Tagged: development

While the announcement that Swedish furniture retailer Ikea was the big story in area development for 2012 for its many fans in the metro, there was a lot more news about business growth the past year.

Kansas City has a problem with vacant homes. 12,000 of them dot neighborhoods around town. Legislation that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed this year is designed to provide a new solution: a land bank.

North Kansas City took the first step toward creating a new sprawling business development Thursday, when a demolition crew began destroying a century-old Archer Daniels Midland mill.

The hulking gray mill sits on 58 acres of prime land at the intersection of 210 highway and I-35. The city hopes a developer will re-tool the land and create a large mixed-use development that could include medical offices, retail stores and possibly even some residential units.

Whether it's the opening of a beacon of the performing arts, a shopping mall revived from near death, a business fleeing one side of the state for the other, or a law firm's attempt to build a new office structure on the Country Club Plaza, it's been a busy year in development across the Kansas City region.

By Susan B. Wilson

Kansas City, MO – The Country Club Plaza has seen plenty of changes its nearly ninety years, but none of have sparked as much public passion as the recent announcement of new building plans by the law firm of Polsinelli Shughart. On August 19th, Plaza owner Highwoods Properties announced it would demolish the Balcony Building on the corner of 47th Street and Broadway to build an eight-story, glass office building.

Kansas City, MO – The historic Plaza "Balcony Building" at 47th and Broadway survives in a new design presented at this afternoon's city council business session. Spencer Thompson of the Polsinelli-Shughart law firm which is to occupy the building explained the new plan.

Thompson said the final design will incorporate as much of the original architecture and Plaza streetscape as possible, and definitely will include the Spanish-style, red-tile roofed tower.