He’s No Angel

Sitting in a back office, Reeder is dressed in a plaid short-sleeved shirt, dark slacks and loafers. He has white hair and a sad countenance. He speaks slowly and quietly. He looks harmless, though there's a hint of screw-you in the way he props a foot on the corner of the desk.

He is joined by McMillin, whose short, solid stature suggests a high school wrestling coach, and a daughter, Leslie, who has blond hair, closely set eyes and a deep tan.

Leslie sits behind the big desk. Her father takes one of the two chairs facing the desk, a subordinate position. The seating arrangement underlines a message that the Reeders wish to impart on their visitor: The felon is not running the show at the View.

"I am retired," Wayne Reeder says. "I am out of the picture, and I always have been, except to advise Leslie, who is a very dynamite executive. She knows what she's doing in all facets of the building, so it isn't as if I'm the mastermind here. I am not the mastermind."

Reeder is technically a "consultant" to the limited liability corporation developing the View. The owners of record are a Reeder family trust, of which Leslie is president, and Richard Turner, an accountant whom Leslie says she has known for 20 years (and her father has known for 40).

The Reeders are obviously aware that it might look unseemly for the city to grant a tax break to a one-time white-collar criminal, hence the emphasis on semantics. Leslie says, "A convicted felon consulting on the project, should that have anything to do with the project getting tax credits or not? No. If it was an ownership interest, or maybe a director of the board, would it be more impactful? Yes. But he's not that."

She adds, "Who I hire as a consultant is entirely up to me."

Leslie claims she saw the condominium potential in the Vista del Rio -- built in 1965 as an apartment house for retired teachers, the building was essentially abandoned in the early '90s -- after coming to Kansas City to visit her father. Prior to moving here, she lived in Phuket, Thailand, for 4 years. She also has a residence in San Diego. She decided she needed a break from Asia, she says, when she saw the downtown and the tax advantages Kansas City had to offer. The Vista del Rio was a perfect qualifier, she says.

The quality of life isn't bad, either. "You know, Kansas City's a nice part of the world to be in," Leslie says. She and her father live in separate apartments on the Plaza. "We love it here."

"Great fishing here," her dad says. "It's a wonderful place."

It would be a mistake, though, to believe that Reeder the elder spends all day chasing after croppie. The View file at the PIEA office suggests that Reeder has been very active in the development of the project and that his role as consultant was chosen after his past came to light.

A sheet of paper in the file, for instance, is stapled with the business cards of Wayne Reeder, Larry McMillin and Bob Mayer -- but not Leslie. Her name also is absent from the sign-in sheet from a 2003 meeting that her father and McMillin held with Figuly and city officials, including Bob Langenkamp, the acting director of City Planning and Development.

Shortly before the 2003 meeting, a city employee learned of Reeder's past by performing a Web search. Donovan Mouton, who works in the office of Mayor Kay Barnes, found a court decision upholding Reeder's fraud conviction and an Orlando Sentinel story about a legal dispute between Reeder and a former director of Hill Top.

Mouton forwarded his discovery to Mayer, according to copies of e-mails in the PIEA file. Mayer's response indicates that Wayne Reeder's role was then clarified. Mayer told Mouton that he discussed the cases with Reeder and his daughter.

Mayer continued, "Without going into a lot of detail in this e-mail, Reeder did explain the circumstances; he will be a Consultant to the Family Trust; his daughter Lesley [sic] will be the primary Owner's Representative, and they do have the Financial Backing and Team to get this deal moving."

Mayer tells the Pitch today that he's always understood Wayne Reeder to be a consultant. "He told me all along that the family trust, through his daughter, were the primary principals of this and he would be a consultant to the project, and that's the way it's been," he says.

Wayne Reeder has made deals since 1955. For most of his career, he was based in Bakersfield, California, where he grew up. His father, a railroad man, moved the family to the San Joaquin Valley from Warsaw, Missouri, when Wayne was 2 years old.

Reeder attended UCLA and earned a master's degree in real estate. Over time, his holdings stretched to 17 states. On weekends, Leslie and her sister Stacy accompanied their father while he inspected new developments. "Our big thrill was playing house in the models," Leslie says, punctuating the sentence with a cigarette-hardened laugh.