6. MISSourI InnovatIon park
locatIon: Interstate 70 and Northeast Adams Dairy Parkway, Blue Springs owner: Blue Springs, Missouri Blue Springs leaders got excited in 2008, believing that sleepy eastern Jackson County was about to get in on the Kansas City “innovation” game. The University of Missouri signed an agreement to put an extension of the flagship university’s campus in a new building near the Adams Pointe Golf Course. Blue Springs bought some vacant land to make the project happen. But nothing has been built, and it doesn’t look like anything is going to happen soon. MU announced that it was abandoning its so-called Mizzou Innovation Center, greatly reducing Blue Springs’ prospects here for realizing the dream of acres upon acres of research and manufacturing.
7. IndIan SprIngS Mall
locatIon: Interstate 635 and State Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas owner: The Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas The metro has its share of dead malls — none deader than Indian Springs, where development dreams come to die. Politicians continually pledge demolition and revitalization, but nothing changes. Indian Springs Mall used to be fairly popular, easily accessible as it was. But crime, a lousy parking lot, and the business misfortunes of prime tenants such as Montgomery Ward eventually rendered the shopping center hospitable only to a police substation. Today, like most enclosed malls, this 750,000-square-foot behemoth is all but unusable. And it has become a festering bureaucratic sore for the Unified Government, which has concentrated much of its development effort in western Wyandotte County. UG Mayor Mark Holland said recently on KCPT Channel 19 that an announcement for Indian Springs Mall may be coming this summer.
8. downtown conventIon hotel
locatIon: Somewhere in downtown Kansas City, Missouri owner: ?
A 1,000-room hotel is one of those expensive projects that City Hall wants but residents haven’t really requested. That lack of public will is partly why no big hotel proposal has come forth in Kansas City. Taxpayers would likely be on the hook for $100 million or more, an enormous commitment to the idea of reeling in out-of-town conventioneers. Convention business has been in steady decline, even as the city has had a shiny new downtown to show off. Four years ago, former Mayor Mark Funkhouser threw cold water on efforts to pursue a hotel operator, saying it was a bad financial gamble. Now Kansas City is pushing hard to land the 2016 Republican National Convention. If that doesn’t materialize, look for city leaders to say the RNC’s booking elsewhere is evidence that the city needs a massive new hotel.
10. kIng louIe
locatIon: 88th Street and Metcalf, Overland Park owner: Johnson County The ski-lodge-style King Louie West building exuded suburban appeal when it housed bowling lanes and an indoor ice rink. But the building eventually got worn down, and its operator moved out. Its size, condition and now-tired kitsch became liabilities that held private developers at bay along this heavy-traffic corridor. Somehow, though, it looked good to JoCo’s Board of County Commissioners; in 2011, six of its seven members decided to buy the old King Louie building for $1.9 million, then toss another $1.6 million at sealing it off from the elements. County officials justified the purchase at the time because they wanted to move the Johnson County Museum there and even add a larger National Museum of Suburbia. Then some elections happened; new commissioners joined the board, and they didn’t like the deal. A national museum sounded fishy to some of them, and the need to get the county museum out of Shawnee wasn’t persuasive enough to convince a majority of commissioners to spend more millions on making King Louie useful again. It sits empty today, dethroned and bereft of money or solid ideas. Some commissioners say the county should sell it.
11. the cItadel
locatIon: 63rd Street and Prospect owner: Tax Increment Financing Commission of Kansas City Kansas City taxpayers have invested millions in the Citadel and have gotten only a trashed field in return. The Community Development Corporation–Kansas City was supposed to build a grocery store-anchored strip mall in a part of town that doesn’t see much commercial development. But the men running the CDC-KC were in over their heads, didn’t honor contracts, buried asbestos at the development site, and kept asking the city for more money to start their project. The whole thing exploded when federal authorities indicted the CDC-KC’s principals right after City Hall nearly rejiggered the municipal budget to hand them a $20 million advance. Since then, the Citadel has somehow gotten even worse. The gas station there closed, and the city is still trying to finish decontamination of the site. Still, City Hall paid $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by CDC-KC. The TIF Commission now owns the site, and the city has hired real-estate firm Kessinger/Hunter to market the property to some future developer.
12. rIchard l. Berkley rIverfront park
9. Metcalf South Mall
locatIon: 95th Street and Metcalf, Overland Park owner: The Kroenke Group and Lane4 Property Group Enclosed malls have become a highly visible casualty of shoppers’ shifting habits. In the 1970s and ’80s, nobody seemed to mind parking a quarter mile from a door to spend hours inside dark, ominous retail arcades. Today, open-air centers mimic small-town strips such as Massachusetts Street in Lawrence. Metcalf South has lingered in a coma for years, fed by a handful of tenants. This year, Macy’s closed shop at Metcalf, pulling the plug on, and creating a potential headache for, one of Overland Park’s busiest intersections. Stan Kroenke, billionaire real-estate magnate from Columbia, Missouri, recently bought the mall but hasn’t announced what he will do with the property.
locatIon: South bank of the Missouri River, between the Heart of America Bridge and the Christopher “Kit” Bond Bridge owner: Kansas City, Missouri The riverfront north of downtown Kansas City is a confounding place. A decent park faces the dirty Missouri River, and a fine concrete trail rolls out of the River Market, only to abruptly end once it reaches the Kit Bond Bridge. An occasional jogger or cyclist uses the park, but aside from the rare festival and fireworks show, the whole area seems out of place, like an idea that never came to fruition. The Port Authority controls development just south of the park and is trying to market the property for some type of use; so far, there has been no substantial interest along the Missouri River.
E-mail steve.vockrodt@pitch.com pitch.com
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