With more diversity and density, Mission Gateway redevelopment project goes back to planners

Mission city planners this week will consider a new plan in the long-delayed Gateway redevelopment that includes a Wal-Mart, hotel, offices and apartments.

The planning commission will begin to consider it Monday. Developer Tom Valenti has already previewed it to a few city officials, including Mayor Steve Schowengerdt and City Administrator Laura Smith.

Valenti, of the Cameron Group of Syracuse, N.Y., said the newest plan’s density and mixed use should meet the city’s zoning requirements for that area. City leaders have over the years preferred a mix of shops, apartments, hotel and office space for the area between Shawnee Mission Parkway and Johnson Drive abutting Roe Avenue. The wedge-shaped piece of land is the former home of the Mission Center Mall.

Documents on file with the city of Mission show a 155,000-square-foot space for Wal-Mart at the corner of Johnson Drive and Roe Avenue. Smaller retail stores would form the lower level of the perimeter along the rest of Johnson Drive and around the corner to Roeland Drive, and atop those stores would be three stories of apartments with 182 units. A seven-story, 200-room hotel would occupy the corner of Roeland Drive and Shawnee Mission Parkway, and potential office space would be next to the hotel along Shawnee Mission Parkway.

The project’s estimated cost is $145 million, Smith said.

A three-level parking garage would take up the middle of the development, but there also would be parking spaces between the shops and the streets. There would be 1,551 parking spaces under the current plan. The total retail and commercial space comes to 350,000 square feet, including the Wal-Mart.

The hotel planned for the site is a “national brand,” Valenti said, but he is not ready yet to reveal it. The office component is more uncertain, he said. If developers can’t get a substantial tenant that area likely would become additional parking, he said.

The struggling mall was demolished in 2006.

The city and developers have been trying ever since to get something going on that corner.

The new plan is more denser and has more diversity of uses than one Valenti brought to city officials about a year ago, he said. Council members cast a cold eye on that scaled-down version for a Wal-Mart and garden center with a 150-room hotel and small retail strip.

That plan itself was a far cry from the one the city approved back in 2013, with 300,000 square feet of retail, a Sprouts grocery, plus a hotel and 300 high-end apartments. That development was to have been completed by about now. The city council approved special taxing districts and invested $12 million in storm water improvements to protect the formerly flood-prone area. But Valenti was unable to get the right tenants together and the corner remained vacant.

Valenti said he’d pursue tax increment financing and community improvement districts — special taxing areas that would help pay the cost of development. But so far no applications have been made.

Because of slow progress on the development, the city council voted in January to put a special assessment of $600,000 per year on the property tax bill of the owner, Cameron Group LLC, to begin to recoup the costs of the storm water work. That will be included on the December property tax bill.

Valenti said he is eager to get construction underway, and if the project is approved by the city, will begin construction before the area is entirely leased. He said he hopes to get construction started in November.

Mission Mayor Steve Schowengerdt said the city looks forward to getting a project up and running.

“But it is a whole process,” Schowengerdt said. “Everything has to start over again. We want to get it done, but have to do our due diligence and make sure everything gets done right.”

His first impression of the plan is that “on paper, it doesn’t look that bad.”

“We are hopeful because he sounds very upbeat about this,” Schowengerdt said. “He really wants to make a go of it.”

The mayor said he’d like to see some forward motion on a viable project.

“It’s been a long time,” he said.

This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 1:27 PM with the headline "With more diversity and density, Mission Gateway redevelopment project goes back to planners."