Midtown redevelopment's big boxes already may be a thing of the past

The offices of HNTB, an architectural design firm, are spread out over the seventh floor of 1201 Walnut with a grand view of downtown and the Missouri River. Amid scale models of HNTB projects -- Kauffman and Arrowhead stadiums, several buildings including 1201 Walnut and what looks to be a train station platform -- Kevin Klinkenberg sits looking though the tinted glass over a city he loves, but a city he is leaving.

Klinkenberg is one of a handful of architects working in Kansas City who is willing to go on record criticizing the city's patterns of development and the business and civic elites who direct them. Klinkenberg, however, is moving out of Kansas City for other opportunities and does not feel the same pressure his peers do.

At issue is the Midtown Redevelopment Plan, otherwise known as the Glover Plan. "Basically, what you have now is a suburban design," he says. "The developers are creating a spaceship landing in the middle of Midtown. It looks, and will feel, as if foreign creatures dropped in there."

Klinkenberg says he has spoken with architects close to the project. They feel frustrated at what seems to be inflexibility on the part of the developers, Steve Block and Roger Cohen. To compound the problem, the tenants, Costco and Home Depot, have a specialized design for their stores that the companies use everywhere and will not willingly change.

"We are going to use public money to build a place where you can buy in bulk," he says. "It is a place, like so many others in the suburbs, that is built to drive to and load up with cheap stuff. The question is whether that is appropriate in the city. We have complained for a long time that we can't buy what we need in the city, but is this the right way to get that stuff there?

"I think it is the wrong way."

The city council recently began undertaking procedural measures to set up $49 million in public financing for the $66 million development. The Kansas City, Mo., Tax Increment Financing Commission owns the 33 acres of weedy, empty ground at Linwood and Gillham. The city is committed to the project in its present design but is taking steps to release tax increment financing bonds and other subsidies for the project -- possibly most important to getting the project underway.

It's about time say nearby residents. The Glover Plan, in part, began in the early-1980s as the Warner-Miller Plaza Redevelopment, a two block long redevelopment scheme that sought to revitalize the heart of a once-vibrant commercial and residential strip. The plan languished, however, and as it did, the uncertainty of residents around the redevelopment also grew. Another redevelopment project, the Luzier Plaza plan at Gillham and Linwood, also grew but went nowhere.

By the time Jim Glover was elected to the city council in 1991, neighborhood groups were desperate to do something about the crime and blight that had bloomed with the neighborhood's deterioration. In reality, say some neighbors, a group of unscrupulous landlords and a few drug houses caused most problems. Redevelopment plans gone awry did most of the damage.

Glover and the city council cobbled together the Luzier Plaza plan and what had grown from Warner-Miller into one, giant, allegedly grand plan. Although many individual residents and businesses protested, neighborhood groups bought into a plan to start with a clean slate, getting rid of drugs and prostitution -- but also homes and legitimate businesses in the area stretching from Linwood to 35th Terrace and from Main to Gillham.

The land was cleared by the end of 1993. The developers and Glover seemed to have tenants for the big-box development in the bag. But then months of delays extended into years. The weeds grew. The morale of Midtown residents sunk. Buildings on the periphery of the empty land now stand boarded and vacant. Block did not return repeated calls for this story.

Councilman Evert Asjes criticizes the way Glover and the developers kept discussions with prospective tenants secret. Asjes also chafed at continual delays due to "almost getting a tenant signed," he says. "There was nothing we could do to get it moving. But when the new council (elected in 1999) came in, we gave the developer a deadline, the first of August, to give us something tangible, something signed in ink. If we didn't get it, we were going to start over and re-bid the project."

Miraculously, Costco and Home Depot were committed by the council deadline.

But the new council did not have a lot of say on a project that had been in the works for two council terms before them, says Councilman Jim Rowland, who was elected to city council early last year. "We are getting to the point where we will be comfortable with anything," he says. "I think most everything was determined before we got here.

"The plan now is good from what I know about it and given its history. We had to make sure we have a development that looks like it is placed correctly. That was the hardest task -- and given the ups and downs of the plan, we had to proceed forward."