No, people’s eyes are not deceiving them.

Not during the COVID-19 pandemic — and likely not even during the Great Depression — have visitors to Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza seen as many vacant storefronts as there are now, about a year after a Dallas ownership group that continues to promise great changes purchased it.

Last week, the restaurant Season’s 52 shuttered its doors at 340 Ward Parkway after 14 years.

The boutique, Razzleberry, at 421 W. 47th St., shut down at the end of April after four years.

Prior to that, Claire’s, the teen accessory shop, cleared out its storefront at 231 W. 47th St., preceded by a recent exodus that has included Brio Italian Grille, the retailers Parachute, Express, Soft Surroundings, Casper and Evereve.

Before the Village Collection (formerly HP Village Partners of Dallas) took over on June 30 — buying the Plaza for $175.6 million from its co-owners, Macerich and the Taubman Centers — other tenants including Chuey’s, Forever 21 and the Hallmark Gold Crown gift shop had already exited the district whose Spanish-styled architecture had, for 102 years, made it what many have called the “crown jewel” of Kansas City attractions.

Now, nearly a year after the new owners’ purchase, concern among Plaza tenants, city leaders and neighbors has continued to rise as the Plaza has continued to lose its luster.

In 2020, as COVID-19 spread across the nation, The Star surveyed the Plaza’s retail landscape to find that 19% of its storefronts were vacant. That was at a time when a new Nordstrom’s department store was still planned on a 3-acre parcel on the Plaza’s west edge — a deal that fell through in April 2022.

Today, of the Plaza’s 156 retail spots, 48 — or 30%— now sit empty.

It is a number that is likely more than during the Great Depression when the Plaza — although a far different place, with neighborhood features such a gas station, grocery, movie theater and, in 1940, a bowling alley — remained largely busy.

“I don’t believe the Plaza was empty during the 1930s,” said Sarah Biegelsen, a historian and archivist at the Kansas City Public Library with a special interest in the Plaza, built by developer J.C. Nichols. “When the Great Depression began, the Nichols company really encouraged the Plaza to have various ways to have people come in.”

Many Plaza traditions, Biegelsen said, began during the Depression, including the first official Plaza lighting ceremony in 1930, the addition of the Easter bunnies in 1931 and the Plaza Art Fair in 1932. A Plaza fiesta was held in 1936 and 1938.

On the south side of Nichols Road — book-ended by Lululemon to the east and the the former Victoria’s Secret (closed in 2022) to the west — four out of 10 shops (40%) along the south side of the road are empty. When Brio closed in January, it left Urban Outfitters as the only one of four Plaza-owned retail spots there that is not dark. Now that Season’s 52 is closed at the corner of Ward Parkway and Broadway Boulevard, four of the block’s 12 shops (33%) sit vacant.

“I mean, all the other retail spots in the metro are doing fine,” said one worried Plaza merchant, who asked for anonymity for fear that criticism of the Plaza’s ownership might hurt the business’s lease. Indeed, according to Costar, a commercial real estate analytics firm, the Kansas City area’s retail vacancy rate at the end of 2024 was at a nearly all-time low of 3.9%.

“The Plaza,” the merchant complained, “may be the only spot in the metro that is doing worse. There is less foot traffic, less sales — and it hurts.”

Country Club Plaza

When the HP Village Partners, now the Village Collection, purchased the Plaza last year, the announcement in Kansas City by principal partner Ray Washburne and his brother-in-law, Stephen Summers, was greeted with almost giddy excitement across the metro.

“We’re generational owners,” Washburne told The Star prior to the announcement. “We’re not putting lipstick on something and flipping it.”

For 26 years — from 1998, when Highwood Properties of North Carolina bought the Plaza from the J.C. Nichols Co., through 2016 when they sold it for $660 million to Macerich and the Taubman Centers, and up to the sale in July 2024 — Kansas Citians had watched the 15-block district fall into gradual decline.

Washburne and his partners already own luxury shopping districts that include Dallas’ Highland Park Village and a stake in Phillips Place in Charlotte, North Carolina. When the partners arrived in Kansas City, they did so with a promise to restore the Plaza beyond its past and also with a vaunted family pedigree.

Beyond Washburne and Summers, HP Village Partners includes their spouses, sisters Heather Hill Washburne and Elisa Summers. The sisters are descendants of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, the father of Lamar Hunt, who founded the Kansas City Chiefs and the American Football League. The Washburnes and Clark Hunt, the Chiefs’ chairman and chief executive officer, are not only related, they are neighbors.

