A Metro North Shopping Center area revitalization initiative won some help from the city of Kansas City Thursday. The city council gave formal approval to a Metro North Area Community Improvement District.
A CID can have a one-cent sales tax of its own devoted to improvements. The advocates actually were the Metro North Commons and Metro North Square shopping centers across the street from the larger Mall.
Attorney Jim Bowers spoke for property owners who plan to upgrade the shopping centers with new facades. He said with new the new exteriors and landscaping and a freshly resurfaced parking lot, the area will look like a new shopping center from the outside.
Bowers said the old Dickinson Theater building and a landscape center will be torn down. Owners hope to begin some of the improvements this spring.
Renovation of the actual Metro North Shopping center, across the street, is stalled due to a lawsuit.
The council also gave final approval to a new tougher set of rules for the sale of copper and other scarp metal to make it harder for thieves to sell things like stolen copper tubing and wire and automobile catalytic converters.