American Equity Investment Life Insurance Co. and the city of Des Moines are continuing improvements to the former Nationwide building on Locust Street in preparation for their moves early in 2026.

American Equity announced in May 2024 its plans to move its headquarters from 6000 Westown Parkway in West Des Moines to 1100 Locust St., in downtown Des Moines. The city approved an agreement with Nationwide to purchase the building at 1200 Locust St., in 2022.

American Equity will occupy portions of the first and second floors and all of the fourth through seventh floors of the western half of the building. The city will move into the eastern half of the building, which is shaped like an H.

The Business Record recently sat down with American Equity CEO Jeff Lorenzen and Des Moines Assistant City Manager Matt Anderson to learn more about work being done and the timing of the moves.

Lorenzen said work is underway to install “all new technology, new ceilings, new lights, all the infrastructure that we need to occupy that building.”

He said American Equity will open up the space to improve the workforce culture for the about 650 employees it will bring downtown.

“We’re really going to have only a few offices,” he said. “It’s going to be an open platform, similar to what Wells Fargo did 20 years ago in West Des Moines. You rent the offices for the day and that’s it. You don’t have permanent space. You have a cube. We think that’s important. It brings everything to the center. We’ll have those city centers and each department will be a neighborhood. It brings people together. We’re excited.”

The targeted move-in date is Feb. 1, he said.

Anderson said the city is on a similar schedule for moving and is busy rehabbing the space in preparation for a move in the first quarter of 2026.

“We’re at the same stage of construction right now,” he said. “We’re building out conference rooms. We gutted it. We’re redoing it, the ceiling and flooring.”

Once work is done, the city will move its departments that are located in city hall, the Argonne Armory building, River Place on Euclid Avenue and human resources, which is currently in the Richard Clark Center.

In total, the city will move about 500 employees into the new space, Anderson said.

The city also purchased the parking lot that is a block south of the building, and the commercial spaces on the ground level will remain, he said.

There are no plans “locked in” for the current city hall or the armory, and plans to move the police department are several years down the road, although the move could happen in phases with some operations of the police department potentially transitioning over sooner, Anderson said.

The city council this week voted to issue a request for proposals for the armory after Des Moines Performing Arts withdrew from talks about purchasing the building to expand its programming.

Anderson said the city is “continuing to work on a couple of ideas for city hall.”

Although he couldn’t speak publicly about what those ideas are, Anderson said the city has received some “bites.”

“It’s an interesting building as we’ve taken developers through it because developers that like the Great Hall can picture either art uses or market uses or music uses or something and don’t really want the office wings on the north and south off the bundling,” he said. “And any user that likes the office wings doesn’t want the Great Hall. You have to find the unicorn that values both the office space and assembly space at the same time. It’s going to be a challenge, but we’ll get there.”