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

[flyingember]

for me, keep the home depot as is

costco renovates to add a new entrance, perhaps some detail to the Linwood side

then over time as leases expire tear down and convert the street facing to more traditional rows and move the fast food into the parking lot.

best of both worlds

[normalthings]

8 years...$50+ million....140 blighted properties....and all we get is a massive surface lot and a suburban Costco and Home Depot in the middle of the city?

I know that it is nice to have these retailers in the city, but it sends the wrong message. We don't need the suburbs in the city. We will be back where we started from in 10 years and these buildings will look outdated.

I just wish that they would have asked for a little more pizzazz in the design of the buildings and the site. It doesn't have to be out of this world, but just give us something besides 119th and Metcalf in the middle of the city.

Check out the colorful California design Target did at inner suburban Lakewood Mall...
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Rawdealman/24233.jpg

How are there no large scale redevelopment plans for this place yet? If every dead suburban mall can get something, Midtown MarketPlace should be able to too.

[Chris Stritzel]

8 years...$50+ million....140 blighted properties....and all we get is a massive surface lot and a suburban Costco and Home Depot in the middle of the city?

I know that it is nice to have these retailers in the city, but it sends the wrong message. We don't need the suburbs in the city. We will be back where we started from in 10 years and these buildings will look outdated.

I just wish that they would have asked for a little more pizzazz in the design of the buildings and the site. It doesn't have to be out of this world, but just give us something besides 119th and Metcalf in the middle of the city.

Check out the colorful California design Target did at inner suburban Lakewood Mall...
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Rawdealman/24233.jpg

How are there no large scale redevelopment plans for this place yet? If every dead suburban mall can get something, Midtown MarketPlace should be able to too.

Home Depot and Costco are busy places. That's probably a major reason why

[DaveKCMO]

Probably the property owner's fault, right? It certainly isn't the market's fault.

[chaglang]

What's happening in the lot across the street from the Linwood Ave entrance to MM?

[KCtoBrooklyn]

Dispensary.

[herrfrank]

And yes I realize that the neighborhood was in bad shape. It was sleazy and a bit dangerous. So what though? That doesn't mean we should tear the buildings down. I will never understand how some think that the key to getting rid of crime and decay is by demolishing buildings. The buildings don't commit the crimes. The people do. When you tear down the buildings you are not getting rid of the people and the problems, in fact you are creating a new set of problems by destroying any semblance of local pride.

There was some good architecture in this hood, and it would have made for a cool, unique neighborhood in today's Kansas City. Really sucks that certain people were so short-sighted.

You're right though in that at the time, these actions were incredibly normal. There is no way to expect them to do it any differently after all the other mistakes made in this period of a few decades.

The more time I have to reflect on Midtown Marketplace Glover Plan fka Warner-Plaza redevelopment, the more tragic it feels to me. The twenty or so low-rise buildings constituting Warner Plaza could easily now be high-end rental properties. The streetwall on Linwood, mostly turn-of-the-century six- and twelve-flats, would certainly be viable. Main Street had charming buildings with significant density. Yes, the inhabitants of that district in 1980 were poor and had problems, but why did we destroy block after block of city to resolve a relatively straightforward human problem?

I do think it is KC's biggest blunder since the highway loop, as it ripped out a massive parcel in the middle of the urban fabric. The airport and the stadium complex are poorly sited, but not ruinous. Kemper Arena has its issues, but it's in a marginal, flood-prone location. The heft of the middle blocks; Main Street; Linwood Boulevard -- permanently and irretrievably destroyed for a trashy big-box complex.

[flyingember]

It's five square blocks out of 1690 urban blocks (I picked SW Tfwy to Prospect, River to 47th)

That's 0.2% of that area, I find it hard to believe five blocks could destroy all of it,

My bet is Warner Plaza would look like 26th and Holmes today, having been torn down and replaced with three story buildings and a lot of parking.

[missingkc]

It was a piece of urban fabric unique in KC. It's a shame it's gone.

[beautyfromashes]

I get the frustration at tearing down whole neighborhoods, but MM has been largely instrumental in rebuilding Midtown. All the tax money from the development goes to residents fixing up houses in the form of $10,000 matching funds for exterior work. This program started in the areas directly around HD and Costco and has moved further east as areas have developed. How many houses have been restored or stabilized due to the district and continue to?

[normalthings]

I get the frustration at tearing down whole neighborhoods, but MM has been largely instrumental in rebuilding Midtown. All the tax money from the development goes to residents fixing up houses in the form of $10,000 matching funds for exterior work. This program started in the areas directly around HD and Costco and has moved further east as areas have developed. How many houses have been restored or stabilized due to the district and continue to?

Isn't Midtown Market Place in a Strongtowns article that details how the buildings there before would have /did produce more tax revenue than what is there now.

[earthling]

The project was good for Midtown but the mistake was placing suburban style pad sites along the streets and the lot in _front_ of Lamars/Verizon was a big urban no-no, parking should be in rear. Maybe with streetcar expansion, over the years they will replace the pad sites with more friendly pedestrian streetfront buildings, ideally with residential above, retail along sidewalk.

