Five area projects under development, construction or recently completed and totaling almost $6.2 billion in capital investment, were showcased by project principals at an event last week co-hosted by the Kansas City chapter of DBIA-MAR and AIA Kansas City. Jon Stephens, president and CEO of Port KC, served as program moderator.
Among the largest of the projects is the Panasonic Energy of North America battery plant under construction in DeSoto, Kan. Michael Kopper, senior project manager at Turner Construction, discussed the status of the $5 million SF facility that sits on 350 acres and is projected to bring 4,000 jobs.
Kopper described the project as “very aggressive and fast-moving.” Foundations at the site started in February 2023, and the first two lines of the battery plant for the first wing are scheduled to commence production in January 2025. The second two lines will be ready for production in July 2025.
The plant structure will be two stories with the size rivaling a six-story high rise. To put the project’s magnitude in perspective, Kopper visually showed that the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building) could fit from corner to corner of the building. The width of the building equals the length of the world’s two largest ocean liners, and three jumbo jets could fit between the building’s two wings of the building.
According to Kopper, steel erection is 100 percent complete, concrete is 70 percent complete, and the building envelope for wing 1 is 50 percent complete. “We’ve put in over $1 billion of work in place in just one year,” Kopper said.
When COVID hit and emptied Walmart’s shelves, Walmart decided to invest further in full supply chain ownership and enter into the beef industry.
Walmart selected a site in Olathe, Kan. for its $250 million beef manufacturing facility. According to Justin Hamilton, market leader of manufacturing at McCownGordon Construction, Walmart chose Olathe because of the proximity of the beef supplier, the good interstate system and the labor market. Hamilton said no live animals will be coming into the facility.
“That’s actually taking place in one of their sole source suppliers up in Nebraska, but they’re basically going to be receiving those large cuts of beef and they’re taking everything from there - highly-automated and are cutting and packaging. They call it “case ready” beef,” said Hamilton.
The erection of steel at the site began recently. Once the facility opens, approximately 600 full-time associates will be working in the 360,000 SF facility. Hamilton said the project will reach substantial completion by approximately April 2025, with products from the facility hitting store shelves in July 2025.
Stephens said the Panasonic and Walmart projects are really important for the area’s workforce and the resiliency of the supply chain and Kansas City. According to Stephens, Kansas City is the 15th largest industrial distribution center in the United States, and in the last three years, it has become the fourth fastest growing on average.
“We now have 330 million SF of class A advanced distribution logistics facilities in Kansas City; so this is a major, major piece of the supply chain,” said Stephens.
To continue its growth and to attract workers to the region, Kansas City is creating some pretty unique infrastructure by building something out of nothing, said Stephens, referring to the South Loop project.
To date, 30 percent of the design has been completed, said Craig Scranton, AIA, principal at BNIM. The four-block project is about “healing the gap between Downtown Kansas City and the Crossroads,” he said.
Scranton said this is a tunnel project that will require a lot of new safety features in the event of battery fires from electric vehicles, some of which are incorporated into the design of the tunnel.
“All the fun happens on the top side, but there’s a lot of detail that goes to the bottom side,” said Scranton.
Plans for the landscaped park atop the tunnel envision interactive children’s play areas, water activities, outdoor space for food trucks, a food hall with seven indoor stalls from different vendors, a pavilion and outdoor event stage, a two-level park office and retail location, a conference room available for rental, three-dimensional custom built play structures, gathering spaces and gardens.
The $285 million project is a true public-private partnership, with more than $75 million of the project cost from private donations, said Stephens. The project will be operated by a non-profit entity.
“We’re still working through what is the best ownership. The City of Kansas City will actually own the tunnel, and that’s because of their bonding capacity in case there’s a catastrophic failure. Most likely, the vertical structures above will be owned by Port KC, and we will have a sales tax district that will help fund the operations and maintenance; however, it will be a publicly owned green space, publicly activated, and available all the time to the public,” Stephens said.
Stephens said the goal is to have some of the functional operational components completed by the World Cup.
The new terminal at the Kansas City International Airport (KCI), one of the region’s most transformative projects, celebrated its one-year anniversary last month.
According to Mark Goodwin, VP at Clark Construction Group, LLC, since the terminal opened, passenger volume is up 10 percent and direct flights and airline participation have increased. The facility also has won numerous awards.
Goodwin said passengers like the concessions, particularly the local flavor. Also getting favorable reviews are the terrazzo medallions brought from the old terminal, the artwork and the all-gender bathrooms.
“Convenience was really, really important in the design, making sure that when you park that it doesn’t feel [farther], and in fact we did the steps. We measured it from the parking lot to your gate, and on average, it was no longer than what it used to be at the old airport,” said Dominique Davison, AIA, managing principal at DRAW Architecture + Urban Design LLC.
Another important design aspect was having the airport feel like Kansas City.
“So when you got off the plane, you knew where you were and it felt different. You definitely smell that barbecue right when you land,” Davison said. KCI is the only airport in the world with a barbecue smoker, said Stephens.
The terminal was designed with future growth in mind. There currently are 40 gates, but Goodwin said the facility can be expanded to 43 gates without making any changes to the baggage handling system or TSA screening, which are sized for a 10 percent increase. Once the existing parking garages come down, the terminal could be expanded to up to 50 gates, he said.
On Saturday, in front of a packed house and a global television audience, the Kansas City Current will play its first match in the newly constructed CPKC Stadium, the first stadium in the world purpose-built for a women’s professional sports team.
The project swiftly came together. Team owners, Chris and Angie Long, announced the stadium on October 26, 2021, and broke ground a year later.
The Riverfront facility is on a seven-acre site. While the building programming covers 90 percent of the lot, only 20 percent is built environment.
“So we’re hoping that at the end of the day, it feels like an extension of the park,” said Mike Kress, AIA, co-founder of Generator Studio, LLC.
‘We purposefully opened the stadium towards the river because that’s sort of the heart and soul of the team's name. That’s the heart and soul of the site. We left the corners open so that you could see back to downtown, so you could see out to the river, and we just thought the major opening gesture back towards the Missouri River was the big move here,” Kress said.
Kress said the stadium was designed for an intimate feel. The stadium has 11,500 seats, but none are more than 100 feet away from the pitch.
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Feature photo credit/copyright: Lucas Blair Simpson © SOM.