Well, you could see this coming. The downtown Kansas City, Missouri, business owners who thought so little of the streetcar idea that they sued to stop it are looking for another day in court.
Lee's Summit lawyer Mark Bredemeier announced on Tuesday that his clients would seek to appeal a Jackson County judge's decision earlier this year to dismiss their lawsuit, which challenged whether the streetcar's funding mechanism was legal.
There are three Hostess outlet stores in the metro (which Pitch editor Scott Wilson refers to as "used bread stores"), and at least two are still open for business.
The employees of the stores sounded like they had been prepared for a crush of media inquiries and were tight-lipped when I called. The woman who answered the phone at the Dolly Madison shop in Raytown said, "I have a few things" for sale. An employee at the Dolly Madison outlet on Blue Parkway in Kansas City said the store is open today, then briskly hung up. Meanwhile, the phone at the Wonder Bread/Hostess outpost on Shawnee Mission Parkway has been off the hook all morning.
In a statement announcing the companywide wind down, Hostess said, "Delivery of products will continue and Hostess Brands retail stores will remain open for several days in order to sell already-baked products."
The first thing you need to know about Zaarly’s newest endeavor, Zaarly Storefronts, is that you can leave the trowel at home. These are not brick-and-mortar businesses, despite the name. Rather, Zaarly is changing its core focus from a model of customers' posting their desires and having Zaarly users fulfill them to one where sellers market their services and products to buyers through a virtual
store. On Saturday, Kansas City will be the fourth market to launch Storefronts.
Zaarly CEO Bo Fishback, who continues to live in Kansas City even though his company’s headquarters moved to San Francisco earlier this year, says the pivot toward giving sellers online spaces of their own came after studying Zaarly’s sales data. But it was also partially inspired by a photo book of New York City storefronts that had gone vacant after longstanding businesses had failed.
“Some [of the businesses] were like third-generation Italian meat markets,” he says. “A health inspector came and told them they were no longer able to hang meat in their windows. They took the meat down, and all their customers started going away.”
The Kansas City Board of Trade has been at the Main Street location for 56 years, but chairman Steven Campbell believed the complex regulatory requirements and operational demands meant that a partnership represented the best chance for future success. While this may allow the KCBT to compete in an increasingly technical marketplace, the brick-and-mortar future of the exchange is less certain. Under the terms of the signed agreement, the trading floor will remain open for at least six months and "a committee of market participants" is slated to advise CME for a minimum period of three years. The board of directors has approved the sale, which now must be signed off on by KCBT shareholders and regulators. The KCBT membership will receive a special distribution of excess cash if the deal closes as it's expected to later this year.
Softbank could have had a much better deal in January. Sprint's stock was trading at $5.53 per share as of 9:15 a.m. after beginning the year at $2.33 per share. This would mark the second major sale of a Kansas City-area Fortune 500 company in the past six months. AMC Entertainment Holdings was acquired by China's Dalian Wanda Group in May.
While the Merriam Village development was selected, Ikea also looked at the Great Mall of the Great Plains in Olathe, the former Bannister Mall site in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Falls (where Bass Pro is located) in Independence. But the location in Johnson County, just off Interstate 35, proved to be the most attractive. After the jump, The Pitch looks at the new store by the numbers.
The store and development (the retailer's first in Kansas) would be at the southeastern corner of Interstate 35 and Johnson Drive, the site of the unoccupied Merriam Village development (6030 Eby). Ikea currently has 38 locations in the United States.
"We were unable to complete a transaction at a valuation or size that would be in the best interests of our company," Chief Executive Bryan Hansel said in a statement to Reuters.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission two weeks ago, Smith expected to price its 4.45 million shares between $16 and $18, hoping to raise as much as $76 million for the company in the IPO that had been slated for this morning. The electric-car company lost $27.4 million in the first six months of 2012, a jump from the $21.3 million loss for the same period in 2011. The company announced earlier this month that it was cutting its projected output from 620 trucks to 380 trucks for this year.
The 300,000-square-foot development's construction on 135th Street between Nall and Lamar has been delayed by the recession and plan changes (most recently a shift of the residential component of the project from the heart of the retail district in April). The Kansas Department of Commerce approved $66 million in STAR Bonds back in 2009 for the project, which will also draw funds from a 1.5 percent additional sales tax as part of the community-improvement district in which it is situated. REI, Cinetopia Theaters, PInstripe bowling, Rocks & Brews, and the American Museum of Natural History — a freestanding 30,000-square-foot building to house traveling exhibits that would stay for four or five months — have all signed on. Originally scheduled to open in 2010, Prairiefire is now targeting the end of next year.
Update: Two more Things of Steven were posted over the weekend: a Super Nintendo with games and an invisible pony and a "1:1 Scale Replica of IKEA 'Expedit' Shelving Unit." And the scribe behind Things of Steven sent me an email early Saturday morning. He fulfilled my request that he write a sales pitch for a waterbed. Enjoy.
"'That's one damn dead waterbed,' she sighed listlessly, regretfully, earnestly, terribly. Her lips were slow but her heart was thumping so fast, like a million tiny pigeons stuck between the carburetor and the hood of a racecar screaming through space heading straight into the sun, a sun composed of ten thousand suns all bigger than itself, all crammed into one and they can NOT stay in there, just like the tears that for so long had fallen inside her, filling her with tears, so that whenever she would move her hand across the desk, or whenever she would turn her head (that voice again?), she could feel the tears in her arms, her neck, making her movements heavy, fluid, slow, like a waterbed."
Original post: For a change, the most intriguing posts on the Kansas City Craigslist site aren't in the "missed connections" or on a personals page. No, a Raytown resident trying unload a crappy bookcase and a coffee table has turned the "For sale/wanted" page the most interesting and the strangest.
The two posts - which are more than 500 words each - are titled "THINGS OF STEVEN - Coffee Table of Prosperity - $10" and "THINGS OF STEVEN - Mildly Depressed Bookcase - $20." And they are worth reading. The intro for the coffee table post is a 175-word sentence that begins:
"I, your humble yet illustrious reporter, lifelong servant to the will of the public, champion of the people, awarded 'Best Pecs' by Boy Frenzy magazine five times from 2002-2009, emissary of goodwill, and of course, loyal confidante of Steven - a gentleman who, I am sure, needs no introduction, whose distinction is without peer, of whose benevolence the cup of humanity runneth over..."
Voltaire - the saloon, not the philosopher - opens tonight
Big Rip Brewing Co. expands the Northland's beer universe
Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper are headed to Cricket Wireless Amphitheater
A consultant tells KC that big retail could save Citadel Plaza
WWE's Monday Night Raw returns to Kansas City October 14
Courtney Cole, Greater Kansas City Women's Political Caucus executive director, answers The Pitch's questionnaire
Shawn Ratigan and Bishop Robert Finn face two new civil lawsuits
Yo La Tengo is at Grinders tonight