- [Announcer] "Flatland in Focus" is brought to you in part through the generous support of AARP, the Health Forward Foundation and RSM.

- Hi, I'm D. Rashaan Gilmore and welcome to "Flatland in Focus."

In the heart of Kansas City stands the Country Club Plaza, often referred to as the crown jewel of Kansas City.

But in recent years, the 100 year old shopping and entertainment district has become a center of commerce culture and controversy.

Tonight we'll be talking about the future of the Country Club Plaza.

(upbeat music) The Plaza is steeped in nearly a century of history, and today stands at a very pivotal juncture.

Once an undeniable emblem of prosperity and heritage, The Plaza now grapples with 21st century challenges of urban development, historic preservation, and community safety.

Tonight we will navigate the complex currents of economic pressures and the debate between progress and preservation.

And critically, we will explore whether the Country Club Plaza is poised for a renaissance or if we are witnessing the erosion of a local icon.

This is "Flatland in Focus," where today's dialogue shapes tomorrow's decisions.

Let's begin.

(transition whooshes) (inquisitive music) - [Quinton] The future of The Plaza is not just a plaza discussion, it's something that impacts, I'd argue everyone, not just in Kansas City, but more broadly in our region.

(traffic rumbling) - The controversy that's bubbling up is that The Plaza's skidding downhill with no stop in sight.

- Walking by empty storefronts now, walking by a dirt pit at the edge of The Plaza is something that is disappointing and it's sad because it was a place that was special for many of us in many of our lives.

Whether you're a hundred years old or whether you're probably 30, at least.

- The movie theater is gone.

Some of the, my favorite long standing restaurants, The Plaza III being one.

- But also struggling because of the change with Nordstrom deciding to pull out of the deal somewhat at the last minute after things have been torn down and the landscape had been reshaped and there's nothing to put there.

So I think it's gonna take some people sitting down and re-imagining what The Plaza could be.

- The problem with developing The Plaza is it's extremely expensive.

Every time you build a building, you're knocking something down the infrastructure below it is terrible.

It would be impossible to ever be able to satisfy everybody.

No matter what you do, you're wrong.

You bring in a national brand, well, why didn't you bring in three?

You brought in this great company.

Well, what happened to the local guy that you kicked out?

This is a tourist destination.

That's the change from 1920s to now.

It served as a community center with conveniences, and now it serves as a tourist destination.

Local retailers are not the answer for The Plaza now.

The Plaza needs to have more new residential around it, more new office, more new medical.

- I don't shop in stores anymore.

I do all of my shopping, I only have a few places that I actually show up and shop because it's so much more convenient to shop online.

We still value interaction and contact with people, and I think the future of The Plaza may rest in how skilled they are, how future focused they are in creating spaces that serve as the magnet for people to come together to, you know, and have fun.

- So what should it become?

I think probably more residential.

Residential, hopefully in a little bit more of an affordable way, although I'm not suggesting affordable housing on The Plaza.

And I also think that it needs to become a place of entertainment.

Restaurants and bars are great, but there has to be something more.

If you're gonna make it pedestrian friendly walking, then I think you have to entertain the pedestrians once they're there walking, some outside activities, something going on that catches the eye that's not available someplace else.

- It is no longer, we like Kansas City because they have the most high-end department store on The Plaza.

It's instead we're going to Kansas City because yeah, I wanna hang out on The Plaza.

I wanna be in this space.

And that's the sort of thing that I think will speak to what The Plaza is for the future.

- If The Plaza truly does go to a pedestrian only location or limited access for cars, having a streetcar will be a big deal.

So it connects, it connects The Plaza, crossroads, downtown, river market, and soon we'll go to the river at some point.

- I think in many ways we are ripping off the poor people who are gonna pay taxes for it and don't have the money that the people would have who live west of Troost.

That's why I call it touristy frou frou.

I mean, we're gonna spend millions of dollars for people who don't live in Kansas City.

We have a half million people here.

We're the largest city in the state of Missouri, but we only have a half million people, slightly over 500,000 people.

But we cannot have a thousand entertainment districts.

- [Ken] There's no question in my mind.

You have to have all different income levels around The Plaza.

