WHERE THEY ARE
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DOWNTOWN
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3. MISSION GATEWAY
LOCATION: Shawnee Mission Parkway and Johnson Drive, Mission OWNER: Cameron Group It’s difficult to name another development project that has proceeded with as much ineptitude as Mission Gateway. Many retail developments have gone up in Johnson County since New York–based developer Cameron Group bought the old Mission Center Mall and tore it down, in 2005. During that time, CG principal Tom Valenti has followed a pattern: Announce a construction start date, produce glossy images of the latest version of the project, and return a few months later with a new start date and a number of subtractions from the original design. Today, Wal-Mart is supposed to anchor the development. Beyond that, who knows? A site that was once supposed to have a hotel, an aquarium and office space may well lose yet another key attraction: apartments. Mission’s long, odd wait to see this most visible development site reborn may yield an ordinary strip mall. Or maybe nothing at all.
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4. GREAT MALL OF THE GREAT PLAINS
5. KEMPER ARENA
The Great Mall opened in 1997, to much Olathe fanfare. City officials then expected that charter buses would roll around the Midwest, corralling eager rural shoppers ready for an exciting day trip to southern, retail-intensive Olathe. But the out-of-towners never arrived in substantial numbers, and the mall was and remains too far south for Kansas Citians who’d just as soon visit the revitalized Oak Park Mall. (Another liability: The Great Mall–feeding I-35 interchange has always been confusing.) Little in the way of investment has been made in the Great Mall over the past 10 years, so the structure still features much of its original signage and what feels like miles of outdated carpet. Olathe has dangled the site as a redevelopment lure, once for a Kansas City Wizards stadium and later for an IKEA, to no effect. VanTrust, a well-heeled developer backed by resources from late auto magnate Cecil Van Tuyl’s estate, bought the mall from a real-estate investment trust and now says it’s working to somehow reuse the site.
Not long after voters approved a sales tax to save the supposedly much-needed Kemper Arena in 1997, Kansas City’s leaders insisted that the city needed a new arena downtown. Once the Sprint Center found approval, city leaders reassured Kansas Citians — who were wondering why they’d just passed a tax to save Kemper — that the West Bottoms oddity would retain all kinds of events. You know: rodeos and monster-truck rallies. Kemper Arena once housed the Kansas City Kings and the Kansas City Scouts, but today it opens the doors to little aside from high school graduations and the American Royal. And the city still pays $1 million a year to keep it open. Two competing plans mean to dictate Kemper Arena’s future. One involves developer Steve Foutch, who wants to convert it into an ambitious youth sports complex. The other comes from the Kemper family, which wants the building demolished and turned into a year-round American Royal complex, owing to the West Bottoms’ stockyard heritage. Neither plan seems to have become a major priority at City Hall.
LOCATION: 20700 West 151st Street, Olathe OWNER: VanTrust Real Estate
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the pitch
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pitch.com
LOCATION: 1800 Genessee, in the West Bottoms OWNER: Kansas City, Missouri