“Clark lives down the street from me,” Washburne had said after the Plaza announcement. “I was in Clark’s wedding.”

Plaza vacancies

Dustin Bullard, the company’s vice president of partnerships and place, insists the promise to raise the Plaza to new heights remains. “I would ask for continued patience and trust,” Bullard said.

Moreover, any notion or impression that the company is not hard at work planning for the future, or that the Plaza is on what anyone might term what he called a “doom spiral” — a vicious cycle of departures, leading to less foot traffic, leading to less revenue, leading to even more departures — is simply incorrect.

In an hour-long interview with The Star, Bullard said he recognized that the Plaza has vacancies, what he called “missing teeth,” although he rightly said that the majority of vacancies existed long before The Village Collection took ownership. The former Houston’s restaurant location has been dark since 2017 and Cinemark on the Plaza since 2019.

He nonetheless said the company was startled that Seasons 52 decided to close, as the Plaza has been focused on retaining and not losing valued tenants.

“You know, they kind of packed up overnight and left,” Bullard said. “We were surprised by their departure.” He added, “we didn’t want them to leave.”

“But I’ll tell you,” Bullard said, “we already have two potential tenants that are highly interested in that space. We are not in an LOI (letter of intent) phase with them, but I have two folks, both of which would be right in line with what we’ve heard from the marketplace, and from the neighborhood, of the type of tenant they would want in there.

“That’s great news to us, that we had people reaching out to us within that day.”

Bullard said he could not reveal the names of the interested tenants, and cited the negotiation only as an example. “Those type of things are going on, behind the scenes, across the Plaza,” he said.

“We think there is a lot of momentum,” Bullard maintained. “Since acquisition, we have had a few departures. But I think it’s — I don’t want to say disingenuous — but the Plaza had a lot of vacancies before we acquired it less than a year ago. So the notion that it is in a doom spiral — the notion that it is on its last breath — I don’t agree with that.”

Village Collection

Bullard made numerous other points. Among them:

▪ The Village Collection has yet to file a redevelopment plan with the city, or with any city agencies capable of offering tax incentives. The company is aiming at filing such a plan no earlier than the end of the summer or early fall. Regarding when earth movers and backhoes and major construction on the Plaza may begin:

“I’m not committing to a timeline on heavy construction,” Bullard said.

▪ One reason, Bullard said, is because of the deteriorated state of the Plaza’s more than 100-year-old underground infrastructure and utilities. He said engineers have been looking at the sub surface sewer and other utilities with the intent to make their report part of the redevelopment plan. The sub surface infrastructure, Bullard said, is worse than the company imagined.

“The findings, I think will be — I don’t want to use the word ‘shocking’ — but I think they will be revealing to some degree,” he said. “I will say that the pictures that I’ve seen from the utility survey company are not what I was expecting. Not in a good way.”

One finding is that as much as 50% of the wastewater and stormwater systems beneath the Plaza may remain connected. That means that during storms, tenants’ bathrooms and drains have the potential or tendency to back up and overflow. Bullard said that prevents the Plaza, in good conscience, from putting new tenants into old spaces.

“That makes it a challenge for us to commit to leasing with new tenants, and even existing tenants, if we know or suspect that those spaces will flood,” Bullard said.

New ownership is looking for long-term success, not short-term profits, Bullard said. That takes time, even years.

“We understand the concern with some members of the public,” he said. “But, again, we’ve got to get this place right. . . .I think what you have seen on the Plaza — and we’ve seen this with other assets across the country — is a lot of times you have institutional owners who are worried about short-term profits. They can’t afford to run a project for five years without high returns.

“We don’t approach a project in that manner. Somebody else could have come in and bought the Plaza and, sure, they could have leased it up with traditional tenants that are pretty easy to get. That’s not our approach. We’ve really stated that from the beginning.”

Bullard said he understands that some in the public may have been looking for the Plaza to make a quicker turnaround.

“But I think when we look at an asset that’s 15 blocks — 50 acres when we put the streets in — you’re looking at a beast of a job.”

Plaza resigns 30 existing leases

Bullard maintains progress is being made.

“We would say it is not taking that long,” he said. “We do this across the country. We have multiple shopping centers and multiple properties, and when we do these very large projects — let’s call it a retool of a center — really one year to five may appear slow to those in the general public, but what we have found is that years one to five are laying the groundwork. It’s repositioning the center. It’s doing capital improvement projects. It’s working with the city on financial tools, on zoning tools. And then when you hit, generally, years five, six, seven, you kind of see this explosive take-off. So it is a curve of work behind the scenes, and then really taking it to another level.”

