On December 31, 2025, the lights over the theater at 3711 Ingersoll came on for the first time since 2014. The marquee had been dark long enough that most people walking past it on a Friday night had never seen it lit at all. Then it was, and inside, a dinner crowd sat down for a show for the first time in more than a decade.
That reopening is the kind of thing that makes a good headline on its own. But it's not really the story on Ingersoll Avenue this year. The theater sat empty through the exact stretch of time when the street around it was torn up, rerouted, and rebuilt block by block. The marquee coming back isn't a comeback happening in isolation. It's one recovery arriving at the tail end of a longer one, and the two overlapping is what actually explains why the corridor feels different right now than it did even two years ago.
A Building That Outlasted Three Different Businesses
The building at 3711 Ingersoll opened in 1939 as one of the first theaters in Iowa built specifically for sound film. It closed in 1977, came back as a dinner theater through the 1980s and into the '90s, cycled through a stint as a restaurant and then a nightclub, and went dark again in 2014. It sat empty for more than ten years until local developer Connor Delaney bought it in 2022.
The theater reopened under executive director Renee Crowell, who described the goal as giving people a night out close to home built around dinner and a live show. Right now the calendar includes jazz orchestra performances, Broadway revues, comedians, tribute acts, and drag shows, with parking available nearby at 609 38th Street or on the street.
A single reopened building doesn't usually reshape how a neighborhood talks about itself. But this one sits in the middle of a corridor that residents already called Restaurant Row, and its return came more than a year after the street itself had already stopped feeling like a construction zone. Put those two recoveries next to each other and this is the first year both are visible at once.
Four Years of Orange Cones, Then an Early Finish
Ingersoll's six-phase streetscape project started in 2020 with a straightforward goal: replace aging pavement, add raised bike lanes, repave parking stalls, and upgrade storm sewers along the corridor. For businesses trying to operate through it, the goal mattered less than the disruption.
When Phase 4 wrapped six weeks ahead of schedule, the relief was immediate and specific. A bartender at Cheese Bar described walking to work and seeing the whole street clear for the first time in years as a genuine surprise. Bartenders at Wellman's Pub called it a deep sigh of relief. Foot traffic had slowed during construction, and once the road opened, people started coming back through the door.
That was the good news phase. It's also the phase that's easy to mistake for the finish line.
The Calm Isn't Covering the Whole Street
Here's the part that doesn't make it into the celebratory version of this story: two more phases of the same project are on the district's books for this year, and neither one is on the stretch that just reopened.
| Phase | Stretch | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Phases 1-2 | North half, MLK Jr. Parkway to 28th Street | Complete |
| Phase 3 | South half, MLK Jr. Parkway to 28th Street | Contractor selected late November 2025, construction planned for spring 2026 |
| Phase 5 | 31st to 35th Street | Anticipated to start later in 2026 |
Phase 4's early finish gave one stretch of Ingersoll its calm back. Phase 3 was slated to bring a new round of construction to the south half of the same blocks between MLK Jr. Parkway and 28th starting this spring, so cones may already be back on that stretch by the time you read this. Phase 5, aimed at 31st through 35th, is still expected sometime later this year. If you live near one end of the corridor, the street may genuinely feel finished. If you live near the other, the reprieve is either ending or hasn't started yet. It depends entirely on which block you're actually on.
What Filled In While Everyone Was Watching the Road
Construction wasn't the only thing happening on Ingersoll during those years. The corridor's newest building, Star Lofts at 2701 Ingersoll, replaced a former gas station and became Iowa's first zero-carbon certified building, built from mass timber with 20 residential units set aside as affordable housing. Its ground-floor retail space landed Refill Market, a sustainable grocery concept, in November 2025. A second tenant is on the way: an ice cream shop with existing locations in Waukee and West Des Moines is opening its third location inside Star Lofts this September.
Elsewhere on the corridor, cheesemonger C.J. Bienert has been expanding his compact and popular cheese shop, Krunkwich Ramen House reopened at 2721 Ingersoll, and Liz Lidgett Gallery + Design was recently spotlighted by the district as one of the small shops anchoring the street's retail mix alongside the restaurants. None of these are the kind of openings that generate a headline on their own. Together, they're evidence that the corridor kept adding layers even during the years when the road itself was the main obstacle.
This Weekend Is the Corridor Showing Its Work
If you want to see all of this at once, tomorrow is the day for it. The Avenues of Ingersoll & Grand, the nonprofit business district that manages the corridor's marketing and streetscape, is hosting Ingersoll LIVE on Sunday, August 23, a family-friendly block party with live music, local art, and food along the avenue. It's the kind of event that only makes sense to run once a street actually has room for people to gather in it again, which is itself a small marker of how far the corridor has come since the worst of the construction years.
If you're only making it out once this month, here's where that time is best spent:
- Catch Ingersoll LIVE this Sunday, August 23, for the block party's live music and food lineup
- Stop into Refill Market at Star Lofts, then watch for the ice cream shop's opening there in September
- Check The Ingersoll's show calendar at 3711 Ingersoll for a dinner-and-performance night
- Watch for Phase 3 cones on the MLK Jr. Parkway to 28th Street stretch, since that construction was slated to start this past spring
A Street Returning to Itself, Unevenly
None of this adds up to a single ribbon-cutting moment. The theater's reopening is a real milestone, but it happened on a street that's still mid-repair in places and freshly reopened in others. The businesses that made it through four years of construction are now sharing the corridor with a mass-timber building that didn't exist a few years ago and a dinner theater that sat empty since before most current residents moved in.
That unevenness is probably the more honest way to describe Ingersoll Avenue right now than any single word like "revived" or "booming." Parts of it are calm. Parts of it are about to get loud again. The marquee being lit doesn't mean the work is done. It means one long wait ended right as a couple of shorter ones are about to begin.
Christopher Lewis has spent years tracking how corridors like Ingersoll Avenue actually change, block by block, rather than by the version of the story that fits in a headline. If you're curious about what a specific stretch of Des Moines looks like right now, or how a street like this one factors into a home search, Christopher Lewis is happy to talk through it. Let's Connect.
