KCRag Forum

Stay tuned for a Collison article...

There was that collapse in the Jazz District last year I think as well. They did save that building though. The building on the NE corner of 19th and Vine with the "Club Mardi Gras" sign.

On my walks this weekend I was surprised to see the roof at the Seiden's Furs building is still open to the sky a full year and counting after the collapse. And seemingly no permits filed for either repair or demo. On deeper digging I did find that the owners of the adjacent building (Majestic) filed suit to force the Seiden's owners to repair or demolish the building, and won a default judgment earlier this summer.

Judgment document:
https://www.courts.mo.gov/fv/c/2116-CV2 ... i=20401064

Missouri Casenet entry:
https://www.courts.mo.gov/casenet/cases ... urtId=CT16

Outrageous that the family hasn't sold the property to someone who can properly care for it. Is it possible for the city to imminent domain the property and register it so that it cannot be torn down and fixed back up to something marketable?

gfenn11 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:42 pm Outrageous that the family hasn't sold the property to someone who can properly care for it. Is it possible for the city to imminent domain the property and register it so that it cannot be torn down and fixed back up to something marketable?

Just let it get torn down

How about no.

Normalthings appears to always advocate tearing everything down. I think he has ownership in a demolition company.

normalthings wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:37 pm

gfenn11 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:42 pm Outrageous that the family hasn't sold the property to someone who can properly care for it. Is it possible for the city to imminent domain the property and register it so that it cannot be torn down and fixed back up to something marketable?

Just let it get torn down

Go back to the 60s

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:00 pm

normalthings wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:37 pm

gfenn11 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:42 pm Outrageous that the family hasn't sold the property to someone who can properly care for it. Is it possible for the city to imminent domain the property and register it so that it cannot be torn down and fixed back up to something marketable?

Just let it get torn down

Go back to the 60s

Some things are not worth keeping

normalthings wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:19 pm Some things are not worth keeping

I feel a bit like you’re just wanting to stir the pot, but these are absolutely the types of buildings that we should be pushing to keep. Nothing could match the benefit that this building brings vs the plethora of empty lots that could have the same function. Dangerous rhetoric.

normalthings wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:19 pm

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:00 pm

normalthings wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:37 pm

Just let it get torn down

Go back to the 60s

Some things are not worth keeping

Said like a Kemper.

Assume you get your wish. Nothing will happen there for years--probably decades. It will be an unproductive vacant lot.

FangKC wrote: ↑Wed Sep 07, 2022 1:32 am

normalthings wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:19 pm

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:00 pm

Go back to the 60s

Some things are not worth keeping

Said like a Kemper.

Assume you get your wish. Nothing will happen there for years--probably decades. It will be an unproductive vacant lot.

Being called a "Kemper" is the lowest form of an insult one can say to another on this message board

What’s so bad about the Kempers? I know they’re behind UMB Bank and the Kemper Art Museum.

I named my dog Kemper. What better way to honor the local oligarchs than by naming a dog after them?

Chris, posters are critical of the Kemper family (Commerce and UMB ) for all the acres of surface lots idling in the north loop. But some forget that they have at least kept most bank operations DT. Commerce at least put up the only skyscraper built DT in the sixties and the first large office tower in the eighties. UMB never built the tower that was to have risen over the north end of their eighties red granite building for which the legendary Emery Bird Thayer department store was razed.

Didn’t Kempers push for destroying the Junction?

That's a good question. I don't know how much of the junction was still there when the post WWII urban renewal began in that area. The hotel there probably had become run down and not the carriage trade. Hard to blame any Kemper back then not wanting the area cleaned up by clearing it. If they had pushed for preservation they would have been decades above their time even on a national basis. In KC awareness for preservation seems to have begun no sooner than the late sixties after the loss of the Board of Trade. Some of the preservation ethos was due to baby boomer hippies appreciating and occupying old buildings and then came the self consciously "old townes" of River Quay and Westport Square and the fern bar trend nationally.

No one has had more gusto for buying and demolishing buildings than both sides of the Kemper clan (Commerce and UMB). There wasn't anyone who could match them. If they didn't do it themselves, they still had influence with their membership and leadership in civic organizations like the Downtown Committee (I think it was likely the predecessor to the Downtown Council).

Many old newspaper clippings covering building demolitions of the era mention them directly.

It wasn't just in the 1950s and 60s. Their recent work was the demolition of the 242-room Prom Sheraton Motor Hotel (once a Howard Johnson's and a Rodeway Inn), which was built in the 60s. Keep in mind that the President Hotel currently has 213 rooms, and Phillips Hotel has 217. In other hands, it could have been converted into a boutique hotel or affordable housing. The motor hotel was built in two sections with a skybridge crossing 7th Street during one of the Kemper's earlier redevelopment schemes. The northern section was demolished first in 1996, and the southern section around 2007. Neither wing of that motor hotel made it past 45 years. Tower Properties (which manages Commerce's real estate) stated back in 1996 they intended soon to build an office building on the site. Still waiting on that.



http://www.highwayhost.org/Missouri/motorlodge.html

https://kchistory.org/image/downtown-a ... ffset%5D=3

In 2002, they took down the Lathrop Building at 10th and Grand for surface parking, a landscaped park, and a passageway between their bank properties at 10th and Grand and 10th and McGee. The Lathrop would have been a good candidate for conversion for housing. Still waiting on that passageway and park. The lesson here is that the Kemper banks often make promises that never get carried out.

https://kchistory.org/image/lathrop-bui ... ffset%5D=0

Read threads:

viewtopic.php?p=444548#p444548

viewtopic.php?p=236455#p236455

viewtopic.php?p=237610#p237610

The Lathrop building had already been renovated into very nice office space in the early eighties. While lots of other properties could be called "blighted" due to lack of upkeep, the Lathrop was surely not one of them.

HalcyonKC wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:09 pm On my walks this weekend I was surprised to see the roof at the Seiden's Furs building is still open to the sky a full year and counting after the collapse. And seemingly no permits filed for either repair or demo. On deeper digging I did find that the owners of the adjacent building (Majestic) filed suit to force the Seiden's owners to repair or demolish the building, and won a default judgment earlier this summer.

Judgment document:
https://www.courts.mo.gov/fv/c/2116-CV2 ... i=20401064

Missouri Casenet entry:
https://www.courts.mo.gov/casenet/cases ... urtId=CT16

I was checking back on the status of this case, and the default judgment was apparently vacated? I have never watched a lawsuit progress through its phases so I don't know if this is normal or the what's/why's behind it. It is now set for a jury trial in October. According to Casenet:

Jury Trial Scheduled
Scheduled For: 10/16/2023; 9:00 AM; JERRI J ZHANG; Jackson - Kansas City