Jordan Creek Town Center is a two-level enclosed mall at 101 Jordan Creek Parkway in West Des Moines, Iowa, with a man-made lake and an open-air retail strip as part of the complex.
It opened in August 2004 on corn and soybean fields. The plan had room for about 150 shops and restaurants, and it opened about 70 percent occupied.
Younkers closed on August 29, 2018. Panera closed on May 19, 2026, a month short of 20 years there.
Today Jordan Creek runs near full while Valley West Mall, 3.5 miles away, has about 18 occupied tenant spaces left. One Jordan Creek lakefront restaurant site is getting a new building, and its replacement is still listed as coming soon.
Jordan Creek opened a third empty
Scheels started trading on July 14, 2004, three weeks before the ribbon.
On August 4 the rest of it opened: Dillard's in a 200,000-square-foot store, Younkers at the far end, Barnes & Noble in about 30,000 square feet, and a Century Theatres complex with 20 screens.
Jordan Creek Town Center is a two-level enclosed regional shopping center at 101 Jordan Creek Parkway in West Des Moines, Iowa.
It opened as the retail core of a new district built on corn and soybean fields, and it is still open, anchored now by Dillard's, Scheels, Von Maur, and the cinema.
The plan had room for about 150 shops and restaurants. On opening day about 70 percent of it was occupied.
So the building came with gaps in it.
It had been drawn as a long grid of narrow bays, many of them built with two fronts, one door into the mall and one onto an outdoor street.
Two weeks before the opening, crews were still finishing tenant facades and assembling the food court, which seated about 1,000.
Apple takes Brookstone and Clarks
Apple opened three months after the mall, on November 6, 2004, in about 4,000 square feet.
The gaps closed fast.
By 2007 local coverage put the mall at about 99 percent occupied, and after that any store that wanted to grow had to grow into somebody else.
Apple did it in 2016.
The rebuild was valued at $3 million and took in the Brookstone and Clarks spaces on either side, which left one store of about 7,200 square feet where three had traded.
Apple sold from a temporary space elsewhere in the mall for the five months the work took.
The math held up. In the twelve months to November 2023 the enlarged store sold $5,235 per square foot, against $918 at Scheels.
Brookstone was gone. Clarks moved to another space in the mall.
Two storefronts came off the map, the store count dropped by two, and the mall stayed full.
Younkers closes and Von Maur changes plan
In February 2018 Von Maur said it would build at Jordan Creek: a two-level store of about 140,000 square feet on the north side, between Scheels and Younkers, at about $25 million, opening in the autumn of 2022.
It had taken some 13 years of on-and-off talks to get to that announcement.
Six months later the plan had a hole in it.
Bon-Ton liquidated, the Jordan Creek Younkers closed on August 29, 2018, and the mall had its first empty department store.
By November 2019 Von Maur had dropped the new building and taken the old one. The north-side store never got built.
Von Maur closed its Valley West Mall store 3.5 miles away, where it had traded since 1976, and opened at Jordan Creek on November 5, 2022 in about 152,000 square feet of the former Younkers.
That created a second problem.
Dave & Buster's had been lined up for roughly 25,000 square feet on the Younkers upper level, and Von Maur wanted the whole building.
So Dave & Buster's went outside. It opened its own building of about 21,700 square feet on July 31, 2023.
Construction had started in the summer of 2022, after a pandemic delay.
One closure had cancelled a $25 million building and moved an entertainment tenant out of the mall and into the parking lot.
Six storefronts, one shop
H&M opened a two-level store on June 10, 2021, about 25,000 square feet of it.
The lower level covered four of the original storefronts and the upper level covered two.
lululemon took three.
Urban Outfitters opened in September 2023 on the upper level near Von Maur, about 8,500 square feet built out of five former storefronts, among them spaces occupied by Journeys Kidz, Halberstadts, and Lucky Bamboo.
Two of those three businesses are still in the mall.
Journeys Kidz moved to another space and Halberstadts is in the current directory. Their old doorways are gone.
The landlord had a reason to allow it.
lululemon's sales went from about $9.2 million in 2021 to about $14.4 million in the twelve months to November 2023, out of three of the original bays.
A building laid out for 165 stores can be full and still have fewer storefronts every few years.
On the lake, one stays and one comes down
The lake district opened with restaurants around the water: The Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Chang's, Champps, and Joe's Crab Shack.
The wider development added roughly 2,000 restaurant seats to the local market in its first year.
Panera opened at Jordan Creek on June 19, 2006 and closed on May 19, 2026, a month short of 20 years. The building stays.
Kura Revolving Sushi Bar has taken it for Iowa's first location, with an opening announced for late 2026 or early 2027.
The Joe's Crab Shack building got the other treatment.
It sat empty on the lakefront, and when a replacement came in February 2026 the plan started with demolition.
A Yard House of about 9,000 square feet is going up on the site.
On The Border, also on the lake, had closed by February 25, 2025.
By May 2026 the city fire department listed the Yard House among projects under construction or close to breaking ground.
Jordan Creek in 2026
The mall is still taking new stores, and they arrive in whatever space the building has.
Iowa's first LEGO store opened in Center Court on May 31, 2024. A 9,000-square-foot Toys R Us opened beside the food court on November 1, 2025.
Dillard's, Scheels, Von Maur, and the 20-screen cinema hold the anchor positions.
The property lists more than 1.1 million square feet and more than 110 retailers.
At the end of 2023 it was 97.1 percent leased to more than 120 tenants, in a mall drawn for about 150 shops.
Nobody has proposed demolishing or converting any of it.
The changes under way in 2026 are tenant turnover and a rebuild: a restaurant torn down for a Yard House, a sushi bar taking a Panera, four more names on the coming-soon list.
At 7 a.m. the doors open for the mall walkers, three hours before the shops.
Their route runs past stretches of wall where five and six storefronts once had their own doors.
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