Ingram's May 2024

1994 Gateway 2000 opens in West Bottoms. Bartle Hall expansion. First floating casinos open—Argosy and Harrah’s. Hey wait— those damn things don’t float Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design opens.

1995 Robert Altman films “Kansas City.” Opening of redesigned Brush Creek. Carol Marinovich elected first female mayor of KCK.

1996 Bistate tax approved to renovate Union Station. Boxer Tommy Morrison admits being HIV-positive. Former Mayor Ilus Davis dies. Roeland Park swimmer Catherine Fox wins two Olympic gold medals. Allied Signal decides to consolidate KC operations.

Stowers Institute for Medical Research opens in the former Menorah Hospital building.

Kauffman Stadium converts to natural grass.

1987 MAY Strip Tease

huge concrete-block warehouses squat ted behind patches of grass and acres of asphalt, tractor-trailers lined up along one side and railroad cars the other? In its day—and its day wasn’t all that long ago—the industrial park was considered quite the innovation, a pleasant alterna tive to the grimy, crowded conditions prevalent in traditional city manufactur ing and warehouse districts like Kansas City’s West Bottoms. But just as the industrial parks of the 1950s made the West Bottoms and its ilk obsolete, a new genre of industrial real es tate development has come along to make most industrial parks as dated as tailfins on a Plymouth. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: industrial parks and the huge “bulk space” warehouses are out. Sleek new developments called “business parks,” filled with architecturally distinct buildings catering to a new generation of American industrial businesses, are in. Some call it the Southern Corridor. Some just South. For our purposes, we’re calling it Southland. Lots of business peo ple think of it as The Office, since that’s where their offices are. To even more folks it’s simply Home. But whatever you call the area south of 83rd Street, east into Missouri, and west into Kansas, you’ll call it something. You are going to have to take it into account. Commercial and residential growth to the south is booming. Ten years ago, no one you knew had an address anywhere near 150th Street. Or, as one long-time Midtown resident put it: “I used to get a nosebleed south of 103rd.” And it seems like just yesterday that the land and sky out that way did look empty enough to feel like high altitude. That’s changing. And changing fast. SEPTEMBER Southbound

And though virtually every devel oper, Downtown businessman, and civic booster prefaces any comment about the Muehlebach with hopes that this faded jewel can be polished to its former luster, that seems unlikely. (Editor’s note: Marri ott Hotels bought the Muehlebach in 1996, refurbished it, and made it part of a complex with the Kansas City Marriott Downtown.) 1988 MARCH Apartment House Blues Landlords can’t fill their buildings and they can’t sell them. Tax reform has changed the economics such that most owners owe far more than potential buy ers can pay. To imagine what it is like to be a Kansas City apartment-building owner in 1988, think back to a summer Sunday in New York a few years ago, when George Brett of the Royals had a game-winning home run disallowed in what has become known as the infamous “Pine Tar Game.” Similar expressions of anger and frustration no doubt have been released in private all over town in 1986 and 1987 by Kansas City apartment own ers just as bewildered and angered by the effects of the 1986 Tax Reform Act on their business. Simply put, the apartment business in Kansas City has been depressed since 1986, the market at first paralyzed by the uncertainties over how Congress would change the tax code and then, when the law was passed, hamstrung by its provi sions. NOVEMBER Plans, Plans, and More Plans For 40 years, Kansas City has been planning to redevelop the riverfront. Isn’t it about time to get started? In another room, a stack of plans sits yellowing. Each tier represents a failed attempt to

With office and warehouse markets amply supplied, shopping centers are the seductive new real-estate romp. K.C. developers are all eyes. For each devel opment “fad” the public observes, there almost always are sound economic and demand-oriented reasons for develop ment to occur. This is best illustrated by the most recent category of commercial real estate to boom in Kansas City, the strip shopping center. Currently, while there are prelimi nary plans for new regional malls in Olathe and western Shawnee, there are no new malls under construction. But for the strip center—the I-shaped or L shaped neighborhood or community shopping center often anchored by a grocery or discount store and filled out with card shops, pizza delivery stations, and beauty salons—1987 will be remem bered as a year of tremendous expansion throughout metropolitan Kansas City. While Kansas Citians are preoccupied with the Allis Plaza’s health, the fate of the Hotel Muehlebach may be hanging in the balance. For more than 50 years, it represented the best Kansas City had to offer. Its stylish elegance catered to gen erations of America’s elite and put rest to the notion that Kansas City was a no account cowtown without a decent place to hang your hat. But the music died in the 1970s, the guests went south to the Country Club Plaza, and the Muehlebach began to hemorrhage red ink, losing more than a million dollars in its last year of operation before its new owner, Executive Hills Inc., shut its doors. SEPTEMBER Bring Down the House

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I ngr am ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

May 2024