If you've lived in West Des Moines for more than a couple years, you've heard about the waterpark. Somebody mentions it at a kid's soccer game, or you see a rendering pop up on a neighborhood Facebook group, and the conversation always lands in the same place: "Wait, is that thing actually happening?"
The honest answer is that it depends which year of paperwork you're reading. Track the Grand Experience through city council records and local news coverage since it was first announced in November 2022, and you'll notice something nobody mentions out loud: nearly every headline number in this project has gotten smaller since the pitch began, while the price tag and the timeline have both stretched longer. That's not a criticism of the project. It's just what the record shows, and it tells you something useful about how to think about a very big promise sitting a few miles from Jordan Creek Town Center.
Every Number in This Project Has Shrunk Since 2022
When developer Jim Bergman first announced the Grand Experience in November 2022, the pitch was a 100,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, a 400-room hotel, a 40,000-square-foot entertainment center, and a conference center, all built on 226 acres along Grand Avenue near the MidAmerican Energy RecPlex, at an estimated $600 million. The West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce's CEO at the time talked about 1,200 affordable housing units as part of the plan.
By the time the city council approved its first development agreement in December 2024, the numbers had already moved. The waterpark was down to 78,000 square feet. The hotel had shrunk to 260 rooms. Workforce housing had gone from 1,200 units to 150. The city offered a 20-year, 100 percent tax increment financing rebate worth $85.5 million to help close the developer's funding gap, plus a share of hotel and motel tax revenue estimated at $5.7 million over 20 years. A city spokesperson told the Des Moines Register at the time that the project had been slowed by high interest rates, which is as close as anyone in an official capacity has come to explaining why the scope kept getting smaller even as the ambition stayed the same.
That December 2024 agreement expired. A revised one followed in October 2025. That one expired too. The West Des Moines City Council approved yet another agreement in July 2026, this time reimbursing the developer up to $105.5 million in tax incentives, a jump from the 2024 figure. The total private investment is still quoted at more than $400 million. The site is still described as 226 acres between South 60th and South 88th streets. But construction, which was once expected to start in late 2025, is now scheduled for late 2027, with a full buildout timeline of eight to ten years after that.
The Mayor's Own Comparison Gives Away the Real Size
The clearest evidence of how much this project has changed came from Mayor Russ Trimble himself in July 2026, when he described the current waterpark plan using the same comparison the city has used since the beginning: Great Wolf Lodge.
Back in 2024, Trimble told a local TV station the West Des Moines waterpark would be "two times the size of the Great Wolf Lodge at minimum." By July 2026, describing the same project, he put it differently:
"Just to give you an idea, the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City is about 38,000 square feet. This is gonna be 45,000 square feet at a minimum."
Run the math and the shift is obvious. A waterpark that was once pitched as double the size of the Kansas City Great Wolf Lodge is now being described as barely 20 percent larger than it. Trimble acknowledged as much, noting the current plan could end up smaller than what was previously promised. The one resident-facing detail that hasn't changed is that West Des Moines residents are still expected to get half-price admission on off-peak days once the waterpark opens, whatever its final footprint turns out to be.
Given the construction timeline now on record, that opening is realistically several years out. Design work is slated for 2026, construction begins no earlier than late 2027, and the city's own estimate for full buildout runs eight to ten years from that start date. If you've been planning around this thing showing up "soon," the paperwork says otherwise.
What's Already Open While the Big Project Waits
Here's the part that gets lost in all the waterpark talk: West Des Moines already went through a real entertainment expansion, and it already happened. It just happened at Jordan Creek Town Center instead of Grand Avenue, and it didn't come with a press conference every few months.
Topgolf opened in West Des Moines in 2024 at the corner of Jordan Creek Parkway and Mills Civic Parkway, inside The Parkways development by Hurd Real Estate. The venue has 72 climate-controlled hitting bays, a full food and drink menu, and it's been operating for two years now, no development agreement renewals required.
Around it, the mall itself went through what Axios Des Moines called a "renaissance" in 2024, with West Des Moines economic development director Ryan Moffat telling the outlet that residents had been "clamoring" for retailers like the Lego Store, Sierra Trading Post, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Urban Outfitters. On the entertainment side, Jordan Creek Town Center added Dave & Buster's, Putts & Pins, Blue Zoo Aquarium, and KPot, a Korean barbecue and hot pot restaurant. According to that same reporting, pad sites built around the new Topgolf location could open up the mall's western side to even more restaurants and retail in the coming years.
None of this required a 226-acre master plan or a decade-long buildout schedule. It's already there, and it's already been open long enough that it barely registers as news anymore, which is its own kind of proof that it worked.
The One New Thing Actually Landing This Fall
If you want a real, near-term addition to keep an eye on, look at the Iowa Clinic rather than the waterpark. The clinic has proposed a two-story, 27,000-square-foot medical office building at 270 Jordan Creek Parkway, on what its economic development director called the last undeveloped parcel in the Jordan West development just west of the mall. The West Des Moines City Council was set to consider the financing agreement in July 2026, and if it moved forward as planned, construction could already be underway this fall. It's a modest building next to a much bigger mall, but it's the kind of project that actually shows up on schedule.
What This Means If You Live Here
The lesson from tracking this project across four years of city documents isn't that the Grand Experience is a bad idea. City officials, the Chamber of Commerce, and the developer have all stayed committed to it through three separate development agreements, which is its own signal that somebody still believes in the math. The lesson is that the gap between "announced" and "open" on a project this size has consistently run longer, and the final product has consistently run smaller, than the early renderings suggested.
If you're budgeting your expectations, treat the waterpark the way you'd treat any big civic promise with a moving construction date: real, probably, eventually, but not something to plan next summer's weekends around. In the meantime, the entertainment corridor that actually delivered is sitting at Jordan Creek right now, fully built, fully open, and worth an evening out whether or not the wave pool ever gets its groundbreaking.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this actually offers day to day, beyond the headlines about what might get built someday, that's the kind of read Erika Hansen gives clients looking at West Des Moines. Schedule a free consultation if you want a grounded, current picture of the city before you make your next move.
