One Urbandale mom found out from her husband's family group chat. He'd seen the news that morning and forwarded it before she'd even had coffee, giddy that a beaver-branded gas station chain out of Texas might be building a store fifteen minutes from their house. By lunchtime, half the neighborhood had an opinion.
That's the state of things right now. Everyone in Urbandale has heard some version of the Buc-ee's story. Fewer people know what's actually been decided, what's still just paperwork, and what number in this whole proposal should actually change how you think about it.
What Got Approved, and What Didn't
On August 10, the Urbandale Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to amend the city's Comprehensive Land Use Plan for a roughly 20-acre parcel near 100th Street and Northpark Drive, changing its designation from "mixed use" to "corridor commercial." That's the entire approval so far. It's a land use designation change, not a permit, not a green light to break ground, and not even a guarantee the project happens.
The amendment still has to clear the Urbandale City Council, and it was expected to land on the agenda for the council's September 1 meeting. Even if the council signs off, the project still needs rezoning, a full site plan, and building permits before anyone pours concrete. City staff and Buc-ee's own representatives have both said this is a multi-year process, not a next-spring opening.
Here's the sequence, laid out plainly:
| Step | Status as of late August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Comprehensive plan amendment | Approved by Planning and Zoning Commission, needs council vote |
| City council vote | Expected on the September 1 agenda |
| Rezoning | Not yet filed |
| Site plan approval | Not yet filed |
| Building permits | Not yet filed |
If you've seen headlines treating this as a done deal, that's getting ahead of the process. What happened on August 10 was step one of at least four.
The Land Underneath It
The parcel in question is currently farmland, a bean field sitting along Interstate 80/35 near the Northpark-Plum Drive area. It's owned by Macon Realty Co., whose director is Frank Cownie, the former mayor of Des Moines. Macon Realty is under contract to sell the property to CSMS Management, a Texas-based firm that city documents and multiple news outlets have connected to Buc-ee's as the entity acquiring land on the chain's behalf. Stan Beard, Buc-ee's director of real estate and development, appeared before the Planning and Zoning Commission to make the case for the amendment himself.
None of that guarantees a store gets built. It does tell you the deal has real people and real paperwork behind it, not just a rumor circulating on local Facebook groups.
Why This Site, and Not the One Down the Road
A year before Urbandale's proposal surfaced, Norwalk pushed hard for its own Buc-ee's. Residents there circulated a petition that gathered more than 3,700 signatures, and city officials publicly said they were courting the chain. That project has stalled, not for lack of enthusiasm but for lack of infrastructure. Buc-ee's told Norwalk officials it needs a full interchange to make a site work, and the interchange planned for I-35 and Fillmore Street is still years away.
Urbandale's site skips that problem entirely. It sits right off the existing 100th Street exit of Interstate 80/35, which is the whole reason the proposal states this location as the company's likely one and only Iowa store. Direct interstate access was cited in the company's own filing as close to the singular reason the site works. That's worth sitting with for a second: this isn't about Urbandale outcompeting Norwalk on charm or zoning friendliness. It's about which suburb happens to sit next to a ready-made off-ramp.
The Number That Actually Reframes This
Set aside the size of the building for a moment (74,000 square feet, matching the company's largest stores) and the jobs figure (more than 200 full-time positions) and even the capital investment (more than $60 million). Those numbers describe scale. They don't describe what the store is actually for.
The number that does is this: city documents project the Urbandale location would draw roughly 5 million visitors a year, with 70 percent of them traveling from more than 100 miles away.
That's the detail that should change how residents think about this project. A convenience store built for the neighborhood pulls its customers from the neighborhood. A store designed to draw five million people a year, seven in ten of whom are driving in from somewhere else entirely, isn't neighborhood retail at all. It's a highway-facing destination that happens to sit inside Urbandale's city limits, more akin to a regional attraction than a gas stop you'd swing by after picking up the kids. The traffic pattern it creates, the kind of visitor it brings through 100th Street, and the kind of businesses that cluster around it afterward will look more like what happens near an interstate outlet mall than what happens near a Kum & Go.
The Disagreement Playing Out in Public
Not everyone at the August 10 meeting was cheering. Kari Carney, representing the group 1000 Friends of Iowa, stood up during the public comment period and asked the commission directly whether this is really what the city of Urbandale wants long-term. It's a fair question, and one city leaders will have to answer more concretely as the project moves toward rezoning.
On the other side, residents who've visited Buc-ee's locations in Texas and Missouri have been openly excited, describing road-trip stops built around the chain's food selection and its famously large, famously clean restrooms. Both reactions are showing up in the same public record, which is a useful reminder that this isn't a settled matter inside Urbandale itself.
What This Actually Means If You Live Near 100th and Northpark
Right now, it means nothing changes on the ground. The land is still a bean field. No construction timeline exists because no site plan exists. The September 1 council vote is the next concrete milestone, and even a yes vote there only clears the way for rezoning and permitting, steps that typically take a year or more before dirt moves.
What it does mean is that the corridor along 100th Street near the interstate is worth watching over the next year, not because anything is imminent, but because a development pulling this kind of regional traffic tends to attract secondary development around it. Buc-ee's own staff report to the city noted the company's track record of drawing additional commercial growth to areas surrounding its stores. If the project clears its remaining hurdles, the stretch of 100th Street near Northpark Drive could look meaningfully different in three or four years than it does today, not because of the store itself, but because of what tends to follow it.
For now, the honest answer to "is Buc-ee's coming to Urbandale" is: maybe, eventually, and the city council's September 1 vote is the next real signal, not the finish line.
If you're watching how growth along the I-80/35 corridor might reshape a specific block, a specific street, or a specific home's setting over the next few years, that's exactly the kind of question Megan Mitchum + CO fields every week from clients across Urbandale and the metro. Reach out anytime you want a straight answer about what's actually happening in your corner of Des Moines, not just what's trending in the group chat.
