KCRag Forum

trailerkid wrote: ↑Sun Jan 18, 2004 6:48 pm 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 We will be back where we started from in 10 years and these buildings will look outdated.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

normalthings wrote: ↑Sat Nov 07, 2020 7:47 pm

trailerkid wrote: ↑Sun Jan 18, 2004 6:48 pm 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 We will be back where we started from in 10 years and these buildings will look outdated.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.

Demosthenes wrote: ↑Tue Mar 04, 2014 1:54 amAnd 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.

beautyfromashes wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 10:59 pm 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 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:33 am 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.

herrfrank wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 2:21 pm 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?

beautyfromashes wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 10:14 am

normalthings wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:33 am 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.

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 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:41 pmif you aren't building housing it's less likely you'll get tagged as a gentrifier.

Eon Blue wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:12 pm

chaglang wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:41 pmif you aren't building housing it's less likely you'll get tagged as a gentrifier.

*upside-down head emoji*

DaveKCMO wrote: ↑Sat Nov 07, 2020 8:46 pm Probably the property owner's fault, right? It certainly isn't the market's fault.

normalthings wrote: ↑Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:06 pm

DaveKCMO wrote: ↑Sat Nov 07, 2020 8:46 pm 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.......