Hidden History : Kaleidoscope at the Hub
The Kaleidoscope Today
Traverse Des Moines’ famous skywalk system on any given business day and you’ll feel the bustle of downtown. Love them or hate them, they’re an important piece of infrastructure that helps the city function. A number of businesses rely on skywalk traffic to make ends meet. I consider them a necessary evil as someone who lives downtown. At night, they’re the perfect representation of a liminal space.
Imagine my surprise when I, as a newcomer to Des Moines, stumbled upon the Kaleidoscope at The Hub in the summer of 2021. For those who may not know it by name, the Kaleidoscope is a dead mall tucked just a block away from the Court Avenue entertainment district. It’s eerily quiet and very dimly lit. The escalators are walled in with chainlink fence in a manner that makes one feel like they are in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. I had to know more.
To understand this place, I needed to rewind
ANd Now It’s 1985.
Cities across America are looking to revitalize their ailing downtown scenes. Retailers have spent the last 20 to 30 years fleeing to massive shopping malls in the suburbs. Reagan is president. Iowa is grappling with the farm crisis. Back to the Future came out last summer (and showed us how much downtowns everywhere had declined in 30 years). Hubbell Realty spent $48,000,000 (about $119,000,000 today) on a downtown shopping mall with no tenants and little parking. The location was central enough to work, but the occupancy was dismal. The farm crisis put a strain on Iowa’s economy, and the national retailers knew this well enough to stay away. Hubbell’s downtown mall seemed doomed from the start. Still, it was meant to be the rebirth of shopping downtown and people were generally more optimistic about shopping malls in the 80s.
The Des Moines Register reported that the mall would open with about 14% occupancy in October of 1985. While there is no real definition of a dead mall, dropping below 50% is often considered a very bad sign. Dropping below 20% means certain death is imminent. So how does a mall in the 80s start off like this? They were waiting for Gucci. Well, kind of.
Hubbell Realty hoped to reel in national retailers like Gucci with high end finishes at the Kaleidoscope.
In the 1980s malls were not clamoring for any tenant they could get their hands on. The so-called “retail-pocalypse” was decades away and shopping malls could curate their store collections so that one category was not over represented. Potential retailers had to fit a marketing plan put together by the mall operator. Why go to a mall with 20 shoe stores when you need a microwave? Malls thought about things like this in those days.
While the interior is decidely 80s it still feels high end, even at the end of its life. The ceramic tiles that give the Kaleidoscope its namesake were imported from Italy, and the wood and cast iron detailing give a nod to the era’s Art Deco revival. Hubbell wanted this to be Des Moines’ fancy mall. In the aforementioned October 6th article from The Register, James Hubbell III, then president of Hubbell Realty claimed
“We could fill it just to have the space occupied. We could have let in tenants, more of the type you would expect to find in a strip center or a budget center. But number one, that’s not what we want, and number two those people can’t afford the rents we want to have here”.
It should be noted that the article discusses the possibility of high end retailers like Gucci and Brooks Brothers opening in the Kaleidoscope with Hubbell. He is again quoted
“We will have stores comparable to those”. Brooks Brothers has “told us consistently that Des Moines is not a big enough market,’ and the cost of a Gucci franchise and its inventory is a “very impressive amount . . . well into the seven figures”.
So was it ever a success?
It wasn’t all doom and gloom. Brands like Laura Ashley and Johnston & Murphy did operate there for a time. The center was literally positioned as the hub of downtown with a large base of workers who could visit on a daily basis. Hubbell Realty remained positive and flexible with their investment. Opening day saw a large amount of traffic even with only three stores opened. The skywalks connected the mall to both JC Penney and Younkers, and the city built another parking garage. The Kaleidoscope was never glitzy enough to attract the likes of Gucci, but the occupancy went up and stayed up into the 90s and early 2000s. By 2005 it seems it was best known by the downtown crowd for its third floor food court and small business offerings.
The Kaleidoscope featuring neon evokes images of Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market
Kevin Hardy/Des Moines Register
In 2006 the Younkers flagship closed and many small format retailers followed. Hubbell Realty would try a number of creative ways to fill space until it sold the Kaleidoscope to EMC in 2012. Around this time a number of downtown buildings were being converted to apartments and hopes were high that the mall could attract attention again. Walnut street was reopened to traffic for the first time in nearly 30 years when the city moved bus operations to DART central station. Things were looking up, until the east half of the Younkers building burned to the ground and the planned Walnut Street renaissance slowed to a crawl. Eventually EMC traded the Kaleidoscope for the vacant 7th and Walnut lot where Younkers stood.
The deal left the mall in the hands of Blackbird Investments, who terminated the remaining leases and planned to demolish the Kaleidoscope in February of 2019. Their goal was to build a glamorous 33 story residential tower, but the first signs of trouble came when news broke in September of 2019 that Blackbird failed to pay US Bank over $100,000 in lease termination fees. A small fire broke out on the ground floor in November 2019. Obviously demolition never happened, and the city terminated their agreement with Blackbird in summer of 2020.Now the site has been the subject of frustration, debate, and several legal battles. In the fallout, the city implemented a new review policy as an effort to stop supporting projects that never come to fruition. Kim Norvell of The Des Moines Register offers insight into what went wrong with the Blackbird backed projects on Walnut street here, but it essentially boils down to the same thing that jeopardized the Kaleidoscope in 1985; ambition at odds with reality.
So what now? Things are certainly not Gucci.
It seems for now that the Kaleidoscope is in limbo. The city and the media have snubbed Blackbird and demolition can’t go forward until the city approves a new plan for the property. The skywalk level remains open to passersby but it is not advisable to hang around long as there are vaguely worded no trespassing signs posted throughout.
Personally, I’d like to see the Kaleidoscope cleaned up and reopened. The site looks to be the perfect space to house an events center and small business incubator like Newbo City Market in Cedar Rapids. The idea being that businesses open there with lower overhead supported by the traffic of the area and special events, grow their following, and then move out to make room for the next business to start. One could even argue this is not unlike what the center’s original management was doing in the early days.
Whatever happens next is left to the ambition of whoever the building belongs to in its next life.
Update: This article focuses on the main portion of the Kaleidoscope that is east of 6th avenue. Shortly after this was posted EMC announced that the small western “half” of the Kaleidoscope is for sale. For now, EMC retains ownership of this smaller portion as well as Hub Tower.
Final Update, July 2023 : The interior of the mall has been gutted and the exterior demolition is likely to finally commence soon. A 30+ story residential tower is planned to replace it.
The Kaleidoscope full of hope and ambition under construction in 1985, Photo by Jim Zeller