Truce or Consequences

Victory came to Jennifer Larson in the library at the Wendell Phillips Elementary Magnet School. First her husband, Ed, called, then a reporter. Then another reporter. And on Monday, March 4, almost exactly two months after the biggest battle of her life began, a fight that she literally took to city hall, Larson sat at her desk and felt victory. How did it feel? Like the beginning of a long fight. "We've won Round One," she said.

Defeat came to Barry Brady at the Ward Parkway office of his local real estate franchise. On Monday, Brady pushed the button, and a public relations company announced that Brady had decided to stop seeking tax money to put an office building for one of the city's biggest law firms on the rubble of a stately Plaza apartment building. Brady, whose company announced those intentions less than two months ago, expressed disgust that "politics impeded the important process and progress underway."

But what did defeat feel like, particularly this defeat to a mob led by folks who are supposed to keep quiet and pay the rent on time? Like disappointment, Brady said. He was disappointed.

As of the new year, more than 100 residents lived in the 88 apartments of Park Lane, a brick, U-shaped building erected in 1925. They needed only cross J.C. Nichols Parkway to jog in Mill Creek Park or to loaf beside one of Kansas City's most photographed fountains. They lived within stumbling distance of the wide sidewalks and borrowed Spanish-Mediterranean architecture of Kansas City's healthiest neighborhood, the Country Club Plaza, where Giorgio Armani rubs elbows with Ann Taylor, and stop signs are so Raytown.

Park Lane's remaining tenants pay between $300 and $1,200 a month to rent basic efficiencies, smallish studios or good-sized apartments, a bargain for an area that calls Pottery Barn and J. Crew neighbors. The residents are different colors and earn varying incomes. Some are so old they creak; others are so young they gleam. Together, they are what one neighborhood activist in Kansas City calls "great human capital."

But in January, the building's out-of-town owners, Highwoods Properties, announced that it wanted to replace that human capital with lawyers. A lot of lawyers. Brady planned to tear down Park Lane and build an office building in its place. To do this, he asked for more than $12 million in public money. He began to move residents out.

Opponents fought back. Led by Ed and Jennifer Larson, they called themselves Protect Park Lane. They protested, they e-mailed, and they dialed phones. They corralled city councilman Jim Rowland to their side, and suddenly they had some political clout. Rowland publicly blasted Brady's idea. He introduced a council resolution to kill the plan before it could find its way to city hall. As Rowland took the issue to the council, the growing mob of Park Lane supporters brought the issue to the mayor's doorstep.

In a matter of weeks, they focused the city's attention on the multimillion-dollar corporation that had the gall to create scores of middle-class refugees so its lawyers could have a view of Mill Creek Park. On Monday, the building's protectors seemed to have won. Highwoods killed its own proposal to raze the historic building.

So victory came to Protect Park Lane, and defeat came to Barry Brady. But at what price? Highwoods promises to keep evicting residents until Park Lane is empty. Taxpayers lose an opportunity to speak against the abuses of tax breaks handed out to fabulously wealthy developers. And a big, important question remains unanswered: But for the outrage of citizens, would it have actually been possible for Highwoods to persuade city hall it was a good idea for public money to pay for destroying homes and building new offices on the ritzy Country Club Plaza?

The handshakes and deals leading to the Park Lane mayhem date back six years and implicate a host of city leaders. That history shows that the war Jennifer Larson was fighting is far from over.

Park Lane was designed by George Post, an architect famous for contributions to the New York skyline, particularly the New York Stock Exchange. Park Lane is the only Post building in Kansas City, and preservationists believe that alone makes the structure eligible for the national register of historic buildings.

The Plaza's property owners have never registered buildings, despite the area's historic and heralded status, so Park Lane has not received recognition as a landmark -- not even in 1996, when its owner proposed "preserving" the building as a fancy boutique hotel.

It was built during J.C. Nichols' creation of the Plaza, a shopping district still successful seven decades later. But J.C. Nichols died in 1950, and a North Carolina real estate company now makes decisions for the Plaza. That company, Highwoods Properties, owns Park Lane and controls $53.7 million in city tax money reserved for Plaza projects.

Highwoods got control of the city's money in part by promising to convert Park Lane to a hotel. That proposal was just one part of an application for tax-increment financing (TIF) subsidies for the Plaza. The plan called for nine projects on the Plaza, estimated to cost $250 million. It included Valencia Place, a stretch along the Plaza's main drag that now features new stores for the Gap and Banana Republic, an unobtrusive parking garage, an extravagant stairway that leads to chic McCormick and Schmick's restaurant and an office building for the Lockton insurance company.