Is Midtown Marketplace one of the city's greatest blunders?

[aknowledgeableperson]

does anybody have any pictures of the area from the 80s-90s?

Let's just say that no matter how bad the current development is, it is better than what was there before.

Although Milton's was a very good bar.

[warwickland]

i'd probably disagree, but i don't know what kind of bones there were to work with, thats why i'd like to see pictures. was there a semblance of a streetwall, etc. now there is nothing, or so it feels to somebody who doesnt use or appreciate horribly designed big boxes, especially in the urban core.

[trailerkid]

Let's just say that no matter how bad the current development is, it is better than what was there before.

This isn't excuse. Choosing to replace a black eye with a large bruise is still a bad idea. Block and Co. are the reason this turned out the way it did. You can't take a developer that doesn't care about the urban context and have them develop significant portions of the inner city. With that said, we are fortunate to have retailers like Home Depot and Costco in the inner city. Probably two of the best neighborhood big boxes you can have.

[voltopt]

here is a street and building layout from the mid to early ninteties, showing what was on the site right before they leveled it.
the green indicates buildings that are still there, more or less.  orange is for buildings that have gone away.

[voltopt]

and here is a document which takes a google earth aerial from about two years ago and superimposes it on the old grid and the earlier graphic.

[warwickland]

thanks! its still hard to tell, but i can imagine there was something of a streetwall there. midtown marketplace would still be a design disgrace, but it wouldnt be so horribly disrespectful to main street if they left the streetwall, and infilled it. my god.


i just have to laugh at how badly this s**ts all over sound planning principles. 

and then i cry.

[bahua]

Oh wow. They ruined it. It was a real neighborhood, and now it's... well... it's what it is now.

[voltopt]

pretty bad, isn't it?

[lock+load]

Looking east from Main down Warner Plaza: 1989

[Tosspot]

Looking east from Main down Warner Plaza: 1989

This may sound ridiculous, but I prefer a built form like this pictured over the big boxes even though the original buildings were vacant and blighted. I don't know all the inner horrid details of the situation, but maybe it could have been possible to rejuvenate that area naturally and save those buildings and thus save the character of the area. Instead we took the easy way out and built big box bilge.

Or...

If we had to have Midtown Marketplace, it's often been noted on this board that these chains do have some stores done on an urban scale with streetwalls and hidden parking and so on. The problem was, in all the cases of the "urban" designs for big boxes, the retailers wanted into those neighborhoods more than the neighborhoods wanted them - so they acquiesced to the neighbors' demands. With this situation in Kansas City, the city and its residents wanted these big boxes for convenience more than the retailers wanted into the market for midtown retailing. It would have been just as easy to find some nameless suburb in which to build their latest big box retail emporia crap.

[warwickland]

Looking east from Main down Warner Plaza: 1989

thanks for the image!

my god, they replaced this with an asphalt hole in the heart of midtown. i don't know what happened, it was politics,...either i feel sorry for the kcmo planners at that time, who obviously had no choice, and this isnt the work of planners, or...

[voltopt]

i seem to remember the hole sitting there for a long time.  i think they bulldozed the site in the mid 90s and didn't build until 99-2000 or so.

[warwickland]

yeah, ive seen that pitch article about the wild dogs that roamed the cleared area.

what is the design life on this crap anyway, i wonder when can we fix this monumental screw-up - and rebuild the urban fabric of this area.

[Highlander]

yeah, ive seen that pitch article about the wild dogs that roamed the cleared area.

what is the design life on this crap anyway, i wonder when can we fix this monumental screw-up - and rebuild the urban fabric of this area.

Unfortantely, the current occupiers of this space are probably one of the more commercially successful concerns in the area.  I can think of a lot of things I'd rather see in that space than the big box stores and parking lots (e.g., here's a great spot for an urban park or a very dense new urbanism project) but it would be tough, if not impossible, to force or buy out a large commercially successful business in the heart of the city.  The whole thing was so poorly planned and administered and fraught with desperation on the city's part.  Now, we are probably stuck with this truly blighted eyesore for another 20-30 years.

The only thing I can think of that might turn the tables is an extremely well placed but short-lived F4 tornado (next time there's a tornado watch, someone might want to sneak a trailer home into the parking lot....maybe we can get one...an F4 that is...to take the bait)

[lock+load]

The only thing I can think of that might turn the tables is an extremely well placed but short-lived F4 tornado (next time there's a tornado watch, someone might want to sneak a trailer home into the parking lot....maybe we can get one...an F4 that is...to take the bait)

I've already got dibs on that tornado at the TSC

[Highlander]

I've already got dibs on that tornado at the TSC

Given the proper trajectory, I think we can share the same tornado (provided it goes airborne in between). 

[LenexatoKCMO]

I've already got dibs on that tornado at the TSC

It's been surrounded by trailer homes for decades and no tornado has taken the bait. 

[bahua]

if they had left the buildings, it definitely wouldn't be blighted now. It'd be another Gillham Row.

[tat2kc]

I think the biggest problem is that the pad sites on the exterior were never developed, or developed well, as in the Verizon/Lamars building.  Pad Sites should have been developed as street front buildings, with parking in the rear. They could have left the two main entrances to Costco and Home Depot; then you'd just see the signs and the drive, but the rest of the streetscape would have nice, well designed brick buildings. 

[aknowledgeableperson]

Given the proper trajectory, I think we can share the same tornado (provided it goes airborne in between). 

It could also take a detour through downtown for some up-to-date real urban renewal.