How many stores are empty at Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza? See the map

The Country Club Plaza, a 102-year-old shopping district that has long been considered one of Kansas City’s jewel attractions, has become ever more vacant — perhaps, even, the emptiest it’s been in its history.

In July, Dallas-based HP Village Partners — owned by descendants of the oil-rich Hunt family that brought the city Lamar Hunt and the Kansas City Chiefs — purchased the 15-block district for a reported $175.6 million, making a promise to restore the languishing district of Spanish tiles and cupolas back to its previous glory.

Nearly one year on, and that hard work is still in the planning stages. What it might cost to restore the area’s crumbling underground infrastructure, let alone rebuild it up top, has yet to be calculated.

Meanwhile, businesses and restaurants continue to leave, a worrisome reality to merchants who fear a vicious cycle of fewer stores, meaning less foot traffic, meaning less revenue, meaning fewer merchants willing to make the Plaza home.

As this recent map shows, created by the Star on a foot tour of every spot on the Plaza, some 30% of the Plaza’s 156 retail and restaurant spots now sit dark. It is a number that is one-third higher than in 2020, during COVID, when the Star created another map showing that 19% of its shops and restaurants sat empty.

Leaders with HP Village Partners, rebranded last year at The Village Collection, urge the public to have both patience and trust.

“It (the Plaza) didn’t get to where it is overnight — and it’s not going to get where we all want it to be in a day,” Dustin Bullard, the company’s vice president of partnerships and place, told The Star.

The company is now mapping the Plaza’s future.

Better days, they promise, lie ahead.

This story was originally published July 14, 2025 at 11:02 AM.