The ‘Plaza Promise’ is an empty promise for Kansas City | Hudnall
There’s a whole genre of internet memes built around the idea of millennials and Gen Z receiving a pizza party — or a ping-pong table at the office, or a subscription to a wellness app — instead of a raise.
The memes mock the very real dynamic whereby out-of-touch corporate leadership offer employees cheap perks instead of addressing larger issues like low pay or understaffing.
I could not help but think of those memes this week upon receiving an email from Country Club Plaza leadership about something called the “Plaza Promise.”
The Plaza Promise’s aim is to show Kansas City that “we’re here for the long-term and are committed to ensuring the Country Club Plaza positively impacts Kansas City,” as Chris Harren, an executive at Gillon Property Group, says in the release.
Gillon Property Group bought the ailing Country Club Plaza two summers ago for $175 million.
The Dallas-based company — its owners are close to the Hunt family, owners of the Kansas City Chiefs — has promised to restore the Plaza to its former glory.
It has been slow-going, mostly because Gillon wants Kansas City to make some promises of its own.
Gillon is asking the public to help bankroll its Plaza overhaul through hundreds of millions of dollars in proposed tax incentives. The group also wants the city to transfer ownership of public sidewalks in the district so it can bypass local bureaucracy to upgrade pedestrian spaces and do security its own way.
In other words, big decisions still lie ahead for the Plaza’s new owners. A lot of money is at stake.
Into this political environment arrives the “Plaza Promise,” a baffling bit of public relations from the Country Club Plaza. I would like to unpack it with you now.
The Plaza Promise
The Plaza Promise, per the press release, is a “multi-year commitment focused on six key areas of impact designed to foster opportunity, improve quality of life, and create lasting benefits for generations to come.”
One of those key areas is kids. The Plaza says it will have a partnership with ProX, which connects Kansas City-area high school students with summer jobs. Other children will get “access” to arts education at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art through a summer program. And a nonprofit called ArtsTech, which helps young people on the East Side build skills in art and technology, will get supplies and its own booth at the Plaza Art Fair.
Other stuff: The Plaza will “further public safety” with an investment in a program headed up by MOCSA, the nonprofit dedicated to supporting survivors of sexual abuse and assault. Other investments include union apprenticeships through the Missouri Works program and a plan to “accelerate housing equity.”
Who could argue with such a virtuous pledge? Indeed, not the boldface names who attached themselves to this release with glowing quotes about the Plaza Promise. That includes Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson; Ralph Oropeza, business manager for Greater Kansas City Building and Construction Trades; Duke Dujakovich, president of the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO; and Tye Grant, president of the Police Foundation of Kansas City.
Dujakovich is quoted saying the Plaza Promise is the “gold standard for how developers should impact this city.” I’m happy for Duke and the union laborers who will get paid to rebuild the Plaza. But, respectfully, that is one of the most ludicrous things I have read all year.
Breaking it down
Let’s start off with one of the only semi-concrete pledges here. Gillon says it will “accelerate housing equity through $5,000/unit contributions from new residential developments, potentially totaling more than $4 (million) over the full buildout timeline and approved density.”
If the dollar figure of $5,000 per unit in the context of housing policy sounds familiar, that’s because the City Council recently passed an ordinance rolling back its affordable housing requirements for developers.
Starting in 2021, developers seeking tax incentives from the city were required to set aside 20% of the units in their buildings for affordable housing, or else pay $100,000 per non-affordable unit into the city’s housing trust fund.
But this policy didn’t work very well, and so this spring the city dropped the requirement from $100,000 to $5,000. The math works like this: A developer who builds 100 units and provides none as affordable housing pays $5,000 times 100 — or $500,000 into the housing trust fund. Under the old rules, that same developer would have owed $2,000,000.
The Plaza Promise was vague on details about that $5,000 per unit contribution, but it sure sounded like Gillon was presenting as philanthropy something it is legally obligated to do.
It’s actually a little more complicated than that.
“Our incentive requests were submitted before the ordinance was adopted, but we wanted to make it clear we’re committed to complying because it aligns with the vision behind the Plaza Promise,” Plaza spokesperson Caroline Hogan told me.
The release also wasn’t clear on whether Gillon was committing to pay $5,000 for every Plaza unit built over the full buildout timeline, or only to the units that would otherwise be required as affordable housing set-asides, per the ordinance. I checked with Hogan. It was the latter.
In other words, Gillon technically isn’t required to make any payments to the housing trust fund related to its development on the Plaza, but as a show of goodwill it is going to pay what everybody else has to — which, again, is far less than it was before the city relaxed the requirements this spring.
Our expectations are so low that this apparently represents the gold standard in community partnerships.
No specifics
Then there’s the piddling amounts these various nonprofits are getting.
ProX will get $7,500 this year, with a promise of $22,500 total over three years. MOCSA gets $10,000 per year for three years.
There’s also $10,000 in seed funding for something called Headed Home, a new AFL-CIO program that helps working families with down payment assistance. The Plaza is also promising “as much as” $50,000 to the program for each residential project (not unit, project) added to the Plaza.
Again: The flip side of the equation here is that the Plaza is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the city in tax incentives.
The other bullet points in this pledge don’t even have dollar figures attached and are vague to the point of meaninglessness. One of the six “key areas of impact” is promoting a new 816 Day in August. Another is to “strengthen connections with local arts institutions through the Arterie.” The Arterie is a pre-existing initiative created by the Nelson-Atkins, the Kemper Museum, and KCAI.
I asked for specifics on all of this. Hogan with the Plaza said they “defer to the press release.”
Gillon has retained Wickham James, the consulting firm of former Mayor Sly James and his chief of staff Joni Wickham, to help get the Plaza deal over the finish line. I called to ask if this was their handiwork and to see how the former mayor would have viewed the Plaza Promise were he still in office.
Would he have considered this pizza party an adequate tradeoff for all the future tax revenue that schools, libraries and other public services would forgo because of the proposed abatements?
But I didn’t get a call back.
