Overland Park greenlights rezoning for Black and Veatch’s massive redevelopment

The Overland Park City Council unanimously approved Black and Veatch’s rezoning requests to allow them to redevelop their headquarters into a full-fledged walkable district with new housing and retail.

“We appreciate the Overland Park City Council’s unanimous approval of this important milestone and look forward to working closely with the city, the state of Kansas and our partners as we move into the next phase of planning and development,” a Black and Veatch spokesperson said in an email.

The global engineering firm proposed the $1.1 billion project last summer on a nearly 80-acre site. But plans have slightly changed since then.

In April, the City Council approved Black and Veatch’s updated version — dubbed Overland Park Plaza II — which will transform the firm’s 22-acre headquarters site at 11401 Lamar Avenue to include more housing, a bigger hotel and a new day care facility.

The updated plan features 88 townhomes, 700 multifamily units and a 250-room hotel — a shift from 457 multifamily units, 102 townhome units and a 160-room hotel. Similarly, office space scaled up to 1 million square feet, instead of 988,850 square feet. The company removed a public park once on the site and instead added a 25,000-square-foot day care.

The project will be built out in phases — with the 750,000-square-foot, nine-story headquarters and child care center coming in first. The housing, retail and additional office space will come later.

While making progress, the project hasn’t cleared all of its hurdles yet. Black and Veatch will have to come back before the City Council at a later date to approve incentives for the multibillion-dollar project.

The firm is requesting more than $200 million in tax increment financing, which would use the increased property tax revenues from redevelopment to help cover its costs. It’s unclear if the incentive requests will change since Black and Veatch’s project has been updated.