Take a look at the colossal structure rising on your left. This is 515 Walnut Tower. At three hundred sixty feet and thirty-three stories, it is the fourth-tallest building in Iowa and the largest residential tower in downtown Des Moines. But beneath that gleaming glass facade lies a foundation built on millions of dollars, severed ties, and a whole lot of corporate backstabbing.
To understand the chaos of competing downtown visions here, you have to look at what was destroyed to make way for it. This site used to be the Kaleidoscope at the Hub, a vibrant indoor mall built in 1985. It famously hosted the very first Panda Chinese Food restaurant alongside shops like Vogue Vision and Ritz Camera. Demolishing it in 2023 marked a painful clash of preservation versus progress, as tearing down the dead mall also meant physically severing the city's intricate Skywalk system. Those pathways must be reconnected by the developers by 2026.
The original vision for this tower started in 2016 with a developer called Blackbird Investments. But many viewed their aggressive proposal as a calculated tactic to disrupt a competing skyscraper project known as The Fifth, developed by Mandelbaum Properties. The resulting clash of egos turned this town into a battleground. The legal battle was so intense that a judge ultimately ruled the city of Des Moines had wrongly scuttled its agreement with Mandelbaum, slapping the city with a brutal 4.4 million dollar judgment. Add in a lawsuit from U.S. Bank over nearly a hundred thousand dollars in unpaid lease termination fees, and the city finally cut ties with Blackbird in June 2020. The project sat completely dead.
It was not until 2022 that Joe Teeling revived the project under the St. Joseph Group. They brought in Beal Derkenne Construction, who immediately hit a snag. They found hidden debris from older structures twenty-five feet below the surface. Once cleared, crews drilled thirty caissons... massive, deep watertight retaining structures... going one hundred twenty feet into the earth just to stabilize the massive foundation.
But the drama was not over. In October 2025, complex guarantee agreements for a crucial construction loan stalled. The general contractor and subcontractors went completely unpaid for months of hard labor. Construction ground to an absolute halt. Always reassuring when building a skyscraper. The giant tower crane was visibly lowered and left to blow freely in the wind, a stark symbol of financial panic. Teeling worked the phones relentlessly, describing the period as painful, until the loan finally closed in November.
When finished, the one hundred forty-eight million dollar tower will feature three hundred sixty apartments, a dog run, a yoga space, and a rooftop lounge pool. Neumann Monson Architects designed it so the building's appearance will constantly shift. The mix of clear and reflective glass catches the sunlight differently depending on the angle, and the structural floorplates were engineered to push the living areas right to the exterior walls for sweeping skyline views.
This entire saga is a testament to the chaotic, cutthroat nature of modern development. But if you want to see how bold gambles played out a century ago, we are heading somewhere entirely different. Just a three-minute walk down the street is the Equitable Building, a historic architectural marvel that tells its own magnificent story of ambition. Let us head there next.
