Blighted Kansas City hotel highrise to be imploded Sunday morning

A once posh hotel in Kansas City will be reduced to rubble Sunday morning — and it won't be an earthquake taking it down.

Twin eight-story towers are scheduled to come crashing down at 8 a.m. in a move by the city to remove the blight that once was the fashionable Park Place Hotel in a business park off Front Street.

The property at 1601 N. Universal Ave. abruptly closed in 2016 and has since deteriorated to the point that it is an eyesore that attracts vagrants and looters. There have been several fires.

"The city devoted considerable resources in an effort to remedy the situation before ultimately settling on implosion," said John Baccala, community liaison for the Neighborhoods and Housing Services Department.

The property has had many names. It opened as the Breckenridge Inn in 1975 at Executive Park off of Interstate 435 between Front Street and the Missouri River in the East Bottoms.

A second tower was added in 1978. With 328 rooms, the hotel was the metro area's 13th largest in 2008. It had a 9,500-square-foot ballroom, a 5-acre man-made lake and an indoor/outdoor pool.

To prepare for the implosion, Kansas City-based Industrial Salvage & Wrecking drilled more than 2,200 holes into the structure. Controlled Demolition Inc. of Maryland is setting explosive charges to bring the structure down.

Traffic on I-435 in both directions, between Missouri 210 and U.S. 24, will be shut down for about an hour, beginning at 7:30 a.m. Front Street will remain open but the ramp to northbound I-435 will be closed.

This story was originally published June 21, 2018 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Blighted Kansas City hotel highrise to be imploded Sunday morning."