- When you walk into the Country Club Plaza, you don't really get a true reflection of all that Kansas City has to offer.

And I think that's the biggest opportunity that faces The Plaza, is how do you make sure that Kansas City as a city is truly reflected in the offerings and the businesses and the food and the music and the art, but also all cultures flow through that because Kansas City is reflective of so many cultures.

More things that factor in the different layers of Kansas City and not just the elite, the wealthy, and the high disposable income class.

- Well, it's going to resemble either a ghost town or it's gonna be a very vibrant place where young people want to hang out.

And where people with means can still go to Saks Fifth Avenue and Halls.

We need that spot in Kansas City, it exists nowhere else.

And probably The Plaza is where it should be.

- I don't relish the the thought of all the work it's going to take because I know what it's gonna take and it's gonna take a lot, but it can be done.

(wistful music) - I'm someone who believes actually the future of The Plaza is bright.

But I think what we need to do is have a space that embraces modernity in a responsible way that I think is welcoming in every direction north, south, west, and importantly east.

- I think The Plazas made it through an awful lot of tough times and remained intact and adapted with the times.

We wanna be sure that there's a large view, a big view taken for what this whole cultural and arts district can be.

This won't be stuff that happens immediately.

It'll take decades, but it needs to start now.

(transition whooshes) - All right, and welcome back with us in studio tonight are four individuals at the forefront of these issues.

Chris Goode owner of Ruby Jean's Juicery and member of The Plaza District Council, developer Matt Pennington of Drake Development, known for its ambitious mixed use projects.

Tyler Enders, who is with the City Planning Commission and a co-owner of Made in KC and Flatlands very own managing editor, and my boss, Chris Lester, who worked as a producer for Kansas City PBS on that special documentary on the history of the "Nichols' Folly."

So with that, I wanna do a bit of a level set with you, Chris, and just talk for a moment, if you will, about the role that the Country Club Plaza plays, not only in Kansas City, but what it means to so many of us.

- Yeah, I've come to view the Country Club Plaza as a prism through which to tell the story for the entire community.

Its story over the past century is one of displacing downtown, being a springboard for suburban sprawl and really the stage where a lot of our discussions about the direction of the city happened.

- When we talk about ownership and we will tonight about who should own it, how that should look, what about the ownership of Kansas Citians?

What is it about The Plaza that we all feel makes it uniquely our own?

- One of the things that emerged in working on the documentary, it's private property and it always has been, but everybody in town views it as a public trust as well.

And there's a interesting personal investment that everybody has with their own perspective.

It's almost like the Chiefs or the Royals, everybody's always talking about The Plaza and what's going on in The Plaza and where's it going and how's it gonna work out and all that stuff.

It's just an incredible ongoing public conversation.

- As the city really struggles to consider The Plaza's future.

And it's not just the municipality, it's all of us collectively, as Chris is saying, what measures can be taken to ensure that development projects that are considering being on The Plaza that are in the works, what should they be doing to make sure that they maintain that balance between public safety and attracting the right types of businesses to the area, Matt?

- Yeah, I mean, I think with the changing retail trends and just with the ever changing environment, you really just gotta have an open mind.

And I think we're seeing more of that here now that things have been changing.

I've seen it on some of my projects, but it really comes down to retailers and restaurants needs is we have to adapt to them and we have to provide them a safe space.

Security obviously is a huge important part of that.

But as we look to change The Plaza, we're looking at what do our retailers need.

- Tyler, you are a retailer on The Plaza.

Have you, I mean, like most of us, I would imagine seen this change in terms of the types of retail stores that are on The Plaza, should there be that mix of entertainment?

Is it just a shopping district and an expansive food court, if you will?

What is The Plaza?

- Yeah, it's a great question.

I don't know if I have a great answer for it.

We've been down there since 2018.

It's certainly one of our favorite locations.

It is our most trafficked location by far.

And I think that you have seen, we've seen a lot of innovation, a lot of new ideas, new companies, and I think what would benefit everyone, including retailers, shoppers, would be a little bit more vision, more leadership, you know, saying this is where we're destined to go and kind of aligning interested groups.

