There is no guarantee of additional jobs, but owners of the Country Club Plaza District are assured the largest tenant of the Valencia Place Office Tower will be in the picture until February 2030.
The 18-year lease agreement was announced today.
No outward change to the building on West 47th Street is planned, although a Lockton vice president, Mark Henderson, does say there will be a $3.5 million interior renovation. The firm currently leases 171 thousand square feet of the building and will add another ten thousand square feet.
Mayor Sly James hailed an arrangement worked out some two years before the lease expired without tense negotiations. James said the two parties worked it out on their own.
“We didn’t have anything to do with it," the mayor said. "There aren’t any city incentives. We didn’t throw any money at this. They’re in an existing TIF [tax increment financing] district. This was a deal worked out by two savvy, smart business entities.”
According to Henderson, the Lockton insurance brokerage firm is trying to get state incentives from a variety of programs including a sales tax abatement.
Lockton was founded in 1966. It has about a thousand employees in the Kansas City area, approximately 750 of whom work at the Country Club Plaza location.