WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — At the corner of Grand and Ashworth, things are running like a Swiss watch.

In January of 2023, they started the renovation on the Val Air Ballroom. Last winter, they finished them. All through 2024, Sam Summers and company rocked the house, and the Waterbury neighbors didn’t complain.

“Our GM said someone stopped by,” says Summers, “and said ‘I just want to introduce myself, I was the guy who used to complain about the sound and I can’t hear it anymore.’”

But Summers moved right from the ballroom to its basement. The giant space got him thinking.

“If I’m going to a concert I’m typically looking to get dinner before I go or find some place to be able to go get a drink afterwards.”

He settled on both. There’s the blue-collar bar Work In Progress on one side and the stunning Tom Archer’s Poor Man’s Country Club on the other.

“We talk amongst ourselves like ‘Oh my god, this place is so cool!’” Summers laughs.

We felt the same way. But there’s maybe no one here more excited than Chef Ryan Skinner.

“Within two minutes I knew this is exactly what I want to do,” says the former Harbinger chef who grew up down the street from the Val Air.

 He gets to return to his home neighborhood and salute its past.

“It’s getting back to the roots of Des Moines dining,” he says of the new menus he’s designed. “Basically things that you would see at Johnny’s Vet’s Club as well — just really getting into the history of Des Moines.”

History gets a lot of play on these walls. Long before Sam Summers was booking Hinterland, Tom Archer was booking the Val Air, with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and The Beach Boys.

“He knew how to make people happy and be able to deliver an experience to folks and at the end of the day that’s what we’re trying to do,” Summers says.

Over the last hundred years, the Val Air went from landmark to eyesore. Over the last two, it’s come all the way back.

Tom Archer’s Poor Man’s Country Club opens Friday, January 31 but reservations open January 10 at 10 a.m. Work In Progress is open now.

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