Stonehenge and the pyramids aside, nothing seems to last forever…
Not even Kansas City’s vaunted Country Club Plaza.
Oh sure, it’s changed over the years – long gone are institutions like Woolworth’s, King Louie, Sears and hoity-toity clothiers such as Jack Henry and Cricket West. About the only biz that goes very far back now is the jeweler Tivols.
No biggie, right? Wrong.
With upwards of two dozen vacancies – 12 in the past year – and one of the Plaza’s biggest “gets,” upscale Oak Park Mall department store Nordstrom bailing from its two year plan to relocate to the Plaza, things are looking beyond bleak.
“I’ve never been more worried about the Plaza,” one big shot developer told a local television station. “You see all the big names going away (and) it’s going to have a domino effect. It’s tough to watch.”
So is there anything much in the way of good news?
“Not that I’m aware of,” says Westport businessman Bill Nigro.
There are basically two takes on the Plaza’s problems:
“They have to get their rents in line so people can afford to be in business,” Nigro says. “Nobody can afford the rents there now.”
“And I think Johnson Countians are afraid to go down there,” adds Mission Hills resident Dwight Sutherland. “Five or six years ago they had flash mob problems where the black kids would come and throw the white kids in the fountains, and then go by outdoor restaurants and knock people’s drinks and food off their tables. Then they had the riots two years ago after the George Floyd incident. People in the suburbs already had reservations about going down there and the riots solidified them.”
Now many of the Plaza’s popular businesses and eateries are history.
Among them, the block long Halls store, deceased local designer Kate Spade, Michael Kors, men’s store Pinstripes, trendyhome furnishings store RE:, the Plaza III restaurant – even Chiefs star Tyrann “Honey Badger” Mathieu’s fiance is closing her Jill Marie boutique later this week.
“That’s my point,” Sutherland says. “You know, I still go to Andre’s – even though its not actually on the Plaza, the same for Winstead’s -and Barnes & Noble. But there’s nothing really unique on the Plaza anymore. I used to bring in out-of-town friends and take them there and they’d be very impressed.”
No mas…
All of that said, the Plaza still has its infamous, 100 year-old, tres-scary, human-sized Easter bunnies – eight to be exact – along with what’s left of its annual Plaza Art Fair and bogus crowd count Holiday Lighting on Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, what’s been described to locals for years as the country’s first shopping center may be hanging by a thread.
Stay tuned?
The over/under on how long it could be before the Plaza lapses into nondescript streets, unremarkable stores and vacant buildings:
“Ten to 15 years”, Sutherland estimates.
In addition to allowing degenerate animals to run rampant on the Plaza, & high rents, brick and mortar stores in general are going the way of the Do-do Bird. Online shopping (Amazon), has changed the game.
Not sure there’s much if anything the Plaza owners can do at this point…
Maybe several months (years?) from now the world will reawaken, JC Nichols fountain will get its name back and open borders and transgender obsessions will take a back seat to slightly more traditional approaches. Then again, maybe not.
Hard to get those genies back in their bottles!
Dwight is right, there isn’t a real reason to go to the Plaza anymore. I remember the days when you would go down around 2:30 walk the area do a little shopping have a nice dinner, drinks and maybe catch a movie. Early 70’s to around 76, 77 bowling might be added to the fun we had there. I go out every year and drive around looking at Christmas lights taking friends on these tours and we have not took a lap through the Plaza for I’m guessing 15 years now to see theirs. Nobody really cares to see them or be in the area of it anymore.
The amazing stunning magic of it all has died and unless a very huge miracle happens nothing is going to resuscitate it back to life. So sad how this town can’t seem to keep anything really nice going anymore. If it’s exciting, safe, clean, and fun people will come from miles around to see, but when it no longer has those attractions those who spend the money no longer come around.
Downtown to the Plaza area was a part of my younger life. The burbs didn’t kill the downtown shopping trips for us, the city is to blame for that. It got trashy, dirty and creepy. This town can’t seem to cherish and take care of what we have or had. No it’s tear it all down for some all glass looking monster that has no architectural soul.
As a kid I remember watching Kansas City’s Christmas Parade them going to see lights at the Plaza. The City more or less killed that fun night around 65 I think.
So sad.
