Temporary Doors Open on Urbandale Drive
Following the sale of West Des Moines’ Valley West Mall, the Des Moines Children’s Museum has now officially launched a temporary location. Executive Director Ashlen Sheaffer said she knew the building’s closure was coming long before the doors formally shut.
Sheaffer’s first warning sign arrived back in 2022 when the mall foreclosed, and another came when Threshold Capital acquired the building. Nevertheless, she never anticipated that just days following the purchase, she and all other tenants would receive a mailed notice giving them a 30-day deadline to clear out of the property.
“It honestly could’ve destroyed us,” Sheaffer said. “That was go time for us. It was make all the calls quickly.”
A Rapid Relocation to Urbandale
Those urgent calls included reaching out to the city of Urbandale. In less than two weeks, the museum closed its doors at Valley West on October 24, cleared out all of its belongings, and opened in an entirely new temporary spot on Urbandale Drive on November 3.
“We wanted to continue business operations as we could, as best as we could and serving the public as well,” Sheaffer said. “This timeline worked out really well.”
The Path Toward a Permanent Home
The museum’s residency on Urbandale Drive will last under a year because they had already targeted a new permanent site nearly two years prior to the shutdown of Valley West.
That permanent facility sits in West Des Moines inside the former Des Moines Golf and Country Club building. The museum acquired the property in early 2025, but construction delays prevented a move before Valley West shut down. Renovations and demolition work are currently underway at the site.
Until those permanent doors open, Sheaffer and her team are focused on maintaining local family programming. “We’re serving people who are looking for things to do,” she said. “They’re looking for things to do with their families, and it was very important for us to keep doing that.”
The Des Moines Children’s Museum aims to complete its move into the permanent West Des Moines location by October 2027.
