Rose Ann Jordison spent the last few months of spring packing away the shelves of Ivy Rose, her shop inside what used to be Painted Tree Boutiques on University Avenue. She wasn't the only one boxing things up. More than 300 small businesses lost their storefront in April 2026 when Painted Tree, a national chain that leased space to independent vendors, filed for bankruptcy across every location it operated, Clive included. Iowa Public Radio reported that the closure blindsided most of the vendors working out of the building, and some told reporters they never received proceeds from sales they'd already made before the doors shut.
On Thursday, July 30, 2026, Jordison and the other returning vendors reopened at that same address under a new name: Eleven101 Collective, run by Knapp Properties, the company that owns the building at 11101 University Ave. One day later, on Friday, July 31, 2026, at 5 p.m., the city reopened the Clive Greenbelt Trail under the Interstate 80/35 bridge, a stretch that had been closed to walkers and cyclists since October 2024.
Two different systems in Clive, one public and paved, one private and full of merchandise racks, had both been stuck for close to two years. Then they both came unstuck within a day of each other. The timing is coincidence. What broke each one, and what finally fixed it, is not.
The Detour That Lasted Two Years
The Greenbelt closure at the interstate bridge started October 1, 2024, and the city's own park projects page is blunt about why: contractors needed the space to prep a new interchange at Hickman Road, not to work on the trail itself. Anyone who wanted to keep riding had to detour through Campbell Recreation Area on the west side of the bridge or pick the trail back up at NW 100th Street to the east. From the east, the trail still routed people to Clive City Hall, the Clive Public Library, and the Clive Aquatic Center, but the direct crossing was gone.
The reason the trail had to close at all, rather than just the construction zone, comes down to what was happening overhead. Iowa DOT transportation engineer Caleb Wright told DSM Bike Notes the agency was mid-widening on the Walnut Creek bridge, with cranes and overhead equipment running through the corridor. That is a safety call, not a trail defect. The Greenbelt wasn't broken. It was standing in the way of someone else's project.
City Manager Matt McQuillen framed the reopening as regional, not just local, calling it the return of "a critical link of the Des Moines Metro regional trail system," according to WHO 13's coverage of the July 31 reopening. That's not an exaggeration. The Greenbelt runs from Windsor Heights to Waukee, stretches more than 11 miles on paved surface, and the city estimates over 75,000 people travel through it in an average year. It's also carried an Iowa Great Place designation from the state's Department of Cultural Affairs since 2019. For two years, the busiest connector in that system had a gap in the middle of it.
Painted Tree Vanished Overnight, and Over 300 Vendors Went With It
The retail half of this story has nothing to do with construction cranes. Painted Tree operated on a simple model: it leased space to small vendors at below-market rates, then handled the storefront operations so those vendors didn't have to staff a shop full time. It worked well enough that the Clive location filled with over 300 businesses. Then, in April 2026, the entire national chain claimed bankruptcy at once, a move Iowa Public Radio's reporting describes as catching Knapp Properties, the building's owner, off guard.
The fallout wasn't just an empty building. One organizer involved in the relaunch, identified in the coverage only as Costa, put it plainly: "Obviously, there was a little broken trust, because the Painted Tree, it was so out of the blue, where they came in and shut down operations that there were, as we've been told, some of the sales that these vendors made, they didn't get the proceeds." Jordison is returning to the same address anyway, hoping that local ownership through Eleven101 Collective produces a better outcome than a national chain's exit did.
The new setup keeps the part of the old model that worked. Vendors still get a storefront without staffing it themselves, since Eleven101 runs its own staff to manage day-to-day sales, which lets shop owners keep a presence in Clive while running other parts of their business elsewhere. What changed is who's accountable when something goes wrong, and that's now a Clive company with a name tied to the building's actual street address.
Different Systems, Same Pattern
Neither of these problems started in Clive. The trail closure was a side effect of an interstate interchange project managed by the state. The storefront closure was a side effect of a retail chain's finances collapsing everywhere it operated, not anything specific to how that location performed. Clive didn't cause either disruption, and city government didn't fix either one either. What ended both was whoever actually held the deed or the contract deciding to act rather than wait for the original arrangement to come back.
Knapp Properties didn't wait for another national tenant to lease the space Painted Tree left behind. It built its own version and put its own staff on the floor. Iowa DOT didn't leave the Greenbelt closed indefinitely while it finished a multi-year interchange rebuild. It sequenced the crane work so the bridge crossing could reopen before the rest of the project wraps.
| While closed | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| I-80/35 trail crossing | Detour via Campbell Recreation Area (west) or NW 100th Street (east) | Direct crossing under the bridge, reopened July 31 at 5 p.m. |
| 11101 University Ave | Vacant after Painted Tree's April 2026 bankruptcy, 300+ vendors displaced | Reopened as Eleven101 Collective under Knapp Properties, July 30, 2026 |
What's Actually Open This Weekend
If you haven't been back to either spot, here's what a Saturday actually looks like now.
- Ride or walk the reopened crossing. The direct route under I-80/35 is back, so the detour through Campbell Recreation Area is no longer the only option if you're heading between the west side of the Greenbelt and the stretch that runs past the Aquatic Center.
- Stop on NW 114th Street. The Clive Aquatic Center sits along this corridor, and it's the same street where you'll find Village Bowls and Bakers Square if you're looking for something to eat after a ride.
- Head to University Avenue for the other half of the story. Eleven101 Collective is at 11101 University Ave, the same stretch of road where Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant has been serving Clive for a while. Browsing the relaunched vendor stalls and grabbing dinner nearby is now a single trip again instead of a workaround.
Don't Expect This to Be the Last Closure
One caveat worth knowing before you plan around the Greenbelt being permanently uninterrupted: the Wastewater Reclamation Authority is building a new sewer line along Walnut Creek, and DSM Bike Notes reports that project is expected to affect several sections of the trail in the coming months. The WRA has said those closures and detours won't be as disruptive as the one that just ended, but it's fair to expect more orange signs before this stretch of Central Iowa infrastructure is fully finished.
That's a different kind of disruption than the one Clive just came out of, though. This one is planned, scoped, and communicated ahead of time by the agency doing the work. The last one dragged for two years because it sat downstream of someone else's timeline. Knowing the difference is useful if you live here and want to plan a bike commute, a Saturday loop, or just a shopping trip without guessing whether the route you remember still exists.
If you're weighing a move to Clive, or you already live here and want someone who tracks this kind of local detail as closely as school ratings or price trends, Christopher Lewis knows this stretch of University Avenue and the Greenbelt corridor well enough to tell you what's actually open this week, not just what used to be. Let's Connect.
