Long before Meridian Event Center & Catering opened on Jan. 29 as a lakeside hospitality hub, there was Rocky’s Pizza — a Central Iowa classic from Rocco LaValle, who became mayor of Iowa Falls and had restaurants in Marshalltown and Webster City, as well as Iowa Falls. That pizza finds a new home inside Meridian, a new West Des Moines event space with two restaurants from local restaurateur Michael LaValle and his LaValle Hospitality Group.
The space takes over a former Wells Fargo Mortgage cafeteria that turned into a sprawling, locally minded gathering spot on a pond, literally the opposite of the parking‑lot views that define much of suburban dining, said Michael LaValle, a longtime and highly influential Des Moines chef, restaurateur and hospitality executive with more than five decades shaping the city’s dining landscape. The Meridian is designed to fill a gap in West Des Moines’ corporate and event venue landscape with indoor and outdoor spaces, Michael LaValle said.
The space includes Atlas Café, opening in mid-February, and Purveyor West & Market, a market and wine bar with seating for 110, debuting later this spring.
The 12,000-square-foot indoor Meridian Event Center seats 600 at tables or 1,110 theater style, with a 10,000-square-foot outdoor space, but doesn’t feel like it was designed by committee. It offers independent food, room to breathe and a refusal to settle for another sea of asphalt.
“West Des Moines patios look out on a parking lot,” Michael LaValle said during an opening event for the event space on Jan. 29. “It’s nice to get outdoors on a lake.”
Michael LaValle points to Methodist West and the Iowa Clinic West Des Moines Campus, along with rows of medical offices that sit just up the hill. Thousands of workers pass along busy University Avenue every day. Some are already booking events — one medical group locked in 11 of them before Meridian even opened fully, said Michael LaValle, who also operates The Purveyor in the East Village, The River Center Events & Catering in downtown Des Moines, and Allora Café in the Krause Gateway Center.
Weddings, galas, all-hands meetings and lakefront concerts are all in the works.
Inside, the Atlas Building Complex that houses Meridian is filling up fast; by July, Michael LaValle estimated about a thousand people will work upstairs on the fourth and fifth floors. Serenity Couture Salon & Spa opened in November next to the events space. The 425,000-square-foot building originally opened in 2000 and then went through renovations in 2020 and 2021. The six-story building includes 800 parking spaces that can be used by event and restaurant visitors.
That built-in audience of tenants mirrors the original corporate cafeteria scale when Wells Fargo filled the space. The back‑of‑house is massive with plating lines, walk-ins, service halls and a dish room engineered for a thousand-person party. The behind‑the‑scenes setup keeps the whole machine moving. Hot food stays hot. Servers don’t pile up in hallways. Events don’t bottleneck.
It means Meridian can function like a coffee shop at 10 a.m. and a convention center at 7 p.m.
The place looks dramatic, with a 10,000‑square‑foot terrace, high above the lake, that opens from a lobby café. A six‑story atrium lets light spill into that café with a water feature trickling down. The lakefront lawn offers seating for up to 1,000 and a stage that hovers over the water. In warm weather, tents can stretch all the way from the atrium to the stage.
The Atlas Café is meant to serve the building tenants
Upstairs, Atlas Café is meant to be simple but dialed‑in with coffee, salads and focaccia sandwiches that nod to Michael LaValle’s South Union Bakery connection. He opened South Union Bakery with chef and restaurateur George Formaro, and now operates Doré Bakery.
Michael’s wife, Lisa LaValle, closed Trellis Café at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden in 2024 and now brings her soups and helped shape the menu.
Tenants, nurses and nearby medical staff are expected to treat it like a neighborhood canteen.
A restaurant and market for wine and grab-and-go items
Downstairs, Purveyor West & Market brings a 110-seat restaurant built around an asado wood oven that threads together pieces of Michael LaValle’s past work: Centro’s polish, Gateway Market’s pantry DNA and a revival of Rocky’s Pizza.
Michael LaValle hopes to recreate his father’s famous pizzas.
If Iowa Falls had an official dish, locals would tell you it was Rocky’s Pizza — an unassuming small‑town pie that grew into a beloved regional icon. Its creator, Rocco “Rocky” LaValle, arrived in Iowa by way of New York City, bringing with him an Italian‑American culinary flair that was still uncommon in rural Midwestern towns in the mid‑20th century. By the time he opened Rocky’s Pizza in 1955 in Marshalltown, he had already carved out a name for himself as one of the state’s earliest ambassadors of pizza.
What made Rocky’s Pizza unforgettable wasn’t just the taste — though locals still rave about the legendary “Rocky’s Special,” a pie fondly remembered as the best around. It was also the performance. Passersby on Washington Avenue often paused to watch Rocky toss dough high into the air through the front window of the shop.
Brad Hartman, who handles business and development for LaValle Hospitality Group, said Purveyor West & Market combines Gateway Market, the specialty grocery store and café in Des Moines, with Wine Styles, a hybrid wine bar, tasting station and specialty retail shop. Purveyor West & Market will feature some live floral arrangements, as well.
Much like the East Village restaurant, customers can pick up bottles of wine and items from a market to make quick lunches and take-home dinners easy with grab-and-go entrées, salads and family-sized meals that work for people with unpredictable schedules.
Bottling wine in the building
Meridian’s beverage program includes BIM — Bottling In Market. Instead of importing finished wine, they bring in bulk tanks of, say, California Pinot Noir and bottle it onsite. It cuts shipping waste, trims packaging and makes it possible to pour wine on tap for huge events without dealing with thousands of empty bottles afterward.
Everything runs through a chilled system with kegs stored in a 30-degree cooler and glycol lines that keep pours crisp at about 29°F.
On any given week, Meridian could be hosting a jazz night on the lake, a clinical symposium over lunch and a fundraiser in the atrium, with regulars popping in for focaccia and a bottle of house wine. The infrastructure makes it all doable without compromising the food.
“We’re set up for some pretty big numbers,” Michael LaValle said.
Where to find Meridian Event Center & Catering
(This article was updated to correct the locations of Rocky’s Pizza and when the first restaurant opened.)
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Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor and dining reporter at The Des Moines Register. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: The Meridian brings two restaurants, event space to West Des Moines
Reporting by Susan Stapleton, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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