report noted DMMCA is seeking close to $200 million or more without sufficient committed funding, and that performing arts organizations supplied no documented support letters, participation agreements or financial commitments, the same report states. Staff also raised concerns about the feasibility and substantial preliminary costs of relocating infrastructure beneath the street, since the arts center's 57,000-square-foot theater addition would be built over Robert D. Ray Drive, closing it, per the Business Record's account of the nonprofit's proposal.
Staff further said the nonprofit's proposal lacks enough information to justify reserving the historic City Hall building and the 401 Robert D. Ray Drive site, warning that holding the property for a project with unresolved financing and feasibility could block a more advanced alternative. The city's own financial obligations tied to the arts center project remain undefined, staff noted, though they said options remain open to study adaptive reuse of the historic building and alternative locations for an arts center elsewhere.
Nonprofit Pushes Back, Developer Says It Wasn't a Competition
DMMCA had asked the council to delay action on the Heart of America proposal for six months to give its plan more time to develop. MD Isley, the nonprofit's interim director, said staff appeared uninterested in exploring compromise opportunities to further study the project, and argued the site adjacent to the historic municipal building is essential to the arts center proposal, saying the community should have time to consider it.
Mike Whalen, president and CEO of Heart of America Group, said he learned of the competing DMMCA proposal only after his company had already submitted its own, and maintained Heart of America never intended its filing to turn into a competition. Whalen said he hadn't seen the staff report but was looking forward to advancing his project, and said Heart of America kept working through the 30-day bid period, with plans to start geotechnical and civil work as soon as possible.
The earlier history of the site shows how much the vision for the property has shifted. Back in January 2024, the city described the 401 Robert D. Ray Drive parcel as 17,168 square feet, or about 0.39 acres, according to the Business Record. A redevelopment notice from the City of Des Moines that February had floated a possible five-story mixed-use building with ground-floor commercial and retail space and up to 76 residential units — a far cry from either the office tower or the theater now under consideration.