▪ It is not unusual for tenants to come and go, based on their own business decisions.

“We don’t have control over that,” Bullard said. “This is a very common occurrence in retail environments. . . .(W)hile it possibly can be concerning to some members of the public, tenant turnover creates a great opportunity for us. We see tenant turnover and tenant change as an opportunity to bring in new life.”

To be sure, several storefronts that were empty at the beginning of COVID are now filled today and vice versa.

Bullard said The Village Collection has already reworked 30 existing leases with existing retail and restaurant tenants, as well as 10 office tenants. He said the company has also received interest from regional retailers that are currently not in the Kansas City area.

“We’re really far down the road with a host of those types of brands that we have in other centers. They’re really excited about Kansas City,” Bullard said. “I’m not able to name drop at this moment. I can say that I have over a dozen LOIs (letters of intent) on spaces on the Plaza today. But we’re just not at the point where we can announce that until it’s signed.”

Security on the Plaza

When Washburne and his partners purchased the Plaza, they said that their first three priorities would be to improve security. The company has done much to achieve that, with new lighting in parking garages, added security vehicles and the inclusion of armed security.

“I think, from our perspective, I think it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, my God, the sky is falling. Some of these stores have closed.’ But the reality is, yes, some stores have closed, but more stores, by my math, have decided to work with us, and rework leases, and are open.”

Bullard said that they keep track of vacancies carefully. He said that over the next 60 days, visitors can expect to see better lighting and perhaps artwork placed in empty storefronts to “bring some life to them.”

“What I’ve told people, as I’ve been to Kansas City, doing presentations and visiting with people: It (the Plaza) didn’t get to where it is overnight,” Bullard said, “and it’s not going to get where we all want it to be in a day.

“The hope I can leave Kansas Citians with is this: The Plaza has an amazing history. It has an amazing legacy. We are long-term legacy holders. And we have the ability and the patience and the capital and local investors on site to take the time to set it up for long-term success. . .

“We’re in this for the long haul. We’re not running away. We are invested. I would ask for continued patience and trust and support form the community. Come back down to the Plaza.

“There may be some folks that have left, but there are a lot of people that are still there, and a lot of tenants and small businesses that need that support. They need shoppers. And they need people to support us as we all work together on the future.”

Renderings of the future Plaza

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has already expressed impatience at the pace of the changes on the Plaza. Lucas said that the city had hoped to see Washburne and The Village Collection submit a redevelopment plan last September and, if not by then, then perhaps by the end of 2024.

Over the last year, purely conceptional renderings of what the Plaza may look like in the future have been shown to neighborhood groups. Drawings have shown a plaza, like a public park, at the center of the Plaza. A new boutique hotel has been mentioned, which may, or may not go beyond current restrictions on the heights of buildings.

Renderings have shown brick streets, new cupolas, towers and pedestrian walkways for added retail. Washburne spoke of increasing the percentage of local shops and restaurants.

“Like most Kansas Citians, I want to see faster movement on the Plaza redevelopment, and have shared that with the redevelopment team,” Lucas told The Star.

City leaders initially expressed hope that the Plaza, done anew, might even become a bigger draw in June 2026 for the start of the World Cup. That hope, at best, is being tempered, if not abandoned.

Acknowledging that the company is working on an infrastructure review, Lucas’s message now is one of understanding of what the Plaza will offer in the long-term. He acknowledged that the company is trying to retain tenants, has improved security and is working on an infrastructure review.

“Their work thus far is essential to the Plaza’s future,” Lucas said, “so I will continue to be patient. That said, as we reach the one-year mark on the group’s purchase, it is time for the next phase of development, requests to be made to the (city) council, and any zoning requests to become part of the public discourse of a crown jewel all in Kansas City want to see shine again.”

Kate Marshall, who is president and founder of the Plaza District Council, a neighborhood group that advocates for the greater Plaza area, said she and her group remain “reservedly optimistic.”

Marshall credits The Village Collection with tackling security. She understands that the Plaza has endured nearly 30 years of deferred maintenance.

“This is tedious, expensive and abundantly necessary work that must be done before new buildings and tenants can move in,” she said. “Our community is understandably impatient, and remaining tenants on the Plaza are justifiably eager for signs of new businesses opening.

“And there is no rushing this.

“While we are equally eager to see change happen, the Plaza District Council continues to be grateful that the new ownership group is willing to make the investment in the infrastructure and master planning that the last two owners deferred.

“They are playing a long game.”

Country Club Plaza Redevelopment

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