Hard to argue your points, Super…
That “all glass monster” you’re referring to wouldn’t happen to be the KC Star press plant would it?
Bill Nigro got his car towed about a year ago on the Plaza in the late afternoon while attending a short meeting and he’s had more than his share of run-ins with the police over crowd issues and the like in nearby Westport.
All of that says, he thinks the current, outgoing KCMO police chiefs is the best the city has had in his time here – 1970s on.
And he worked diligently to protect the Plaza during the George Floyd riots. For which the local jokesters labeled him racist loser and he’s being hounded into retirement and given next to no credit for the work he has done.
At this stage of the game from the media – national and local with a handful of exceptions – are aligned with organizations such as Disney and the Nelson-Atkins Museum to declare that enforcing the laws and making the streets safe is basically racist.
And that’s the name of that tune…
Transgender obsessions and immigration policies are to blame for the demise of the Plaza? Weird. It’s almost like trying to sell T-shirts for $100 out of a brick and mortar store that’s you costing $10K/month to lease is a bad business idea. As a consumer, why do I want to help you pay your overhead because you made a bad business decision by not reading the economic tea leaves?
If you build a better mousetrap, people don’t give a shit if you’re selling it out of your basement. If you are running your business from a storefront, you better offer a product that consumers can’t get cheaper on-line while laying around in their underwear.
Yes, a certain percentage of the population enjoys an actual “shopping” experience. But, that demographic is shrinking with each passing generation.
You have a point, Big Jim…
But not on the border crisis and transgender fixations. Those are just two recent examples of the brand of woke policies and thinking that also resulted in scrubbing JC Nichols name off the fountain, The Star scrubbing William Rockhill Nelson’s name off its resume and the Plaza losing its battle with inner city types to overrun and scare off its target audience customers and a lot more.
Of course, online shopping is taking a toll…that’s a given.
However, people still want to feel safe and not have to dive into the bushes when they hear gunshots like the former mayor of KC did while doing a PR stunt outside the Cheesecake Factory.
Former Plaza owner Highwoods tried to fight it with massive overhead floodlights atop the Seville Center and an armada of security and police vehicles parked outside its front door. Crown Center hired busses to take kids back to the lesser side of town so they wouldn’t hang out there on weekend nights. Westport is being forced by the city to pay minority observers to make sure when they card people to enter on busy summer nights they don’t discriminate.
What’s all that got to do with online shopping?
COVID and the riots were a perfect storm when The Plaza really needed not one more problem. I still love The Plaza. I still go to the Plaza regularly to walk around. I would like to see some more bars there that appeal to the 35 and over crowd. They can close early so they don’t contribute big bar drama. There are restaurants in Brookside, Crestwood, PV, Midtown and Parkville that would be awesome on the Plaza. They would need a landlord that gives them a break and makes more money off of a mix of
other types of tenants. The Plaza has three incredible hotels and I put business associates in them frequently. They also have a good mix of Tier 2 Hotels. I love the Plaza restaurants but I don’t always want a 2.5 hour steak/seafood dinner. It needs a sprinkle of mom and pops with character that fits there. I hate to say it but it needs a hero savior. Someone locally who could buy a baseball team if they wanted, but instead buys The Plaza and hires really smart connected people from Kansas City to run it.
I think at this point, they’re far less likely to attract top tier buyer – such as Hioghwoods – and would have to effectively fire sale it off.
Unfortunately, the deep pocketed kinda locals are few and far between – or saw it seems.
Halls didn’t leave on a whim, Hallmark is facing its own problems trying to salvage what’s left of the greeting card industry.
While it’s hard to imagine it going to complete ruin, how long can they stave off crime, woke thinking and the long drive from the burbs where most of the money now lives?
That’s it in a nutshell Hearne, when they lost those coming in with the money the Plaza started going downhill, and fast. The same diverse group goes from location to location, ruining it all either by intimidation or by rioting and destroying it.
Till prosecutors and LEO’s step in and make that go away it will continue to happen. I like many of my friends through the years have dropped a decent amount of coin in those few blocks. We loved going there and now we never think or talk about going there. But at the same time if we make it known why we don’t, we get labeled as racist.
