OFFICIAL - Prairiefire

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LenexatoKCMO
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OFFICIAL - Prairiefire

Post by LenexatoKCMO »

From the Star:

Called Prairiefire at LionsGate, the 1.4 million-square-foot project will offer upscale shopping, offices, restaurants, entertainment, golf course villas, loft apartments, condominiums and a hotel.

The project will include a Native Wetlands Interpretive Walk, a one-acre park for music and events, a bike/hike trail and a butterfly garden.

The development will include the so-called Prairiefire Cultural Museum, which will house traveling exhibits from the American Museum of Natural History. Potential exhibits include ones about lizards, dinosaurs and horses. A new exhibit would be moved into the museum every six months. The first five years of exhibits have been scheduled.

If the project is actually built, it stands to turn Overland Park?s 135th Street into a tourist haven. The project is planned just north of the Nicklaus Golf Club and a couple miles east of a new soccer complex that will open later this month.

http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/1389255.html
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Re: OFFICIAL - Prairiefire

Post by KCMax »

I don't know about "tourist haven", but I have said for awhile that KC needs a natural history museum and it looks like OP may beat them to the punch.
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Re: OFFICIAL - Prairiefire

Post by knucklehead »

$100 million in TIF for a retail and office project at 135th and Nall is rediculus.


(Yes it is TIF according to the generic definition of tax increment financing).
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by zonk »

Is this a TIF Bond project backed by the City's General Fund?  Star Bonds?
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by knucklehead »

It is Star Bonds - hence the need to add the exhibit space for the traveling exhbits to posture the project as a tourist attraction to get state approval.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by DaveKCMO »

yay! museums in the countryside! you'd think they would have put this in the metcalf corridor to build on what they're planning there.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by KCMax »

DaveKCMO wrote: yay! museums in the countryside! you'd think they would have put this in the metcalf corridor to build on what they're planning there.
Good point. This would be the perfect replacement for Metcalf South Mall.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by Melling »

DaveKCMO wrote: yay! museums in the countryside! you'd think they would have put this in the metcalf corridor to build on what they're planning there.
Perhaps this could have been the redevelopment of Metcalf South Mall?  I think that would have been consistent with the Vision Metcalf plan.  It would have also been enhanced by the proposed BRT route between Metcalf and the Plaza.  
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by LenexatoKCMO »

KCMax wrote: Good point. This would be the perfect replacement for Metcalf South Mall.
The owners of the mall already tried to get a more modern, deconstructed mall development plan off the ground but Sears owns their space there and killed it.  Apparently it is better to have a dead, vacant mall all around you than to undergo a year of construction disruption and have a vibrant shopping area around you.  
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by ComandanteCero »

son of a....

It's not like 135th isn't oversaturated with retail....  :roll:

This is what will continue to weaken north JOCO, since a lot of this retail is essentially cannibalizing existing market up north (i.e 119th and Metcalf or Town Center where stores like Best Buy and Barnes and Noble have been threatening to move further south and close their existing location), it's not like South JOCO is continuing to explode the way it was a few years back, or that folks in Olathe (which is one of the larger growth areas) will naturally want to travel that far east.  

As to the museum portion.... sounds like a joke and a half.  How can these developers throw these figures around with a straight face?  I very much doubt it'll bring in 400,000 annual visitors, that's the same amount the zoo gets.  Science City gets a bit over 200,000 in a year (or at least they did in 2006).  For a rough sense of how much your average travelling exhibit might get (i.e not something like Bodies Revealed), the "Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln" show at Union Station got something like 40,000 people between November of 2008 and April of 2009.  But even using the block buster travelling exhibits (i.e Dead Sea Scrolls, Bodies Revealed), they got between 160,000 and 170,000 each.  I very much doubt this museum is going to be bringing in two such caliber exhibits a year. (and even if it did, it would STILL have a tough time hitting 400,000).
knucklehead wrote:(Yes it is TIF according to the generic definition of tax increment financing).
I understand what you're saying (i.e there are parallels) but just to be clear (so we don't conflate the two):  Tax increment financing is a very specific incentive tool that uses the increment in property taxes to fund improvements (and mostly just deal with local property taxes), and usually TIF districts have to meet blight requirements and such.  STAR bonds only deal with state and local sales taxes (i.e Sales TAx Revenue Bonds), and generally it doesn't deal with any increment, more importantly a lot of the time the state sales tax makes up a larger portion, so the impact on local municipalities is less than for TIF (not to mention the local municipalities gets to keep the increase in property tax).
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by GRID »

It's things like this that make me somewhat happy about leaving KC.

Seriously.

golf course, soccer fields and this stupid little museum is going to be a "tourist haven"  From KC Star.

All funded by super tif (err STAR bonds) in one of the most upscale, fastest growing outer belt suburban communities in the midwest?

All I can say is wow.

Would have been great for this to go to Union Station rather than it being USED as LEVERAGE to use public money to build a suburban development on the greenest possible field in metro KC.

Yet Kansas falls for it.

This project makes the stupid Mission Aquarium project look much better though.
Last edited by GRID on Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by Midtownkid »

Hey GRID, The National Air and Space Museum just opened up a branch of their museum basically on the fringe of DC's sprawl in VA.  (Near Dulles)  Not too different here...

This development does sound dumb.  I wish the same developers were interested in developing KCMO and the urban core instead.  Not that I want suburban development in KCMO, but I mean the same money and drive in the core.  That Natural History Museum belongs in Union Station or near it...

