Platform Ventures isn’t the only KC developer making millions from ICE | Opinion
What has played out over the past few weeks with Platform Ventures isn’t unique to Kansas City.
All across the country, communities are stumbling onto the same basic story: An owner of industrial real estate in their city has been quietly approached by federal officials looking to buy their property and convert it into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. City Halls are caught flat-footed. Local officials scramble to figure out what authority they have, if any, over a federal project that could bring hundreds of detainees to industrial areas never meant for that use, in places where neighbors didn’t expect it and don’t want it.
It’s happened everywhere from Ashland, Virginia, to Surprise, Arizona, to Salt Lake City. (And it’s worth noting at the top here that nearly 40% of the people that will be held in these facilities have no criminal conviction at all, and fewer than 14% have violent crime convictions, according to the government’s own numbers.)
In some places, residents found out in time to organize, press the owners to reconsider the sale and prevent the deal from going through. In other places, it was too late.
In Oklahoma City, the public got there in time. When word leaked in January that a warehouse there might be converted into an ICE detention facility, residents there raised hell.
The owner, it turned out, wasn’t local. It was a company 350 miles up Interstate 35: Flint Development, based in Prairie Village.
Prairie Village company and ICE
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt then had what was apparently a productive conversation with Flint Development. By January’s end, he announced the deal had been shelved.
“I commend the owners for their decision and thank them on behalf of the people of Oklahoma City,” Holt said. “I ask that every single property owner in Oklahoma City exhibit the same concern for our community in the days ahead.”
In a different world, this column might be a plea for Platform Ventures to follow Flint’s example. Do what Flint did in Oklahoma City: Listen to the community and walk away from the project.
Alas, the reality is a bit messier than that.
Because while Flint Development was backing off its plan in Oklahoma City, it was finalizing a deal in West Texas for a similar type of facility.
On Jan. 27, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security quietly cut Flint Development a $123 million check for 60 acres of warehouse property outside El Paso.
Just as Platform Ventures did in south Kansas City, Flint sold the El Paso community on an industrial park, only to turn around and cash in on a prison camp expected to detain thousands of immigrants.
Who is Flint Development?
Flint Development has handled the scrutiny much the same way Platform Ventures has: by ducking it.
The firm develops logistics projects across the country and often touts its deals with LinkedIn posts and ribbon cuttings. Not this time. Information about the Oklahoma City and El Paso properties have disappeared from flintdevelopment.com, as have references to the company’s principals, Devin Schuster and Hunter Harris. Requests for comment went unanswered.
The same goes for Platform Ventures. You won’t find the names Ryan and Terry Anderson on that company’s website anymore, though at this point everyone in Kansas City knows who they are. First came the City Council’s emergency ordinance attempting to block their warehouse deal with ICE. Now Port KC, the agency that holds title to the land and helped make the warehouse possible in the first place, is trying to distance itself from the mess.
On Monday, Port KC’s board voted to cut ties with Platform Ventures.
“Our specific focus,” Port KC President Jon Stephens said, “is doing what we can to impress upon the owners that we are doing everything we can to discourage and disallow the transfer or sale of that property.”
The federal government’s intended use of the facility is galling enough. But it’s also rather remarkable that Platform Ventures has been too cowardly even to communicate its plans with Port KC, the business-friendly agency that helped it line up $80 million in bonds and tax incentives to build its warehouses out in south Kansas City. Port KC has never met a developer it didn’t like. If they don’t want to do business with you, it’s probably time for a long look in the mirror.
Monday’s vote doesn’t unwind what’s already done, and the Port is apparently powerless to stop the deal from going through.
“We have literally no say,” its attorney, Brian Rabineau, recently told the Kansas City Beacon. “Our development agreements say outright that if a developer wants to take back fee title at any point in time, all they have to do is tell us, and that starts a 90-day clock that we have to comply with.”
Sounds like a poorly written contract to me. In any case, Platform Ventures sent over that formal request in early January, which means that ICE will take control of the property in early April unless something changes.
What could change? Nobody really knows. The Andersons won’t talk. ICE won’t talk. The City Council’s moratorium on new “non-municipal detention facilities” will probably slow things down, but it’s almost certainly destined for federal court.
What happens next most likely won’t turn on the law. It’ll turn on whether the people holding the deed have enough regard for the community that subsidized them to do the right thing and walk away.
And right now, they won’t even return a phone call.
