The Old Wells Fargo Tower in West Des Moines Just Turned Into Something Nobody Expected

Drive past 7001 Westown Parkway and for most of the last two years you'd have seen exactly what you expect from a six-story office building on that corridor: tinted glass, a parking structure, cars that show up at 8 and leave at 5. Wells Fargo occupied the tower for years before pulling out in 2024, and after that it sat the way big single-tenant buildings tend to sit when the tenant leaves: quiet, a little forgotten, the kind of address you drive past without registering.

That's no longer an accurate description, and if you live in West Des Moines and haven't been inside since 2024, the building has quietly become one of the more interesting new places to grab a coffee, order a cocktail, or watch someone get married.

A Downtown Playbook, Moved West

The person responsible for the change is Michael LaValle, and if his name sounds familiar it's because he's spent years building out food and event spaces closer to downtown Des Moines. He's the name behind Allora Café inside the Krause Gateway Center, the original Purveyor Wine Bar and Eatery in the East Village, South Union Bakery, Trellis Catering, and the River Center. When WB Realty Co. bought the Atlas Building from Wells Fargo for $16.5 million and started reimagining the 415,000-square-foot tower as a multi-tenant property, LaValle's hospitality group became one of the first announced tenants, brought in specifically to do at 7001 Westown Parkway what he'd already done downtown: turn ground-floor square footage into places people actually want to be.

He's called the project a "food mecca," and standing on the building's elevated patio last fall, he pointed toward the small pond north of the tower and gave it a name that had never existed before: West Fest Lake. That kind of branding only makes sense if you're planning to build something around it, and that's exactly what's happened over the first eight months of 2026.

Four Concepts, One Address, Under Six Months

The rollout has been fast by commercial real estate standards. Here's what's landed inside the building since the start of the year:

Meridian went first, and it's the anchor of the whole plan. The venue occupies Suite 150 and includes a lakeside stage, thirty feet across, with seasonal tented seating built for wedding ceremonies, corporate galas, trade shows, and concerts. That stage sits right on West Fest Lake, which means an event space that used to not exist now has direct sightlines to water that most West Des Moines drivers on Westown Parkway have looked at for years without knowing it had a name.

Atlas Cafe followed a month later, and it's the one most residents will actually walk into on a random Tuesday. It sits in the atrium, where floor-to-ceiling windows and a run of sculptural water features around the stairwell make the space feel less like an office lobby and more like something built to be photographed. The pastry case runs on Doré Bakery, LaValle's own bakery brand, which means the same croissants and baked goods that built a following downtown are now available six miles west without the drive into the city.

The Atlas Room is the strangest addition and probably the most memorable. It's a full speakeasy, cocktail list and all, built inside a day spa. That's not a typo or a marketing gimmick, it's literally tucked into Serenity Couture Salon & Spa's footprint in the building, which makes it one of the only places in the metro where a manicure appointment and a cocktail hour share a floor plan.

Purveyor rounded out the lineup this spring, bringing LaValle's original East Village wine bar concept west with a twist: wine on tap, poured by the glass or filled into a growler to take home. Between the four spaces, the ground floor of a building that spent two years as a quiet corporate office now runs a coffee shop, a wine market, a hidden bar, and an event hall large enough to host a wedding reception for a thousand guests.

Why the Timing Isn't a Coincidence

None of this happened in a vacuum. Around the same time LaValle's concepts started filling the ground floor, Athene signed a lease for the entire fifth floor, about 70,000 square feet, and moved roughly 420 employees over from the Westfield Office Campus on Jordan Creek Parkway earlier this year. WB Realty's bet was that a building with a working restaurant, a real event venue, and an actual food scene downstairs would lease office space upstairs faster than a plain glass tower ever could. The Athene move suggests that bet is paying off, at least on the office side. It also means the building's daytime population, and by extension the lunch crowd at Atlas Cafe, is only going to grow.

For anyone who works nearby or just cuts through that stretch of University Avenue and Westown Parkway regularly, that's the part worth knowing: this isn't a pop-up or a temporary activation while the building waits for a permanent tenant. It's the permanent plan, backed by a company that already moved 420 people into the same address.

What's Actually Worth Doing There Right Now

If you're trying to figure out what to do with this information on a Tuesday afternoon or a Friday night, it breaks down simply. Atlas Cafe is the low-commitment option, a coffee and a pastry on your way somewhere else, or a lunch spot if you're already in the building for work. The Atlas Room is the one to save for an evening when you want something a little different than the usual bar rotation on Mills Civic Parkway. Purveyor is the wine bar move, especially if you like the idea of filling a growler instead of committing to a full bottle. And Meridian, along with the lakeside stage on West Fest Lake, is the one to keep in your back pocket the next time someone in your life gets engaged or your company needs a space for more than a hundred people.

None of this changes what the building looked like from the outside. It's still a six-story tower with a parking structure and a name most people in West Des Moines have called "the old Wells Fargo building" out of habit. What's changed is what's happening inside it, and on the small stretch of grass and water behind it that now has a name of its own.

Next time you're driving past 7001 Westown Parkway, it might be worth pulling in.

Curious what else is changing in West Des Moines this year, from new construction to the neighborhoods around it? Boutique Real Estate keeps a close eye on the west metro and is always happy to talk through what's happening on the ground, whether or not you're in the market to move.