KCATA poised to unveil ambitious office development plan

The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority and Briarcliff Development Co. are working with the city manager of Kansas City on an agreement to move forward with an ambitious office development proposal for the River Market.

One unusual aspect of the project: Briarcliff will seek an anchor tenant but has pledged not to engage in the economic development border war or poach a major company from right over the state line in Kansas.

The City Council’s Planning, Zoning and Economic Development Committee is set to discuss on Wednesday a cooperative agreement between the city, the transportation authority and the developer on plans to transform a surface parking lot at Third Street and Grand Boulevard. The goal is to build two new office towers along with a multimodal transportation hub, more retail and a new parking structure that could provide some park-and-ride spaces for bus and streetcar riders.

“The ATA is not just a bus company anymore,” KCATA president Robbie Makinen said Friday, adding that his agency is focusing on transit-oriented economic development.

The transportation authority owns the 1.8-acre site at Third and Grand that now has 193 free parking spaces. But the agency has long thought the land had greater economic development potential. In late 2015, it chose Briarcliff out of a field of five companies to come up with a higher and better use. The KCATA liked the fact that Briarcliff focused on offices, while the other four proposals were residential.

Since that time, the plan has grown and evolved as it kicks into a higher gear, said Dennis Hays, vice president for economic development for the KCATA.

It was originally envisioned as two office towers, each 100,000 square feet, with an underground parking garage.

But then Briarcliff and the ATA learned that land for parking might instead be available just to the north and west of Third and Grand, because the nearby Veolia energy company was giving up use of its 4-acre coal yard at First and Grand.

“They will no longer need this land. It will be surplussed for them,” Hays said, adding that negotiations are underway to possibly use that land for a 900-stall decked parking structure. That parking alternative allowed Briarcliff to increase each six-story office tower to 150,000 square feet, or 300,000 square feet total, Hays said.

The project is also supposed to include a transportation hub benefiting the downtown streetcar, bus connections, bike-share stations and possibly future commuter rail.

The ATA needs the new cooperative agreement, Hays said, because the bus agency currently has an agreement with the city to provide the 193 parking spaces. Hays and Makinen said the parties must work out future parking availability for office users, transit customers, River Market consumers and others in the public.

“We’ll work that out,” Makinen said.

If the project gets built, it will provide a revenue stream for the agency to improve transit service and possibly pursue other redevelopment.

Actual tenants for the office towers have not yet been identified.

But the ATA is a bi-state agency. As such, officials there emphasized to Briarcliff that they didn’t want economic incentives used to lure a major anchor tenant to jump the state line from Johnson, Wyandotte or Leavenworth counties.

“The agreement specifically provides a provision to avoid the border war,” Hays said. “We think it’s innovative.”

Briarcliff president Richie Benninghoven said the goal is to create a project that’s attractive enough to lure companies not currently located in Kansas City or the immediate metro area.

“Really, the intent of the project is we want to create net new jobs to the city,” he said.

Benninghoven said the cooperative agreement approval would start a 270-day clock in which the parties hope to identify key anchor tenants and work out the financing details to make the project a reality.

He said Briarcliff felt this office concept provided a good balance to a part of town that has already seen a lot of residential development, and that the transit hub would be an added bonus for both employers and employees.

This story was originally published January 14, 2017 at 2:00 PM with the headline "KCATA poised to unveil ambitious office development plan."