And so a lot of what we've seen has almost been in spite of that type of leadership.

And I don't want to, you know, say anything negative about my current landlord, but if a new owner, a new prospective owner is coming in here and has a really strong vision of what they would like to see, how they wanna see the streets filled with people and activity, I think that's what Kansas City's ready for.

And I think that a lot of people are kind of on the sidelines ready to invest, ready to move down there, whether it's their business, their office.

- How should the city plan to support entertainment and other cultural experiences in The Plaza area moving forward?

We just heard both Matt and Tyler say that we need to have that right blend of businesses down there, what does that look like though?

- You know, I think for me, coming from my perspective, right?

The Plaza has always been a place that you go every now and then.

It's a place that people even outside of Kansas City are like, "Oh, you're from Kansas City.

I've been to The Plaza."

- They know The Plaza, right?

- It is one of those things.

And so I think that that creates an obligation for the city to use all of its surrounding assets, you know, Mill Creek Park, the tennis courts and activate them, create a bowl around it that really pours into retailers like Made in KC, restaurants and then making way for small retailers, you know, very, very small food retailers to bring in new cultures, new fare and give it that home-like feel.

You know, that feeling, that Kansas City that we love, that we adore the local vibe that we love about Made in KC.

- But is it fair to say that it has always been the expectation and that maybe just our collective experience that the Country Club Plaza was really about those higher end stores that you didn't find anywhere else?

It's not Westport where we have a lot of local, which, and many of us don't want that aspect of Westport to change, but there does seem to be, Chris, a bit of a shift.

- Well, there's a couple of things here.

It started as a local service oriented retail center for the people who lived nearby, and then it became much more of a high-end experience in the '80s and whatnot.

And one of the things about the default and the presumed assumed change in ownership is the new owners are gonna be at a much lower investment base than the previous owners.

And hopefully that gives them more financial flexibility to fix deferred maintenance and also entice new retailers.

So there is a silver lining in this default, potentially.

- So, but the realities of it are that there are 24 vacancies on The Plaza right now.

That's not a small number.

I don't know what historically it has been, but it certainly is noticeable as you drive through the area, what resources specifically are needed?

Are we talking purely or mostly financial resources?

Are there other things that need to happen in terms of the city investing more in security and safety?

What specifically is needed?

- So, I think even before you get into the Country Club Plaza proper right?

Brush Creek, it sits there, it's a beautiful asset that's, it's underwhelming, you know, it's a thing you look past where it could be an activation point that no matter what people come and visit, whether people are doing rowing races up and down Brush Creek, that brings economic prowess to one of our biggest revenue centers in the Country Club Plaza just by activating the real estate that it owns.

We don't need a tennis court right there.

That's an opportunity for the city to activate.

- What should be there?

- There could be a STEM center that bridges kids from the east to the west and creates this hub of food and STEM and education that brings activity, vibrancy, right?

Every time we see Monday Night football, you'll see the camera do this big pan.

And you see the Country Club Plaza, and then when you get just to the east of The Plaza, there's nothing there.

- What resources are needed?

Are you lacking resources that the city can and should provide or are they doing enough and it's really gonna be up to the new owners?

- I'll give you two answers, I think there are many, you'd mentioned 24 vacancies, clearly that's a fluctuating number.

In that count, two things that would not have been counted would be the theater building, so the old theater building, which is just west- - And the Nordstrom's lot if you will.

- Yeah, and so the theater building just west of the Cheesecake Factory where Restoration Hardware used to be, there's over 12,000 square feet on the internal part of that building that is not functionally viable right now.

And so you have these really old buildings that were designed a long time ago, and that building in particular, you've got Shake Shack on one corner, there's one alleyway and there's room for one dumpster.

And because that one dumpster is already spoken for by Shake Shack, the building in some ways is architecturally obsolete.

And so we can't fully maximize that building the way it sits today.

If you look at the other theater building above Urban Outfitters, where the movie theater used to be, you have tens of thousands of square feet of vacancy, but you have some buildings that really need some true investment where either the ceiling height is incorrect or you have an alleyway problem.

So that's one thing that I think investment, financial investment would help with.

