Missouri’s reality TV cowboys want to become housing developers. See plan near KC
The McBee family is currently in their third season of reality TV fame, fighting on camera to save the family farm in Gallatin, Missouri, while patriarch Steve McBee Sr. serves time in a South Dakota federal prison for crop insurance fraud.
The latest installment of “McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys” premiered just a couple weeks ago, and the family’s footprint around Kansas City is only growing.
Now, the McBees are looking to expand their business empire beyond cattle and the slew of car washes they own across the metro — into housing development.
McBee Construction applied with the city of Independence to build 39 duplexes in northeast Independence. Along with a total of 78 residential units, the development project would also include a walking trail.
The planning and zoning application for the project names Jesse McBee — one of the four brothers who anchor the reality show — along with Quist Engineering Inc., a Lee’s Summit civil and structural engineering firm, and Area Surveyors, a land surveying company based in Grandview.
Both a preliminary development plan and a final plat, a legal document that divides larger properties into individual lots and streets, for the duplex complex, called McBee Acres, will go before the Independence City Council Monday for final approval.
McBee Acres would sit on about 12 acres of currently undeveloped land between North Salem Drive, North Bay Avenue and East U.S. Hwy 24. They would connect to North Salem Drive by way of a planned new street running through the development.
According to city planning documents, developers would plant 63 trees along the new road, and city water and sewage infrastructure in the area would be extended to reach the new homes.
Each duplex would have a garage, driveway, side yard, rear yard and access to on-site maintenance, with some one-story models and some two-story models. Each of the 78 residential units would cost about $1,400 a month to rent.
City staff wrote that McBee Acres would support a growing need for new housing options around the edges of Independence, “to attract new residents from around the region and beyond.”
“It is important for the City to encourage a diversity of market-supported development in specific locations throughout the City,” staff wrote in planning documents for the proposed complex.
Independence annexed the site in 2015 with plans to create a commercial district, according to city documents, anchored by a grocery store and several retailers. That project was never completed.
With an FBI investigation involving the McBee family also in the works, the family’s business enterprises are now in the hands of Jesse McBee and his brothers Steven Jr., Cole and Brayden. The family owns multiple corporations and family firms, including McBee Properties LLC, Rock Bluff Development LLC and S&K Enterprises LLC.
Under the McBee Properties name, the family has already been acting as landlords and property managers in Independence for several years. The family’s business portfolio also includes a chain of gas stations and several KC-area carwashes.
The family’s farming operations at one time spanned Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, growing to 40,000 acres by 2020. However, prosecutors alleged during McBee’s Sr. trial, operations across the farms were “haphazard” and poorly organized.
In October 2025, McBee took a plea agreement that included a two-year sentence and a $7.2 million repayment to the federal government. He reported to prison on December 1.
In April, Steven Jr. defended himself against accusations of verbal abuse from his new — now apparently ex — girlfriend, Allie Eklund. He later apologized for sending her “cruel and degrading” text messages.
