jqGrid - how to set grid to NOT load any data initially?

How can you create a grid but not load any data?

If I omit the url option then the loadError callback is triggered.

Currently we set url:NoData.json where NoData.json is a static file with no rows in it.

Issue is in our loadComplete callback we'd like to dipslay a message if the grid contains no data - except we don't want to display this message on the initial load. Currently we handles this as follows:

//jqGrid load complete handler
function loadComp(grid) {
    if (grid.getGridParam("url") != "NoData.json" && grid.getGridParam("records") == 0) {
        setStatus("Your search did not return any results");
    }
}

This just seems a little hacky.. would like to just have the grid not load any data initially.

Any ideas?