This used to be called Prairie Fire right?  This is a less-dumb name.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by dangerboy »

Obviously this region has not learned any lessons from the problems associated with scattered public assets.  A museum 25 miles from Downtown makes a sports complex 7 miles away seem suddenly very close.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by ComandanteCero »

Well, I think it's a bit too generous to call what they are planning a "museum".  It sounds like they won't have much (if any?) permanent exhibit, so it'll probably just be a smallish place to set up the travelling stuff.  I mean, how much space does something like Union Station's "Dialog in the Dark" really take up?
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by GRID »

Midtownkid wrote: Hey GRID, The National Air and Space Museum just opened up a branch of their museum basically on the fringe of DC's sprawl in VA.  (Near Dulles)  Not too different here...

This development does sound dumb.  I wish the same developers were interested in developing KCMO and the urban core instead.  Not that I want suburban development in KCMO, but I mean the same money and drive in the core.  That Natural History Museum belongs in Union Station or near it...

This used to be called Prairie Fire right?  This is a less-dumb name.
But was it to bring the museum closer and help expose it to suburban areas in a big city that is difficult to navigate that already has a billion urban core museums?  Maybe it was to get people interested so people WOULD go into DC and see the real thing?

Or was it to land massive tax breaks to build a suburban development on a greenfield.  Remember this OP thing is nothing more than "space" for traveling exhibits.  This thing in OP is the biggest freaking scam I have ever seen.

KC is not DC.  Not even comparable, even in this situation.  We have amazing buildings like Union Station sitting underutilized while the suburbs do things like this.  People don't understand how much damage this kind of stuff does to the overall health of the region.

Microsoft is not in Downtown Seattle either.  But Downtown Seattle is still a huge financial center and the city is big enough and has a vibrant enough downtown to overcome having one of the metro areas largest employers in a suburban campus.

KC is not so lucky to be able to overcome the damage (or missed opportunities) of having all of Sprint in OP.

Same deal.
Last edited by GRID on Tue Aug 18, 2009 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by Midtownkid »

Actually I think it was to store planes and stuff that don't really fit into the actual A+S museum.  No, not really the same...but just saying that DC has lots of sprawl and inter-city competition.  I guess the real difference is that it can just support of all it better.
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by ComandanteCero »

The reason east coast cities are able to maintain their urban cores has more to do with the sheer population in the general region, along with large swathes of historic urban fabric, than it does with a particularly enlightened approach to planning.  Philadelphia and Baltimore have probably lost the equivalent of two KC urban cores and they still have pretty cool urban areas just because there's so much of it (i.e North Philly).
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by LenexatoKCMO »

GRID wrote: But was it to bring the museum closer and help expose it to suburban areas in a big city that is difficult to navigate that already has a billion urban core museums?
Probably a bad analogy - I think the Air and Space Museum Annex is located where it is because the nature of the exhibit requires a substantial amount of outdoor acreage for displaying large aircraft - something that probably wasn't available in the urban parts of DC.  

That said - I don't think this suburban museum phenomenon is unique to our area.  It seems like large suburbs all over the country are starting to push towards developing suburban cultural amenities - musueums, fine arts spaces, etc.  I suspect they are waking up to the notion that these are the sorts of things that helps make your city's success more permenant and less subject to the winds of development change.  I don't see how this is at all a KC specific issue.  I would wager you could look at most every major metro in the coutry and find some significant cultural amenity that has been built in the burbs over the last 5-10 years.  

Besides, weren't you the one clamoring for years about JoCo/KS not carrying enough of the cultural amenity burden?  
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by ComandanteCero »

GRID wrote:Would have been great for this to go to Union Station rather than it being USED as LEVERAGE to use public money to build a suburban development on the greenest possible field in metro KC.

Yet Kansas falls for it.
absolutely, that's what angers me the most.  These private developers using these half assed "cultural amenities" as a way to sugar coat what is an otherwise unnecessary and unworthy project (in terms of getting public subsidies).
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Re: Prarielife at Lionsgate - large mixed use development and museum

Post by GRID »

LenexatoKCMO wrote: Probably a bad analogy - I think the Air and Space Museum Annex is located where it is because the nature of the exhibit requires a substantial amount of outdoor acreage for displaying large aircraft - something that probably wasn't available in the urban parts of DC. 

That said - I don't think this suburban museum phenomenon is unique to our area.  It seems like large suburbs all over the country are starting to push towards developing suburban cultural amenities - musueums, fine arts spaces, etc.  I suspect they are waking up to the notion that these are the sorts of things that helps make your city's success more permenant and less subject to the winds of development change.  I don't see how this is at all a KC specific issue.  I would wager you could look at most every major metro in the coutry and find some significant cultural amenity that has been built in the burbs over the last 5-10 years. 

Besides, weren't you the one clamoring for years about JoCo/KS not carrying enough of the cultural amenity burden? 
YOU CALL this a freaking BURDEN, an AMENITY?

Build a fucking attraction with public money.  A REAL attraction.  A bottanical Gardens or soemthing.  Don't use some lame half assed tourist trap that is only there to get STAR bonds so a developer can build suburban retail centers and star bond them too.

JoCo should be teaming up with other area counties to put Union Station to use.  That would be my first wish.  I dont want museums in the suburbs. I don't want culture in the suburbs.  I want to the real deal.  I want an urban core that is thriving with museums and culture. Can we do that first?

But they don't want to do that, and it's obvious they don't.  Then, pass a real tax and buld a real regional attraction.

This is nothing but a way to STAR bond a massive suburban devleopment.

That's all it is.
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