The much anticipated development project proposed by developer Willie Lanier Jr. for downtown Kansas City, KS, has died a quiet death.
The project, which started under former KCK Mayor David Alvey, had been the source of many clashes between KCK Mayor Tyrone Garner and the Unified Government Board of Commissioners. By the time Garner took office, the projects had already had numerous extensions and since then had received at least a couple more.
The last extension to the development agreement, made in April 2024, required work on the project to get underway by the end of February 2025. Our sources say Lanier did ask for another extension, but was reminded the commissioners were clear when they made the last agreement extension that it would be the final one.
Initially approved in 2020, the $25 million project would have replaced the closed Reardon Convention Center in downtown KCK with a 7,500-square-foot multipurpose community meeting space and redevelop the balance of the with a multi-floor building that would include 85 to 100 apartment units with approximately 7,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor.
Some delays in the project were due to changes in local leadership and differing visions for downtown KCK.
Garner supported maintaining the Reardon Center instead of razing it but didn’t get much support from other commissioners. The Reardon Center has been closed since 2021, leaving the city without a large meeting or convention location.
With the Lanier Development project behind them, Garner says he will put a discussion for next steps at the convention center on an upcoming agenda. A group of city officials recently toured the facility, which Garner says is outdated but in good structural condition.
The city has $6 million in revenue generated from a sales tax in a designated Downtown Community Improvement District. If approved by the commission, the funds could be used to make improvements and renovations to the Reardon Center.
Garner, who has decided not to seek reelection, says he feels strongly this is a decision that should be left to the Commissioners.
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The Hilton Garden Inn next to the old Reardon Center was recently sold. No additional plans have been announced for the hotel, but the hotel likely suffered economically by the loss of convention traffic from the Reardon Center.
The Minnesota Avenue Triangle Project planned at 4th and Minnesota Avenue in downtown KCK has also fallen through. The project was awarded to developers Flaherty & Collins, who submitted the project as a response to a Request for Proposal issued by the Unified Government. The two-phase $145 million project was supposed to break ground this summer on a 12-story tower with 244 apartments.
According to city officials, the developers pulled out of the project citing a funding gap.
The MERC, a downtown cooperative grocery store that opened in July 2020, is also weighing shuttering its doors. The store was built to address KCK’s downtown food desert and expected to benefit greatly from residents of the Lanier Project that never came through. Present concerns expressed by the story are a growing homeless population in downtown KCK and shoplifting, both of which are negatively impacting the operation’s bottom line.