A Condemned Man

Paul Thomas, the owner of Justrite Stamp and Seal Company at 1301 Grand Boulevard, expected to feel insulted.

On November 15, Thomas got an offer from the city of Kansas City, Missouri, for the land where Justrite has stood since 1959. The city wants the parcel to accommodate the Sprint Center, the new arena to be built using the proceeds of tax increases on hotels and rental cars that voters approved in August.

The city said it would pay Thomas $514,000. "It's way low," he says of the offer. "Way, way low."

Thomas' unhappiness with the city's bid comes as no surprise. He opposed the arena plan, just as he opposed the Power & Light entertainment district when it was on the ballot in 1998, and just as he opposed light rail in 2001. Thomas resisted these efforts because he feared they would lead to condemnation proceedings. Justrite is a modest business in a scraggly section of downtown, and modest businesses in scraggly sections of town tend to get demolished in grand redevelopment schemes.

Thomas, who wears a beard and works in bluejeans, wants to stay put and run the business the way he has since he took over from his father, who bought Justrite in 1979. "I make enough money not to have to move and not to have to work weekends," he says.

A move looks inevitable, though. The city told Thomas that he had seven days to accept the offer; if he didn't, the city would attempt to seize his property using its power of eminent domain. "We're going to acquire it," City Manager Wayne Cauthen flatly told the Pitch just days before the offer was mailed to Thomas.

Cauthen's blunt appraisal of the situation is emblematic of the way the city and its surrogates have gone about putting together property in the south loop, Thomas and other property owners say. In addition to securing space for an arena, the city has acquired land for the new H&R Block headquarters, which is under construction, and is nearly finished assembling the blocks for an entertainment district. These projects are getting public help through tax-increment financing; when they're finished, the taxes they generate will pay for the cost of land acquisition and other infrastructure.

But as the city brings rise to near ruin, Thomas and others complain that an unfeeling steamroller is flattening their small businesses.

Darren Siegel, who owns a three-story building at 1319 Grand that's home to an all-ages nightclub called the Stray Cat, says he struggled to find any official who could tell him whether his property was in line for the wrecking ball. Siegel first called the city-funded Economic Development Corporation. From there, he says, he was directed to the City Planning and Development Department, which told him to call Mayor Kay Barnes' office, which told him to call the Economic Development Corporation.

A letter from the city finally arrived on September 20, informing Siegel that his property stood in the way of the new arena.

Siegel's offer arrived at the same time as Thomas' did. He, too, felt insulted. Siegel had bought the building in 2001 and spent money restoring its windows, maple floors, exposed brick and tin ceiling. "It [the city's offer] was more than I paid for it but less than what I have in it, and definitely a long ways from being fair," Siegel says.

No property owner likes to see his house or business condemned. But the government that invokes the privilege should be gentle, says Doug Patterson, a lawyer who specializes in eminent domain cases.

Patterson credits Mayor Carol Marinovich and the Unified Government of Wyandotte County for offering residents 125 percent of the market value of their homes when they were displaced by the Kansas Speedway. Patterson takes a dimmer view of the Kansas City Tax Increment Financing Commission, the agency amassing land for the H&R Block building and the entertainment district. "The TIF Commission never seems to get it," Patterson says. "They come up with offers that are offensive."

The TIF Commission initially offered $299,000 to the owners of American Formal and Bridal, a tuxedo shop on Main Street that was condemned to make way for H&R Block ("Always the Bridesmaid," August 19). The owners -- Ben and Shirley Penner and their son, Daryl Penner -- held out and were awarded $593,000 by a judge-appointed commission.

The Penners' attorney, Rhonda Smiley, represents another property owner in the south loop who was offered $25,000 less than the property's purchase price two years earlier. "Kansas City comes in with a lowball approach and gives very little consideration to the existing businesses," she says.

Patterson says the TIF Commission's offers are especially insulting because the land will be used by private entities. "What kind of message is that? 'We can't even pay you what you bought it for -- and, oh, by the way, a Planet Hollywood is going where you are,'" he says.

Andi Udris runs the Economic Development Corporation, which administers most of the city's tax-incentive programs. He rejects the accusation that he and his colleagues have bullied property owners. Udris says that most of the land in the south loop was acquired without acrimony.