The Merle Hay Mall Food Court Already Closed. The Demolition Is Still Running Behind Schedule.

Drive past the north end of Merle Hay Mall on Douglas Avenue this month and the windows near the old Younkers entrance are dark. No cinnamon smell drifting out toward the parking lot, no line for Maid-Rite, no sign of the tamale cart that used to sit near the food court doors. If you've lived in Urbandale for any stretch of time, you've probably noticed the quiet before you noticed anything else. That quiet has been building for almost a year, and it has almost nothing to do with the wrecking ball everyone's been waiting for.

Here's the part that surprises people: the food court didn't close because demolition started. It closed because demolition kept getting pushed back, and the mall's owners needed the space empty long before construction crews were anywhere close to showing up.

What already left, months before anything got knocked down

The mall's Local Eats Food Court had four tenants left by the time closure notices went out: Maid-Rite, Tamale's Industry, Turkish Feast, and Vietnam Cafe. Each had to decide, on a tight and shifting timeline, whether to stay in the mall or leave it entirely.

Tamale's Industry had been in that food court for about a decade under owner German Tejeda. Rather than try to relocate inside the mall, Tejeda moved the business into a food truck, now parked outside Merle Hay off Douglas Avenue. He told a local reporter it had been the hardest year the business had seen, and that traffic inside the mall had been thinning out well before construction became visible from the parking lot.

Turkish Feast had barely opened. Owner Veysel Kadir Yilmaz launched the restaurant inside the food court on December 6, 2025, and within months was already weighing a move to a sit-down space in downtown Des Moines instead of investing in a mall storefront with an uncertain runway.

Vietnam Cafe has been the food court's longest resident, run by Brenda Tran for more than fifteen years. As of this summer she was still open, still serving, and still waiting on the 60-day notice to vacate that every remaining tenant expected. Mall management offered food court vendors the option to relocate into new storefronts facing Douglas Avenue, closer to where arena foot traffic will eventually pass. The catch was cost: rebuilding a restaurant space with proper drains, hoods, and electrical ran an estimated $50 to $60 a square foot. For businesses running on thin margins, none of the remaining tenants took the offer.

That's the part of this story that rarely makes it into a press release. Long before a single wall came down, the businesses that gave the mall its everyday texture had already been asked to leave or priced out of staying.

The demolition date that keeps sliding

If you've been waiting to see the old Younkers building actually come down, you're not imagining that it's taking longer than announced. The timeline has moved every time mall ownership has given an update.

Part of the delay comes down to money. Phase One of the project, the arena and volleyball facility, needed $56.9 million in committed financing by March 31, 2026. As of the letter sent that same week, ownership had identified about $44.3 million, leaving a gap of roughly $12.6 million still being filled through sources that include GreenState Credit Union, which has backed the project since 2022, and a $7.5 million commitment from the International Coliseums Company. Construction costs are also being re-priced now that the plan calls for an entirely new building rather than a retrofit of the old department store shell, which Holland has said is actually the cheaper option once you factor in what it takes to run modern arena mechanical systems through a 1970s-era structure.

None of that means the project has stalled. It means "late summer or early fall" is a wide window, and as of the most recent public update, the mall was still inside it. If you've driven past and seen fencing or equipment staged near the old entrance, that's this schedule finally catching up to itself. If you haven't, the gap between announcement and shovel is simply wider than most people assume for a project this size.

What's actually still open right now

It's easy to read all this and picture a mall in decline. That's not quite the picture on the ground. Outside the wing being rebuilt, Merle Hay is still functioning as it has for years:

• Target and Kohl's remain anchor stores, along with Ross Dress for Less
• Dinks Pickleball, which drew nearly 60,000 visitors in its first year of operation, is staying put, with additional courts planned nearby as part of the redevelopment
• Flix Brewhouse, the eat-in movie theater and microbrewery that opened at Merle Hay in 2014, is still running shows
• GameDay Arcade and Kids Empire are both open
• Applebee's, IHOP, and Starbucks continue to operate on the mall's out-parcels along Douglas Avenue

The mall pulled more than 750,000 unique visitors and 3 million total visits between July 2024 and July 2025, according to figures Holland presented to a local commercial real estate group. Whatever changes over the next two years, that baseline traffic hasn't disappeared. It's concentrated in the parts of the property that aren't under construction.

Why this particular corner matters beyond the mall itself

The wing being rebuilt, the one that housed Younkers, the food court, and Dinks Pickleball, sits on the Urbandale side of the property line. Merle Hay Mall actually straddles two cities: roughly two-thirds of it is in Des Moines, and the remaining third, including the section now being torn down and rebuilt, is inside Urbandale's city limits. That split is why a joint board with representatives from both cities and Polk County oversees the project, and it's part of why Holland has described the redevelopment as "the gateway" to Urbandale's own downtown redevelopment plan, with a streetscape project planned for Douglas Avenue alongside the arena work.

Aaron DeJong, Urbandale's economic development director, has been the city's point person on the joint board tracking funding updates. On the Des Moines side, economic development administrator Carrie Kruse has said the city is open to discussing tax increment financing for a future hotel and retail development on that portion of the site, though nothing has been finalized.

Once complete, the arena is planned to seat up to 4,000 for hockey, indoor soccer, and concerts, with Drake University's hockey clubs and the Iowa Demon Hawks professional soccer teams as anchor tenants. The adjacent volleyball facility, replacing the old food court footprint, is expected to draw about 2,000 visitors every weekend once it's running year round. Holland has projected the completed project will add roughly 65,000 unique visitors a year to the mall, a real number, but a modest one next to the 750,000 who already show up annually. The bigger draw isn't a bigger version of the mall people know. It's a new reason to be there on nights and weekends that used to be quiet.

What to actually watch for this fall

If you want to track this without waiting for another press release, the visible signs are simple: permits posted at the site, fencing extending past what's there now, and any announcement of a groundbreaking date rather than another "still the plan" update. The full build, arena, volleyball facility, hotel, and new retail space along Douglas Avenue, isn't expected to wrap until fall 2028. What happens this fall is really just the first domino, the one mall ownership has been trying to tip over since last winter.

If you've got questions about what's changing in your part of Urbandale, or anywhere else across Central Iowa, I'd love to talk it through. Laura Major keeps an eye on this stuff so you don't have to. Let's Connect.