As someone's looking to invest in this area, we need to have a really dependable landscape for that investment.

And so you need to know what the city wants to see.

You need to know that, okay, I'm not gonna be working on a project for two years to get it off the ground.

And so the city owes some level of certainty to retailers, to shoppers, to developers of here's what we want to see in the Country Club Plaza, and here's what the rules are.

- Are those tax incentives that we're talking about or other resources?

- I think there are a lot of ways that people can finance projects.

What I hear the most, whether it's on City Planning Commission or as a retailer, is that people just want dependability of knowing how they get through the city's processes when they're trying to make a project penciled and get through the permitting process.

- Well, are we at risk of losing some of the architectural history that really makes The Plaza what it is with all these new developments?

Is that a factor or a concern?

Is that something that the city should be looking at in terms of making sure that whoever is coming in bears that in mind?

- At the end of the day you have 800,000 square feet of retail on The Plaza.

I don't know of any other shopping center in the country that has 800,000 square feet of retail with a vibrant usage.

So you're gonna have to make difficult choices and whether you're gonna take down some of the buildings on the east side, whether you remove some different structures, that's gonna be a situation that the city and the developer's gonna have to have.

And until we have those difficult discussions, you're not gonna see, you know, more density done in a correct manner.

You're not gonna see residential, which is a must on The Plaza to be able to get more foot traffic and those retailers for concepts that are local and national to survive.

So yeah, I mean it's, there are some difficult choices ahead of us.

- Matt just mentioned housing and so if you could speak to that as well, because I don't know in The Plaza's hundred year history, if it's ever had anything that approximated what we might call affordable housing or if there was ever a push or any of that.

So I bring that big gift to you and ask you my friend unwrap that for us.

- There is so much to unpack from the last five minutes.

First of all, may I rewind the tape ever so slightly and talk about the preservation aspect of The Plaza?

It is architecturally significant.

I think everyone agrees with that.

It has never had local landmark designation, it's never had a national designation, which would come with a variety of tax breaks to help incent redevelopment, but also lots of red tape and restrictions on how to manage The Plaza.

For the better part of the last century.

It was owned by the Nichols Company and there was some level of trust that they would take care of The Plaza and not have any additional oversight.

The last 30 years have been out of town owners and some really weird things have happened since then.

So as to the housing thing, you mentioned the tennis courts is really interesting to me because if you look at The Plaza, it came up in our documentary several times, people are drooling over that piece of property, quite honestly, and if you look at The Plaza now with the Nordstrom's lot and with the tennis courts, book ending The Plaza, those two pieces of property and what happens with those in terms of going up in the air and creating housing with maybe ground floor retail, it's something to keep an eye on.

One of the folks we interviewed for the documentary said they had done an informal survey of sites around The Plaza and they said we could do 2,500 units of housing, we could do another million square feet of commercial, office, medical, et cetera.

But it also comes with pressure and planning issues and infrastructure issues that we're going to be wrestling with for decades.

- So I have to ask Matt as a developer, the numbers that Chris just threw out, I mean, is that something that one has an appeal then I'm gonna go to both of, you know, Chris and Tyler to ask, is that what we want?

- I'm not gonna change my mind on difficult decisions that need to be made on some of the structures.

I do agree on the tennis courts, that is an amazing spot for residential or some type of activated use, like Chris was saying, but there's just a number of decisions that need to be made to activate different areas of The Plaza.

- Does that change the, not just the makeup of The Plaza, but does it change how it feels and what it means in Kansas City if we are to further develop it?

- Yeah, so I also sit on The Plaza District Council with Chris and one of the things we talk about often is we just want to see a vibrant place where people are walking around seven days a week, you see families going to a park because there's green space and something to do.

You see people who are working there, living there, et cetera.

And so yes, for us, you know, we do want to see more people in general.

And I think that anytime I hear about a building coming down, especially a historic building, my initial reaction is to tense up.

But then when I hear about, "Oh, well what if we had this beautiful veranda or this big green space, so this big area where we could activate and have shows or concerts or bring people together," that's something that kind of helps me imagine what could be, and it's difficult to have those, you know, discussions that are so theoretical, but it is exciting to think about what this area could look like if everyone followed a vision that someone could actually execute.

