After years of delay, can Mission Gateway join Johnson County projects going up in 2022?
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The future of the long-awaited Mission Gateway project is in question again after its latest plans expired at the end of the year, casting doubts about whether the ill-fated project could join six other major developments going up across Johnson County in 2022.
The blank white walls and forest of rebar and concrete pilings along Roe Boulevard and Johnson Drive showed Mission residents the first inklings of the perennially delayed project two years ago.
But now the small stand of would-be foundations have been frozen in time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
The $200 million redevelopment plan must start from scratch following the expiration of the project’s development agreement — and millions of dollars in tax incentives — when the clock struck midnight and rang in the New Year.
Originally conceived 16 years ago, the project that was supposed to replace the former Mission Center Mall on Johnson Drive has never come to fruition after years of various development plans.
Construction finally began in early 2020 only to abruptly stop with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work at the site never resumed, contractors filed at least a dozen liens claiming they were not paid for their work and city leaders learned last year Valenti’s group had failed to pay more than $356,000 in property taxes on the site.
The partially built structures have sat untouched ever since.
But the project was required to be substantially complete by the end of 2021 for developer Tom Valenti, of The Cameron Group in New York, to receive an estimated $36 million in tax incentives pledged by the city of Mission. With the work incomplete, both the agreement and incentives expired as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Valenti’s group still owns the property, so both he and city officials expect they will attempt to renegotiate a new development agreement early this year. City officials have grown frustrated after years of unmet promises, however, and it is unclear how the council may view another new Valenti proposal.
“We acknowledge and share the frustration of our residents with respect to this project,” Mission Mayor Sollie Flora said in a statement last month. “Our top priority in any renegotiation will be protecting the City’s interests.”
It is not the first time city officials and residents have scoffed at Valenti’s progress, or lack thereof — in 2011 he pledged the project would not take 16 years to complete, a self-imposed deadline that passed last year — but he said recently he remains undeterred.
Financing for the project is in place, Valenti said, and he intends to continue the plans he has previously proposed. The latest iteration of the project included apartments, a 200-room Marriott Element hotel, a food hall curated by celebrity chef Tom Colicchio and a 90,000-square-foot Cinergy Entertainment complex with 10 movie theaters, a bowling alley and zip lines that now stands as an unfinished shell on the property.
“It’s all good. The project is going forward,” Valenti said. “We have our financing lined up, we’re just waiting to hear back from the city.”
