What’s going on with the old service station on Westport Road? | Hudnall
Editor’s note: Join David Hudnall as he explores stalled projects, vacant buildings, and other Kansas City community mysteries. Suggestions for places to investigate? Email dhudnall@kcstar.com
Today’s property is 1321 Westport Road, a historic service station on the northern edge of the West Plaza.
It sits across Roanoke Parkway from Jimmy John’s, across Westport Road from Guardian Angels Catholic Church and just west of the QuikTrip where two men were shot and killed Saturday night.
The property was a gas station dating back to at least 1947, when it operated as Bill Dunkin Service, a Skelly Oil business. Jerry and Patricia Murphy bought it in 1975 and ran a service station there for roughly the next 30 years, much of that time as Murphy Texaco.
Both Jerry and Patricia have since died — he in 2022 and she in 2025. Property records show they sold the building to JJRE of Kansas City LLC in 2013.
Today, the pump canopy still stands in the parking lot. The station building remains intact, and the asphalt is in good shape. Peering through the windows, you can see an old water fountain, paint buckets and other stored items, including a variety of Jimmy John’s posters and signage.
But the property has sat vacant for nearly two decades. Several readers wanted to know: Are there any plans for it?
A food truck hub?
Mark Abbott and Justin Neff are listed in state filings as the owners of JJRE of Kansas City LLC. Abbott also owns the Jimmy John’s building across the street, which explains the restaurant signage visible inside the former station.
I reached Neff last week.
“There’s no update on the building — we’re just holding onto it at this point,” he said.
Julie Jennings, a board member of the West Plaza Neighborhood Association, had told me that the owners appeared before her neighborhood group a few years ago and said they hoped to turn the property into a food truck court.
“It was going to be a thing where there was one permanent food truck there, and then other food trucks would rotate in and out,” Jennings said.
She said she followed up in January while attempting to renew JJRE’s neighborhood association membership but never received an update.
“I’m not sure if the economy changed their plans, or what,” Jennings said.
I asked Neff about the food truck idea.
“There was a possibility of that at one point, but right now we don’t have any plans to share,” he said.
The WP Corner sign
The property’s most recent interaction with the city involved the old Texaco pole sign near Westport Road.
In 2023, Kansas City determined the sign had been abandoned because it sat empty and appeared to be in disrepair. City records indicate it had not displayed an active business advertisement since 2011. JJRE appealed the determination but also obtained a permit to install a new sign on the pole.
The sign now reads WP Corner. State records show Mark Abbott incorporated a company called WP Corner LLC in 2021.
The move appears to have resolved the issue. By November 2023, inspectors observed the new sign panels had been installed, and the Board of Zoning Adjustment later dismissed the appeal.
But several years later, there’s still no business attached to that sign. WP Corner sounds like a fine name for a food truck hub, or perhaps a restaurant with some outdoor seating under the old pump canopy. For now, though, the only sign of life is that WP Corner sign. It seems we’ll have to keep waiting to see if the service station will ever be reborn as something new.
This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 12:51 PM.
