Are KC's Leaders Manic-Depresssive?
Tower Properties is currently demolishing a dilapidated motel and a structurally unsafe parking garage in downtown Kansas City's North Loop. That's all fine and dandy.
They are also demolishing the 116-year-old Grand Opera House. This is not cool. They are getting away with this while at the same time the younger Empire Theater on the opposite side of downtown is being saved and restored.
What will replace these three buildings?
Surface parking lots.
That's right, Tower Properties has been given TIF money to demolish these buildings and create three new surface lots in the North Loop.
The end result will be a massive scar of 8 contiguous city blocks of surface parking clustered in the North Loop.
This scar is being created with public money at the very same time that public money is being used to repair just such a scar on the opposite side of downtown.
The Power and Light District, which is costing over $800,000,000 to develop, is replacing what was once 7 blocks of surface parking and blight. So why is the city now allowing an even larger area of blight to be created at the same time?
As if this were not insult enough, Tower is demolishing all three of these structures simultaneously. They have closed all the sidewalks around these sites, including both sides of Main Street.
So now not only has the ability to walk between the River Market and the Loop been greatly hampered, Commerce Bank employees who park in the surface lots north of 7th Street are now cut off from their jobs.
There's going to be a lot of frustrated bank workers this morning when they return from thee President's Day holiday!