Mission Gateway still in legal limbo. City ‘never plans to’ become the new owner
While a Johnson County judge ruled that a bank can finally foreclose on the long-beleaguered Mission Gateway site and sell the land, the road ahead to redevelopment is still long.
And the city says it won’t become the property’s new owner to revive the site. Taking it over would be too expensive.
“Even when the foreclosure can proceed, the City doesn’t have a legal stake or interest in the property until it is acquired by someone, and they come forward with a development proposal for the Council to evaluate,” City Administrator Laura Smith said in an email. “The City has never, and never plans to, own the site. The cost of acquisition would be prohibitive.”
After years of promises and rewritten agreements, the Mission City Council approved a $268 million mixed-use project that would’ve included a 90,000 square-foot Cinergy Entertainment Complex, 50,000 square feet of commercial or restaurant space, 370 apartment units and a parking garage. The second phase would’ve included a 200-room hotel and office space or a medical facility.
But more than $449,000 in unpaid taxes brought the project to a halt and prompted a lengthy legal debacle. The city pulled its tax incentives and threw out its fifth iteration of a redevelopment agreement with the developer in 2024. The foreclosure lawsuit was brewing around the same time.
In December, a Johnson County judge issued a partial ruling that Metropolitan Commercial Bank can finally sell the land, agreeing that the Developer, Aryeh Realty LLC owes $26 million after it defaulted on its loan — bringing the lawsuit and unexpected trial to its last chapters.
But final rulings are still a few months out as the judge needs to decide who gets paid back first, and the land still needs to be sold. Any sale proceeds will be held in a trust until the parties figure out where the money goes.
In the meantime, the city is in the same “holding pattern” since the lawsuit began in 2023, Smith said. Unable to clean up the site or take action, the city will have to leave the half-built parking garage, the concrete beams and empty lot untouched when thousands of visitors come to town for the FIFA 2026 Men’s World Cup in a few weeks. According to KSHB reporting, the city is preparing for 1,000 to 1,500 people each day at the city’s transit center during this summer’s matches.
“The City does not have any specific plans for the Gateway site ahead of the World Cup,” she said. “The foreclosure proceedings are still in progress, and we don’t expect there to be any final solution through the courts until much later this year.”