Payday lender should let damaged building be demolished

The building at the northeast corner of Prospect and Independence avenues in Kansas City is a wreck and a blight.

It has no roof. The front walls are gone. Its interior is littered with boards and rubble.

For the neighborhood, the gutted structure is a jarring reminder of a tragedy. It stands next to the site where two Kansas City firefighters perished on Oct. 12 while fighting a fire that investigators say was intentionally set.

But for its tenant, payday loan service Speedy Cash of Wichita, it’s still a moneymaker.

Although the remains of the building clearly need to come down, Speedy Cash is fighting demolition. A 2007 Kansas City ordinance would prevent it from opening another payday loan and/or check cashing operation at that spot or anywhere nearby.

The ordinance says no two businesses that offer quick cash at high interest rates can locate within a mile of each other. The Northeast area is awash with such businesses. But many of them, including the Speedy Cash, were there before the ordinance was passed and are considered “nonconforming.”

The ordinance states that nonconforming uses cannot continue once a demolition permit is issued, which has happened with the Speedy Cash building. But the company has gone to court to claim the building should be repaired and it should be allowed to resume the business of charging low-income people exorbitant interest rates.

The insistence of Speedy Cash that the building is salvageable appears preposterous from a street-level view, but the legal wranglings could take some time.

That would be mercenary and irresponsible. An engineer hired by the city has said the building poses a safety hazard, and its condition will only deteriorate over the winter months.

In order to heal, the neighborhood needs the building to come down and ideally be replaced with something more wholesome than another payday loan operation.

Speedy Cash operates three other businesses in Kansas City and about 200 more elsewhere. If it is indeed a good neighbor — which most payday loan outfits claim to be — it will recognize that the ill will resulting from a legal fight would far outweigh the benefits of remaining at its destroyed Northeast location.

This story was originally published December 17, 2015 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Payday lender should let damaged building be demolished."