Drive east on Douglas Avenue toward 70th Street this fall and you will start seeing fencing, staging equipment, and eventually the slow disappearance of a 165,000-square-foot building that has sat mostly empty since Younkers closed in 2018. That building is the first domino in a project that quietly reshapes how the entire east edge of Urbandale will function by 2028. If you live here, this is the change that matters most in your daily orbit, and the visible signal for it starts this summer.
Here is the part most residents miss. The Merle Hay work is not a standalone mall renovation. It is the anchor for a longer city plan that stretches from the mall westward along Douglas Avenue to 75th Street, and the demolition timing is what unlocks the rest.
The Domino That Has to Fall First
The former Younkers store is coming down. Business Record reporting puts demolition on track for late summer 2026, kicking off a phased build-out that Merle Hay Mall CEO Liz Holland has described as lining up dominoes. Tenants she has been talking to are not signing letters of intent until they see the wrecking equipment show up. Once the shell is gone, the leases move.
What is going in its place, according to the approved Iowa Reinvestment Act plan and the renderings from Perkins & Will Architects:
- A multiuse arena on the Younkers footprint, sized for hockey, indoor soccer, and concerts
- A 50,000-square-foot volleyball facility
- More than 140,000 square feet of new retail and restaurant space, some in existing mall footprint that has been systematically vacated
- A 150-room hotel
- A new anchor building on the empty parcel just north of Kohl's
Total project cost sits at roughly $58 million, and everything is scheduled to be complete and open by fall 2028.
The Number That Reframes the Story
The mall attracted an average of 35,000 shoppers per day at its year 2000 peak. Since then, national mall economics have gone sideways, and Merle Hay's assessed value dropped more than $13 million between 2005 and the late 2000s according to the mall's own filings history. The redevelopment is not chasing that old model. Holland has been explicit about the mission: turn the property into a weekly-needs destination, not a monthly one, by pairing everyday tenants like Target (added in 2005) and Flix Brewhouse with regional draws like the arena and volleyball complex.
For someone who already lives within a ten-minute drive, this is the practical read. The mall is being rebuilt around trips you take every week anyway, plus reasons to come on a Friday night or a Saturday morning.
Why the Timeline Matters More Than the Renderings
Renderings are pretty. Timelines pay the mortgage on your patience with construction traffic. Here is the sequence residents can actually plan around:
- Late summer 2026 — Younkers demolition begins. Expect staging along the north side of the mall complex and periodic lane impacts on 70th Street and Douglas Avenue.
- Late 2026 through 2027 — Arena and volleyball facility vertical construction. Interior tenant space work happens in parallel inside the existing mall as leases sign following the demolition milestone.
- 2027 — Merle Hay Mall has publicly targeted 2027 as the completion window for the arena portion in earlier reporting, with the broader project extending later.
- Fall 2028 — All spaces, including the arena, hotel, and new retail buildout, scheduled to be open.
The Merle Hay Reinvestment District 28E Board, a joint entity between the cities of Urbandale and Des Moines, handles the Iowa Reinvestment Act application on behalf of the project. The IEDA approved a revised $26.5 million IRA allocation in November 2025 after the original 2022 approval had to be reworked when the Des Moines Buccaneers exited hockey negotiations in 2024. That reworked approval is what put the current phased plan back on the calendar.
If you live west of the mall in the neighborhoods around Meredith Drive or north of Douglas Avenue, that reworked timeline is the reason your Saturday errands will feel different starting this fall rather than a year from now.
How This Threads into Douglas Avenue
Most residents know Urbandale has been talking about a downtown for years. What is less well understood is how tightly the Merle Hay project is stitched to that plan.
The city's downtown master plan, developed with consulting firm Bolten and Menk and approved by the City Council in December 2023, defines downtown Urbandale as the corridor between Merle Hay Road and 75th Street along Douglas Avenue. In early 2026, the Council awarded two follow-on contracts: a branding contract to De Novo Marketing of Cedar Rapids and a zoning overhaul contract to Wright Smith Cozino working alongside Confluence. Current zoning is neighborhood commercial, which permits only low-density commercial use. That has to change before the master plan's mixed-use vision is legally buildable.
Aaron DeJong, Urbandale's economic development director, has described the situation candidly: some residents did not know Urbandale had a downtown, and the branding work is partly meant to answer whether "downtown Urbandale" is even the right name for what is being built. Liz Holland has publicly called Merle Hay the gateway to those improvements, and the mall is separately planning a streetscape project along Douglas Avenue that ties into the corridor.
Put those two things next to each other and the mechanic gets clearer. Merle Hay generates the private investment and the foot traffic. The Douglas corridor rezone gives smaller-scale developers a legal path to build behind it. Neither works without the other, and the mall demolition is the visible starting gun for both.
What Changes for You Between Now and 2028
This is the section residents actually want. Sorted by how soon it hits your calendar:
- Traffic patterns near the mall shift by early fall 2026. Construction staging for demolition will affect the north side of the complex first. If you cut through the mall parking lot to skip Douglas Avenue, plan an alternate.
- Tenant churn accelerates inside the mall. Holland has said the mall has "systematically vacated" spaces it needs for redevelopment and can give 60-day notices to existing tenants. If a shop you rely on is in a footprint that gets absorbed, you will hear about it fast.
- The Flix Brewhouse and Dinks Pickleball anchors stay. Both are inside the Urbandale portion of the mall footprint and are part of the weekly-needs strategy, not the redevelopment tear-down.
- Douglas Avenue zoning proposals go public over the next 12 to 18 months. The Wright Smith Cozino and Confluence work will surface as draft zoning overlays, and public meetings on those are how residents actually shape what the mixed-use blocks look like.
- Property near Douglas and 100th could shift. The Council has separately floated a new city facility of roughly 70,000 square feet at the southwest corner of Douglas and 100th, pending a bond referendum in 2026. That is a separate project from Merle Hay, but it is part of the same east-west corridor story.
The One Line to Remember
If you live in Urbandale and someone at a family dinner asks what is happening with Merle Hay, this is the short version. The Younkers demolition this fall is not the interesting news by itself. The interesting news is that it is the trigger for tenant leases, for the arena vertical work, for the mall's Douglas Avenue streetscape, and for the city's zoning rewrite of the corridor between the mall and 75th Street. Four separate timelines start moving off one wrecking crew.
That is the sort of stitched-together detail that only shows up if you have been reading the meeting agendas and the Business Record filings side by side. Most coverage treats these as separate stories. In Urbandale, over the next two years, they are one story.
When Real Estate Questions Come Up
Corridor-level projects like this are the kind of thing that quietly changes how a neighborhood a mile away feels five years from now. If you are thinking about how the east side of Urbandale fits into a move, a sale, or a longer-term hold, that is a real conversation worth having with someone who tracks these timelines as closely as you do. Bo Cosens Real Estate works across Urbandale and the surrounding Central Iowa suburbs, and the background in mortgage lending and title work means fewer surprises when you actually get to the paperwork stage.
Let's Connect when you are ready to talk through what any of this means for your specific block.