And if people kind leaned into advancing the next a hundred years in a way that's more inclusive, that's more prosperous for all of Kansas City, - How do we achieve that, Chris?

I know that's a very loaded question, but you've got all the answers.

- That's that's the difficult conversation.

It's always been The Plaza and it has to transition for the next a hundred years in being our Plaza.

And so when I think of the tennis courts, I think there's the opportunity to go vertical, but then there's a beautiful skating rink on the bottom or something that creates a bridge from the east to the west and says that this isn't a place that you're not supposed to come to because you're a young Black teenage kid.

This is a place that you're welcome because we have amenities that are for you, that are for your family, where you can also feel safe because that safety thing is a, that's loaded.

For Black people, it's always been this kind of a, "Ah, you know, should I go there?

Do I feel welcome?

Is that for me?

Is it not for me?

What time should my kids go there?"

That's a lack of safety.

And so I think if that safety is extended east, then it'll exist on the west end of the east in the form of the a new plaza.

- What has been the great failing where it concerns the Country Club Plaza?

I mean, it's easy to talk about it from an economic perspective and some of the politics that are involved and that sort of thing, but has it just been a failure of imagination on part of Kansas Citians writ large, - The great failing of The Plaza?

The Plaza has real challenges.

COVID did it no favors.

Online shopping has done it no favors.

Depending on who you ask, in making the documentary, people told us somewhere between 30 and 50% of all the receipts on The Plaza are from outta town zip codes.

So that gives you that sense of it's not the local place it was when it first started.

And I think a lot of this conversation about more housing, more people, more activation is to address that balance a little bit and make it more of a local place again.

- To have that vision of The Plaza that I think most of us would share.

We want all of Kansas City to be able to enjoy it.

We want our visitors and friends to enjoy it when they come.

But in order to do that, has the city properly addressed the safety and security concerns?

- Yeah, so KC Common Good, for example, is doing the long hard slow work that's the community based work, and the police department is doing some of the quick fix work, like parking an extra patrol car walking around.

And that's to give you two bookends of all the work that needs to be done in between.

And the work needs to be in tandem with the tenants there, with the owners there, with the community members.

Some of the things that we've talked about in The Plaza District Council is if you take all the different properties around there, because there are a lot of individual property owners as well, whether it's in condos, whether it's office buildings or retail buildings, and all of them have their individual security systems set up and their security teams.

And so I think there needs to be a lot of coordination.

One thing that I want to add is that as I started out, you know, talking about our presence on The Plaza, it's one of our favorite shops, if not our favorite shop.

We love being there, it's a wonderful spot.

You know, Matt's chosen to invest there and so it's this amazing asset that is truly, you know, a gem of our city.

And we're all talking about it in the way of, we see the potential and we see what the gap is.

And so I don't want anyone to think, "Oh, they're down on The Plaza."

We're not, you know, I celebrate it every day and we just see how much further we can take it.

- Well, we've talked about here tonight is more than a debate over space.

It's a reflection of our collective identity as a community.

The tension between legacy and evolution is always going to be there.

The Plaza's not just a place but a palimpsest.

And it's eternally written and rewritten by the people it serves, right?

And so it's a reminder that every decision we make for the future of the Country Club Plaza is also a choice about what kind of city we want to be.

And that's where we wrap tonight's conversation.

You've been hearing from Chris Goode, owner of Ruby Jean's Juicery and member of The Plaza District Council.

Developer Matt Pennington of Drake Development, Tyler Enders, City Planning Commissioner and Co-owner of Made in KC, and Flatlands, very own managing editor Chris Lester.

Be sure to follow us at flatlandshow.org for more reporting on The Plaza from reporters Brian Burns, Mary Sanchez, and Kevin Collison and more.

And you can also watch our 30 minute special on the history of The Plaza "Nichols' Folly."

Thank you Chris for that.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

I'm D. Rashaan Gilmore and this has been "Flatland in Focus."

As always, thank you for the pleasure of your time.

- [Announcer] "Flatland in Focus" is brought to you in part through the generous support of AARP, the Health Forward Foundation and RSM.

(gentle music)