Kansas side of metro KC develpment thread

[empires228]

From what I can tell the Metcalf South plan can still get rejected by the city. The developer is just mad that the city rejected their Walmart disaster that was being pushed by a member of the Walton family. It doesn't look like Metro North is going to be replaced by anything special either just another faux downtown surrounded by a big box store and a sea of parking that will resemble the awful Northfield Stapleton in Denver rather than the semi tolerable Zona Rosa.

"The 90-acre Metro North Crossing development is forecast to cost $186 million, with $71 million of that in tax incentives redirected to support the project. Thomson said Clay and Platte County representatives support it and there is no neighborhood opposition. However, he acknowledged that Platte R-3 School Superintendent Mike Reik voted against it at a recent TIF Commission meeting."

Did JCP and Dillard's receive any taxpayer money to vacant Metro North? Dillard's was a later build at Zona and JCP built two stores to replace it so I doubt there were NO incentives involved to get those stores to move, especially since Dillard's held on to their vacant store and the Ward's store until they were forced to give them up when they were declared blighted.

Then there is the stupidity of this.

Council members questioned whether a rebuilt Metro North would draw business away from Zona Rosa, another upscale shopping center a few miles west in Platte County.

But Thomson and Horn said Metro North would have a very different mix of tenants and uses and should not compete in a detrimental way with Zona Rosa.

Of course it will draw traffic away. Zona Rosa sucked away tenants looking to jump ship from Metro North just like Oak Park Mall did with Metcalf South. Besides the giant box on the north end that looks like it could be a Walmart/Costco/Menards and the Trader Joe's I can't imagine the inline tenants will be much different from what is offered at Zona Rosa and The Shops at Boardwalk, especially with all of the recent retail bankruptcies and closures along with all of the expected ones. The one thing that excites me about this project is that the northland will finally get the nice Macy's store they deserve, even though Macy's may be gone from most of the country within five years, especially out here the Midwest and Texas where the stores were named as some of the worst performers and the east coast stores were named the highest performers. I hope they can target something like Von Maur to fill the 100,000 sqf of retail above Macy's. Different anchors is what allowed so many malls to be constructed in KC in the first place because none of the ones that were close had the same department store combinations between Harzfeld's, Macy's, Stix Baer & Fuller, Montgomery Ward, Sears, The Jones Store, and JCPenney, plus The Plaza had Saks and Halls.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by empires228

Did JCP and Dillard's receive any taxpayer money to vacant Metro North? Dillard's was a later build at Zona and JCP built two stores to replace it so I doubt there were NO incentives involved to get those stores to move, especially since Dillard's held on to their vacant store and the Ward's store until they were forced to give them up when they were declared blighted.

I already stated many times that zona rosa was not built with any incentives no matter how many times you bring up that it potentially was.

There is a transportation sales tax that funded the garage int he second phase. There is no zona rosa tif and the city would have never supported using tifs to move from metro north to zona rosa.

The reason metro mall closed was the mall was not maintained by the owner and the norhtland was rapidly growing and retailers needed more than one location so they opened locations in the I-29 corridor and the I-35 corridor, but the 169 corridor emptied out. With all the new housing going up in the immediate area of Metro North, the 169 corridor will again be a retail hub.

So there is a market for retail at Metro North. The area is still booming with new rooftops. Twin Creeks will add 75,000 new residents over 20 years. Shoal Creek will probably add another 15-20k in the next ten years and there are new housing developments filling in the gaps south of 152 all over the northland.

The Northland once had one huge retail area (Metro North). Now it has Two large areas (Zona Rosa/Tiffany Springs and Shoal Creek/Liberty) plus many smaller developments have popped up like Briarcliff and Burlington Creek.

There is plenty of room for new large scale retail development at Metro North and retailers know this. This is why Metro North is not going to have any problems lining up tenants for the new Metro North development.