Independence Square

It started with Saddle Ridge.

By the mid 1990s, with his legal career a success, McClain and his wife, Cindy, were ready to build a new house that would accommodate their six children. But Independence didn't then have what McClain called an "executive subdivision," a new development with the kind of upscale homes they had in mind.

"Independence wanted it in the worst way," McClain says. "How do I say this? I like these people. I wanted to help."

The project also brought McClain and John Pennell together for the first time in the fall of 1996.

Pennell was then a small-time home builder in business with his brother. The pair were building six or seven homes a year.

"Move-up houses," Pennell calls them. They were priced around $225,000.

Pennell remembers the marketing materials he'd seen for Saddle Ridge. McClain insisted on strict control of designs. He required slate roofs and brick or stuccolike exterior. In return, he promised an exclusive neighborhood with a swimming pool, sculptures and a trail system linked to the county's own.

The plan sounded good to Pennell, who says he offered McClain a disclosure.

"I'm getting ready to run for mayor," Pennell recalls telling McClain. "If that's a problem, we need to go somewhere else."

McClain reassured Pennell that it wouldn't be. "This is business. That's politics," Pennell remembers McClain saying.

McClain wasn't encouraging. Both men remember that McClain told Pennell he wouldn't have much of a chance.

McClain says he meant to caution the political neophyte that the voters didn't know him and wouldn't support him. He remembers suggesting that Pennell run for a city council seat first.

But the way Pennell tells the story, McClain made the decision for the city. He had picked Mayor Stewart, and so Stewart, the incumbent, would continue to be mayor.

Pennell paid $50,000 for a single lot near the entrance to Saddle Ridge. He and his brother built a 3,600-square-foot, single-story house with a walk-out basement and a huge stone fireplace. The completed house languished unsold for two years, sucking up 24 months of loan, tax and insurance payments before it finally sold for $525,000.

Pennell blames the delay on McClain's "build it and they will come" philosophy, which passed for market research. "It never dawned on me that someone like that would have no business plan," Pennell says.

Pennell says problems with the development hurt his ability to sell the home. He says erosion problems caused mud to ooze across the newly built streets, building up deep enough at times to stop traffic. McClain, he says, was slow to follow through in building the pool and adding the sculptures and other aesthetic amenities.

But McClain blames Pennell's problems on the home design, which included only two bedrooms. "We tried like hell to sell it," McClain says. "The reason he lost money was, it was a goofy design."

Pennell's mayoral run was no more successful. Independence voters overwhelmingly re-elected Stewart in 1997.

But in defeat, Pennell gained some name recognition, and soon people with gripes about Stewart's mayoral administration began approaching him. And many of the complaints, Pennell says, involved McClain.

McClain's critics complain that he has used his money to buy the politicians of Independence.

He has been a prodigious political donor. In 2002, he helped start a political group called Citizens for Independence with a donation of $22,000. The group backed Independence City Council members Jim Schultz and Jason White and Mayor Ron Stewart in the last city elections. More recently, McClain's political clout rose to a new level when Emanuel Cleaver chose him as co-chairman of his successful congressional campaign.

McClain insists that he doesn't ask for special favors, but he isn't afraid to tell elected officials what he thinks. And that rubs some people the wrong way.

"He's a cocky untouchable. He's a typical lawyer," says Councilwoman Renee Paluka, who hasn't been endorsed or opposed by McClain and is in her second term. "When you run for office, he threatens that he'll spend every dime to take you out of office."

"I don't remember making that comment to anyone," McClain says. "I think that may be kind of the lore because I was willing to spend money to put candidates in."

Paluka says that McClain's money has granted him a special status. "Before they even cite him for codes, they call him and send him a special letter. They don't do that for anyone else," Paluka says. "How can you totally blame Ken McClain? His hand's been held for so long. On the other hand, when you have someone that is investing in property, doing a lot for the city, don't you tend to hold someone's hand a little?"

Paluka, however, doesn't see John Pennell as the city's savior against the ravages of McClain.

"The town is, like, real divided about Pennell," she says. "A lot of people think he's a real pain in the butt because he's always into everybody's business." She puts Pennell in a category of gadfly with good intentions and an ability to connect to the common citizen.