We’re not racists, we just have a general dislike of thugs, thieves and small gang mentality making you move or get plowed into on the sidewalks . Not all people of color are bad folks but as they say, a few rotten apples in the basket hurts the whole basket. Someone has to deal with the few rotten ones, and to be honest nobody really is.
Exactly, Super Dave…
Nobody seems to want to deal with any number of prickly subjects. Teaching children that they arte either racists or members of the oppressed; that boys can be girls and vice versa; that dudes with a hankering to lean toward the effeminate side are more than welcome to compete with actual women, no matter which ay they, uh, swing.
We are living in bizarro world today, so we’re just going to have to ride it all out and hope the the best, unfortunately
One other thing, the Plaza was a replacement for KC’s downtown when there basically was nothing of note to visit downtown. Now for the first time in the memory of everyone under 50, downtown is thriving, so the people who naturally want to have an urban shopping/going out experience go to new coolest place, which is downtown, and the natural constituency of the Plaza, the people 40+ that have been going there are put off by all of the issues that started in the mid teens and got worse with the contrived BLM riots. The Plaza is now left without a natural customer base other than tourists or nostalgia seekers.
VERY interesting take, Harry…
Well, let’s think about it a bit more. When I was growing up the Plaza had a Safeway store on the west side, a Standard gas station smack in the front middle where Wornall Road bisects Brush Creek and things like barber shops, upscale women’s hairdressers, an upscale grocer and a shoe repair place. In short it had some fairly mundane underpinnings and suburbanites of the day – now we would probably call them “townies” could lead their everyday lives.
Along with there were upscale stores like Cricket West, Woolf Brothers and Herzfeld’s to keep the well-heeled and somewhat cook crowd interested.
Downtown was also still viable – dare I say, thriving – and missing from all of this were the more rough hewn denizens of the inner city, spreading fear and uncertainty.
I think to some extent that latter element is less a factor in the new downtown, but just as it most definitely was at Crown Center not that many years back, chances are it will be again depending on how things evolve and the city handles crime and criminals.
I do think the Plaza’s “natural” customer base is still within spitting distance, just like downtown. Clearly, it’s not celebrating a renaissance like downtown, but perhaps with the right management and an orderly enforcement of crime and criminals, that renaissance could be just around the corner.
The flight to the suburbs of – not just white folks, but black, Asian, you-name-it – people wanting a kinder, gentler, safer environment to raise their families will continue to make it challenging for upscale places like both the Plaza and downtown to succeed.
That and online shopping which is a challenge even for suburban retailers.
In the meantime, things look to continue to make for pretty tough sledding for the Plaza, including for the reasons you point out.
The $64 Billion question: Will it prove terminal?
Just wait. The Plaza rumor mill has odds on TARGET taking the Nordstrom’s space. That’ll be the final blast into mediocrity. I said, years ago, it would be the next Bannister Mall. And it’s headed there fast, now.
Good one, Sir Paul…
I remember the, uh, good old days, of Bannister Mall. Driving all the way from Johnson County to see Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, of going there on a Saturday afternoon in May to flyer the cars in the parking lot for my first concert, The Happy Together Tour with The Turtles, Gary Lewis, The Buckinghams and Grassroots at Municipal Auditorium in June of 1985.
It’s kind of a scarey, screwy thought,I suppose it could happen.
But probably not as extreme – not nearly as extreme – as Bannister Mall…not in our current lifetime, anyway
On the south side of the creek… there are a lot of high powered people who probably consider themselves Plaza Residents. Perhaps not on some. I think we see people who like their KC identity and live in luxury without expansive grounds in Mission Hills, Sunset Hills, PV etc. Extremely nice apartments and condos. Old money and some new money too. Hopefully they will help the Plaza. I don’t think the Target is so bad. Some of the best urban districts in the US have Targets Duane Reade etc.
True…
And at this point, Patrick Mahomes is in your list of in-town types…not that that wildly matters because my guess is, he won’t be the next KC lifer///Len Dawson.
But there definitely is a ton of old and new money in the in-town world, but the Plaza is soooooo big and sprawling, chances are its gonna need a heckuva lot more bodies to sustain it.
Unfortunately, it has a ton of low lives living close by and as we have seen, planting floodlights, parking fleets of police and security cars and posting loitering signs and enforcing those kind of rules aren’t much of a deterrent.