[beautyfromashes]

Isn't Midtown Market Place in a Strongtowns article that details how the buildings there before would have /did produce more tax revenue than what is there now.

Would be interested to see that article and how they determined value. Did they count just tax revenue to the city or tax revenue diverted to the neighborhood? How do you value the easy access to building materials and the incentive that brings to renovate houses in the area? Do they count revenue just at creation taking into account tax deferment or also after deferment when incentives expire? Does Costco bring people to the area that then also buy a coffee at Filling Station? Does the MM break a stigma for the area making it to be seen as a viable place to live or purchase? As was said, the edges are ugly AF but MM is/was good for the area.

[chaglang]

Yes, the inhabitants of that district in 1980 were poor and had problems, but why did we destroy block after block of city to resolve a relatively straightforward human problem?

Sadly, your answer is in your question.

[normalthings]

Isn't Midtown Market Place in a Strongtowns article that details how the buildings there before would have /did produce more tax revenue than what is there now.

Would be interested to see that article and how they determined value. Did they count just tax revenue to the city or tax revenue diverted to the neighborhood? How do you value the easy access to building materials and the incentive that brings to renovate houses in the area? Do they count revenue just at creation taking into account tax deferment or also after deferment when incentives expire? Does Costco bring people to the area that then also buy a coffee at Filling Station? Does the MM break a stigma for the area making it to be seen as a viable place to live or purchase? As was said, the edges are ugly AF but MM is/was good for the area.

- It looks like they Counted just property value based on the few buildings around the site that still stand. If you use the values of the Armour buildings, which the site could have been turned into instead of being bulldozed, I think that number would grow exponentially. Lets compare the values of Home Depot, a larger Armour Boulevard apartment, and then a small apartment or single-family home similar to the ones once on that site.

Armour Large Apartment Value - $800-900,000 per acre
Armour Small Apartment Value - $500-600,000 per acre
Area Single Family Home Value - $300-450,000 per acre
Home Depot @ Midtown Market - $190,000 per acre


- Easy access to building materials can be done in an urban way. You don't have to build a suburban big box home depot to get that. The Waldo Sutherlands manages to keep most things you'd need on a much much smaller site (and bike + ped accessible too). NYC manages to fite hardware and lumber stores inside dense urban settings. I don't think MM is breaking any stigmas for anyone.

The vacant site was redeveloped with TIF beginning in 2001, and the super-sized block is now home to a Costco and a Home Depot. A 2000 article from The Pitch KC provides a nice history of the site, and features a young Kevin Klinkenberg, Strong Towns member and frequent contributor, objecting to the project at the time. Klinkenberg likened the proposal to “a spaceship landing in the middle of Midtown”—a fundamentally suburban, car-centric land use in the middle of one of Kansas City’s traditional urban neighborhoods developed around early-20th-century streetcars.

These stores generated a positive economic return in a narrow sense: $6.5 million of public investment to produce $15.5 million of new value, on a prime infill site that had been a barren eyesore. The important question is: compared to what alternative?

What if Kansas City had really invested in revitalizing, instead of demolishing, the neighborhood around this troubled site? Here is a 2018 photo of four historic apartment buildings on Gillham, adjacent to the big-box plaza. Each building (including the Costco and Home Depot) is labeled with its present-day tax value per acre:



We can extrapolate from these buildings to imagine what might be the case if the whole site today were populated by similar development. The answer, if you do simple multiplication, is that it would be worth $40 million—not the $19 million that it is currently valued at as big-box retail. It would also be helping to stitch together, rather than disrupt, the traditional urban fabric of Kansas City’s south side.

But this vision would have required a different kind of foresight and prudence on the part of leaders in the 1990s: the willingness to tackle the problems of a blighted neighborhood with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, and to accept incremental gains.

[chaglang]

It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone proposed something like this now. I suspect the allure of urban retail options and plentiful parking would probably get it further than we would like to think - especially if the retailer is someone like Target. Density is still a bad word in a lot of neighborhoods around Midtown Marketplace and if you aren't building housing it's less likely you'll get tagged as a gentrifier.

[Eon Blue]

if you aren't building housing it's less likely you'll get tagged as a gentrifier.

*upside-down head emoji*

[chaglang]

if you aren't building housing it's less likely you'll get tagged as a gentrifier.

*upside-down head emoji*

The circularity of the logic joining the the coalition of people opposing density because it will lower their property values with the people opposing density because it will gentrify a neighborhood is so perfect and complete that it's almost unassailable.

[normalthings]

Probably the property owner's fault, right? It certainly isn't the market's fault.

HomeDepot and Costco Corporate appear to be the 2 single largest owners. I honestly doubt they even know about streetcar or the changing dynamics of their under utilized lane. Could be good if someone reached out to them.......

[flyingember]

Probably the property owner's fault, right? It certainly isn't the market's fault.

HomeDepot and Costco Corporate appear to be the 2 single largest owners. I honestly doubt they even know about streetcar or the changing dynamics of their under utilized lane. Could be good if someone reached out to them.......

Since the city has done project outreach to property owners, there’s a 100% chance they know