KC’s Zona Rosa will demolish some stores to create park as part of big revival effort
Zona Rosa Town Center will demolish some storefronts to make way for a new outdoor green space as the first part of a major redevelopment effort to improve the outdoor shopping center in Kansas City’s Northland.
Managers of the outdoor shopping center this week announced a multi-million-dollar redevelopment of the mall that will begin this fall and conclude by spring 2021. The mall, which currently has dozens of vacancies, will demolish the building just south of the Dillard’s department store to make way for a new green space called North Park.
“It’s obvious that this alone is not going to fix Zona Rosa,” said Scott Zigler, the mall’s general manager. “This is a major first step of the kinds of things we will be doing going forward.”
In the existing town square space near Bravo Italian Kitchen, Zona Rosa plans to add covered outdoor seating, a new stage and a splash park. It will also add new landscaping and public art, along with other improvements to public restrooms and apartment and office buildings across the shopping center.
In subsequent phases of redevelopment, Zona Rosa hopes to add new multifamily residential development, hotel, office and restaurant space.
Demolishing the 25,000-square-foot building, which had about 15 retail spaces, will create more visible sight lines between the first phase of Zona Rosa and the Dillard’s building. That company, which owns its Zona Rosa store, has redevelopment rights on the site and has signed off on the plan, Zigler said.
“You’ll see the Dillard’s store and sign out front,” he said. “It will strengthen Dillard’s and the connectivity between the two.”
But the move will also allow Zona Rosa to start winnowing down its retail footprint, which currently spans about 950,000 square feet. More than 50 storefronts at Zona Rosa currently sit shuttered, many of them clustered around the second phase of the development near Dillard’s.
“We have too much retail space in general,” Zigler said. “Part of the redevelopment is to figure out how you repurpose the surplus retail space into something that is relevant and something the community wants.”
The pandemic has only added to the woes of Kansas City retail centers like Zona Rosa. Across the metro area, dozens of mall stores have closed as major retail chains struggle through bankruptcies and declining consumer spending.
But Zigler said Zona Rosa has been struggling since the Great Recession. Moving forward, the mall hopes to continue to diversify its real estate with more office and residential uses.
“We have not been very competitive recently. We’ve had more closings than openings,” he said. “Hopefully, this demonstrates our ability to spend money and resources at a time when it’s a very challenging economy.”
Zona Rosa opened in 2004 near Interstate 29 and Barry Road. In 2018, Monarchs Sub LLC purchased the open-air shopping center and hired Trademark Property Company to manage it.
That year, Trademark gathered dozens of design and real estate experts as it sought ways to “revision and evolve” Zona Rosa, which has performed well below financial expectations.
“There is so much potential to unlock at Zona Rosa,” Terry Montesi, CEO of Trademark Property Company, said in a news release. “We’ve taken much time and care into developing the right concrete initiatives that will improve the property and redevelop it for the future based on the continuing evolution of the retail industry, and more importantly, the needs of the Kansas City community.”
The shopping center has failed to generate enough sales tax revenue to pay annual debt payments on the $32 million in bonds that were sold in 2007 to finance two public parking garages. At the time, Platte County officials said they would consider making up the difference to investors in the event that the project did not generate enough taxes to make payments.
But the county has resisted making up for the shortfall, pushing its credit ratings down. Two courts have found in favor of the county, ruling it was not responsible for making bond payments. UMB Bank, the trustee for the bonds, said it will seek a rehearing of the case or appeal the decision to the Missouri Supreme Court.
In a September 10 notice to its bondholders, UMB reported that special sales tax collections at Zona Rosa have declined significantly through the pandemic. While special taxing districts collected more than $131,446 from the shopping center’s sales in January, that figure had sunk to $51,112.38 in August.
The Star’s Steve Vockrodt contributed to this report.
This story was originally published September 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
