How many times does Kansas City need to say it? The Plaza is no place for high-rises
Many Kansas Citians have heard that our beloved Country Club Plaza is again besieged with a proposed intrusion to the district. Drake Development recently purchased the Jack Henry building at 47th and Jefferson streets and remodeled it incompatibly with the surrounding buildings. Now the company wants to replace the historic Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist immediately to the east with a glass box called Cocina47. And that box would be nine stories tall — three times the height allowed by the Plaza overlay ordinance, for which Drake is requesting an exemption.
On May 19, Drake presented its plans at Unity Temple on the Plaza before a group of several hundred people. The mood in the room was one of guarded attention, and a long line of city residents had questions for the developer. But the owners were not present. Instead, Drake’s two representatives fielded the questions and firmly insisted their plans are wonderful and right for the Plaza. The audience clearly disagreed, as do Block Real Estate, surrounding neighborhoods and the members of Historic Kansas City. Thank goodness for HKC’s bugle call exposing the numerous problems with this proposal, including the lack of additional parking. The City Plan Commission rightly unanimously rejected the plan on Tuesday.
This terrible idea to destroy a structure in keeping with the Plaza’s historic character is a flashback for me to previous threats to the area. I worked at City Hall in the 1980s when the R.H. Sailors & Co. project came about for redevelopment for every building south of 47th Street between Oak and Main streets. That plan called for demolition of everything at the site, to be replaced with major high-rise construction. The public became aware of this proposal — especially residents around the Plaza. They objected, and with City Hall’s support, they suppressed this development, which would have caused havoc on the streets into and out of the area.
Later, the J.C. Nichols company sold the Plaza to an out-of-town company called Highwoods Properties from the East Coast, whose plans called for ultimate replacement of the well-known shopping district with a Corporate Woods-type collection of buildings. It envisioned construction of high-rise glass and steel apartments, offices and commercial structures. Those plans would have created another common commercial district with little personality. Highwoods’ first idea was to replace one of the original Nichols buildings on the north side of 47th Street with an 18-plus-story property.
People became alarmed when Historic Kansas City exposed the proposal publicly. Members of the University of Missouri-Kansas City‘s Architectural Studies program shared those concerns, and conducted a study that produced a slide presentation showing a progression, from one end of the Plaza to the next, of how quaint, low-rise buildings began to disappear and be replaced by high-rise, large scale buildings over time. HKC and other interested parties supplied surrounding homeowners with yard signs proclaiming, “Highwoods kills our Plaza.” Soon, public pressure stopped this proposal, and what is now known as the Postanelli building was moved to the west side of the Plaza with a better thought-out design.
Threats to the Plaza like these will continue. The Drake proposal next goes to the full City Council, which must reject it. Kansas Citians will need to keep eternal vigilance to prevent outsize, over-scale new developments that would spoil this revered Kansas City landmark.