Special tax is requested for Uptown Theater and Uptown Shoppes

Board members of Kansas City’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority want a detailed review of occupancy and leases in a midtown shopping center before acting on a community improvement district tax request from developer Larry Sells.

Sells owns the Uptown Theater at 3700 Broadway and heads UGA LCC, which leases and manages the Uptown Shoppes across Valentine Road from the theater. He is asking for a 1-cent sales tax to fund stepped-up security and property improvements.

The taxing district would apply only to the theater and the small strip center, previously known as the Valentine Shopping Center.

The redevelopment authority’s executive director, Joe Egan, said he would report back to the board after he reviewed occupancy and lease details to ensure that Sells and UGA were in compliance with the terms of the sale-leaseback agreement reached in 1998, when the authority acquired ownership of the shopping center.

As property owner of the shopping center, the redevelopment authority will be a co-applicant if the community improvement district request is pursued.

Sells bought the theater in the mid-1990s and has been the leading force for rehabilitation of the shopping center. UGA is the master tenant and subleases the shopping center to other tenants.

At the redevelopment authority’s meeting this week, board members questioned whether the shopping center’s occupancy meets the 75 percent rate required in the master lease. Sells said he measured the occupancy rate at 86 percent.

Sells told the board that added revenue from a improvement district tax — applied to event sales at the theater and to sales made by tenants of the shopping center — would help pay for added security and exterior improvements at the center.

Egan said the shopping center is in basically sound condition and its heating, air conditioning and electrical systems have been upgraded. There is a small roof leak at a skylight in the “mini mall” of the L-shaped retail strip, but no major problems, he said.

Sells told the board that he had made “great progress” in fixing up the shopping center but that he was losing a quarter million dollars a year on the site and didn’t have the money to do much more.

He said the taxing district funds would allow him to tie in with existing Main Street or Westport security programs to improve services at 37th Street and Broadway.

Real estate agent Joyce Murray told the board members that she thought tenants would favor the additional 1-cent tax if it led to greater security services.

This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 11:59 AM.