High-tech indoor mini-golf, bowling business planned near Jordan Creek Town Center

A first-of-its-kind upscale miniature golf and duckpin bowling alley will open in this fall near Jordan Creek Town Center.

Putts & Pins, which also will have a restaurant and bar, will occupy two new buildings at 6920 EP True Parkway just north of the mall.

There is currently nothing else quite like it in Iowa, said Mitchell Kann, a commercial Realtor who is who is opening the business with his brother.

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Kann said they want to create a place where people can be competitive, but also socialize, and described Putts & Pins as "high-tech gamified mini-golf." An electronic scoring system being developed with an Indiana company will track players' strokes and other elements of scoring, he said.

"You'll still use a putter and a ball, but there won't be notecards and pencils," Kann said. "Everything is highly technical. Each course has lights and a computer system in it that tracks where the ball is at and where you're moving."

There also will be six lanes of duckpin bowling, a variation of the game played with smaller pins, shorter lanes and downsized balls that lack finger holes. Popular on the East Coast and now spreading across the country, it doesn't require bowling shoes and gives players three rolls per frame instead of two, making for a quicker game than traditional bowling.

"It allows for a much ... quicker but fun environment," Kann said. "You can wear casual dress, casual shoes."

Not a regular mini-golf course

In addition to automated score keeping, the 24-hole mini-golf course will feature interactive holes, with trivia questions players must answer by hitting balls into the correct side of the hole, Kann said. Speed will be a factor, with quicker players earning better scores, he said.

"So the faster you get to the cup, the more points that you would score," he said.

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One hole will emulate the classic Nintendo game Duck Hunt, he said. Another will feature a Plinko-style arrangement where users who hit the middle hole score better.

"Each one is uniquely designed by our manufacturer for this specifically," Kann said.

The pair of 17,000-square-foot buildings that will house Putts & Pins are under construction on what had been a vacant out-parcel on the north side of Jordan Creek Town Center near the mall's Scheels store. The bar and restaurant and six holes of mini-golf will occupy of the east building. The western one will have a smaller food and drink service area as well as another 18 holes of golf and the bowling lanes, with a breezeway connecting the buildings, according to documents filed with the West Des Moines Board of Adjustment.

On Wednesday the board recommended approval of a conditional use permit, which must be approved by the City Council. Kann is developing the project with Ankeny-based design firm Keen Project Solutions and aims to open Putts & Pins at the end of August or early September.

The business' core demographic will be millennials and it could operate as late as 2 a.m. on weekends, he said. But he knows mini golf and bowling also could draw families, so Putts & Pins is considering whether to have certain times restricted to people 21 and over, perhaps on weekends.

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Kann hopes this Putts & Pins location will be the first of a chain he and his brother will start in mid-sized cities.

"My brother and I were really focusing on something the state does not have," Kann said. "With our high-tech gamified mini-golf, we feel that we have indirect competitors for this type of social space. We don't have any direct competitors in this space."

Philip Joens covers retail, real estate and RAGBRAI for the Des Moines Register. He can be reached at 515-284-8184, pjoens@registermedia.com or on Twitter @Philip_Joens.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Mini-golf business near Jordan Creek mall will cater to millennials