Drive past 100th Street and Northpark Drive right now and you will see soybeans, not a beaver mascot. But if you were at Urbandale's Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on Monday, August 10, you saw the first real vote on what could become Iowa's first Buc-ee's, a 74,000-square-foot travel center on the 20-acre parcel that former Des Moines mayor Frank Cownie currently owns through Macon Realty Co.
The commission approved the request unanimously, changing the site's comprehensive plan designation from mixed use to corridor commercial. That sounds like a green light. It is closer to a permission slip. And the way this deal is moving compares directly to a similar effort years in the making, thirty minutes south, that hasn't gotten nearly as far. Understanding why tells you more about how development actually works in this metro than any press release will.
What Actually Happened on Monday
The land use change was requested by CSMS Management, the company tied to Buc-ee's as the contract purchaser of the property, according to reporting from Local 5's sister station. City staff recommended the change, telling commissioners the site along Interstate 80/35 was better suited as a regional destination than as mixed-use development. The vote passed without dissent from the commission itself.
That does not mean construction starts this fall. Urbandale officials have been clear that the comprehensive plan amendment still needs city council approval, expected on the agenda for the September 1 meeting, and that rezoning, a site plan, and building permits all come after that. City staff have said those remaining steps could take several years before anyone walks through Buc-ee's doors in Urbandale.
If you have been hearing about this for a week and assumed it was basically decided, it isn't. It is one step in a process that typically has four or five.
The Norwalk Comparison Nobody's Talking About
Here is the detail that puts Urbandale's progress in context. This isn't the first time a Des Moines suburb has gone after Buc-ee's. A year earlier, Norwalk circulated its own petition supporting a Buc-ee's at a future interchange along Interstate 35 and Fillmore Street, west of the city. That petition gathered more than 3,700 signatures, more support by raw numbers than anything currently organized in Urbandale.
Norwalk's effort is still waiting. City officials there have said Buc-ee's told them an interchange would be necessary before the company would build, and that interchange is still a few years from construction. Norwalk is continuing to court what it calls high-value commercial development, but it is doing so without the one thing Urbandale already has: a finished interchange sitting right at the property line.
That is the mechanism worth understanding if you live in either city. Public enthusiasm didn't decide which suburb got further. Existing infrastructure did. Urbandale's parcel sits directly off I-80/35 today. Norwalk's site needs a road project that doesn't exist yet. Buc-ee's, like most large-format retailers chasing interstate traffic, is building where the exit ramp already works, not where the community wants it most.
What the Numbers Actually Say
The figures attached to the Urbandale proposal, drawn from city documents cited by the Business Record, give some shape to why officials are willing to move a comprehensive plan around for this. The store would represent more than $60 million in capital investment and create more than 200 full-time jobs, with Buc-ee's real estate representative Stan Beard telling the commission those positions would start in the $19 to $22 an hour range. The company projects roughly 5 million visitors a year, with 70 percent of those travelers coming from more than 100 miles away.
That last number matters if you're picturing this as a neighborhood gas station. It isn't designed as one. Buc-ee's model depends on being a destination stop for long-distance drivers on I-80, not a fill-up spot for people running errands in Urbandale. The plan calls for 60 gas pumps and between 20 and 24 electric vehicle charging stations, open 24 hours a day, and Beard has said the company does not allow semi trucks on-site, distinguishing it from a traditional truck stop.
The Man Selling the Bean Field
Cownie, who served as Des Moines mayor before returning to the private sector through Macon Realty Co., is now on the other side of the table as the seller. Asked about his own experience at a Buc-ee's, he didn't hold back.
"You go in thinking you're going to buy maybe a ten-gallon gas, and you leave with $300 in stock. And it was the most amazing experience."
Whatever you make of that endorsement, it tells you where the momentum inside this deal is coming from. The seller believes in the product enough to describe his own shopping trip like a conversion story.
The Pushback, and Where It's Coming From
Not everyone at Monday's meeting was there to cheer. Kari Carney, representing the statewide land-use nonprofit 1000 Friends of Iowa, pressed commissioners to think past the jobs number and the tax revenue.
"You should ask yourselves, 'is this really what the city of Urbandale wants,' and 'does this really fit in with the long-term goals that the city council and the mayor have set.'"
1000 Friends of Iowa has spent nearly three decades focused on how Iowa communities use land, and Carney's question wasn't about Buc-ee's specifically so much as about whether a 20-acre commercial mega-site fits the comprehensive plan Urbandale already had in place before this request arrived. When a commissioner asked Beard if he wanted to respond directly to the opposition in the room, he declined, saying he didn't think city staff wanted that kind of back-and-forth before the process had gone further.
That exchange is worth remembering heading into September. The opposition in Urbandale is organized around planning philosophy, not primarily traffic or noise complaints, which is a different fight than the one playing out in some other states where Buc-ee's has proposed locations near residential areas.
What Still Has to Happen
For anyone trying to track this without reading every city council packet between now and groundbreaking, here's the actual sequence still ahead:
- City council vote on the comprehensive plan amendment, expected September 1
- A formal rezoning request for the 20-acre parcel
- Site plan approval, which is where traffic, drainage, and design details typically get hashed out
- Building permits, the last procedural step before any ground gets broken
Each of those is a separate public meeting with its own vote, and each is a point where the current comprehensive plan objection from groups like 1000 Friends of Iowa could resurface with more specific arguments about traffic counts or site design.
What to Watch Next
If you want the short version to bring up the next time this comes up at a backyard barbecue: Monday's vote was real, but it was the easiest vote of the ones still to come. The September 1 city council meeting is the next checkpoint, and it will show whether the opposition voiced by groups like 1000 Friends of Iowa has picked up any council votes or stayed contained to public comment.
The Norwalk comparison is the piece most people miss. Enthusiasm and petition signatures didn't get a Buc-ee's built faster there. An existing interstate interchange is doing that work for Urbandale instead, and it's a reminder that when you're trying to guess where the next big commercial project in the metro will land, the map of finished highway infrastructure tells you more than the map of community interest ever will.
Whether or not you ever pull into that 60-pump lot for gas, corners like 100th and Northpark are exactly the kind of local detail that shapes what a neighborhood becomes over the next decade. If you're watching how a specific pocket of the western suburbs is changing and want someone who tracks these shifts as closely as the city council does, that's the kind of groundwork Marc & Jill Lee do every day. Get Moving With Marc & Jill Lee.
