When it opened in 1923, Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza was the first planned regional shopping center in the United States designed with parking to accommodate shoppers who traveled by car.
For a period from about 1905 to 1919, developer J.C. Nichols was assembling the land for the Country Club District, of which the Plaza was a part, according to Kate Marshall, president and founder of Plaza District Council. Marshall said Nichols was very focused on the Country Club District being trolley-centric.
Marshall was one of the speakers at last week’s luncheon hosted by CREW Kansas City to discuss future plans for the Plaza. Marshall was joined by panelists Aaron Mesmer, chief investment officer of Block Real Estate Services, LLC, and Mark O’Briant, COO of HP Village Partners, LP. Tyler Enders, founder and owner of Made in KC, moderated.
For its first 75 years, the Plaza was owned by J.C. Nichols Company. In 1998, J.C. Nichols Company merged with Highwoods Properties, a North Carolina-based real estate investment trust.
HP Village Partners, a Texas-based company with ties to the Hunt family (owners of the Kansas City Chiefs), recently purchased the Plaza from The Macerich Company and Taubman Centers, Inc., which acquired it in 2016.
The Plaza is often called Kansas City’s “crown jewel,” but as tenants have left and crime has climbed in recent years, the jewel has lost some of its luster. HP Village Partners seeks to polish it up and make it shine again.
O’Briant said HP Village Partners has been working to acquire the Plaza since the summer of 2023 when it was approached by the property’s lender.
“I think they saw us as the right operator. They saw the tenants that we bring, how we manage properties, how we operate properties and said this is really a good marriage, a good fit. . . . The problem is that through the 10 months - 12 months [before closing], the tenants started leaving,” he said.
O’Briant said HP Village Partners are legacy owners with no plans to sell the Plaza.
“So in 10 years, we’re still here. We’re not going to come in and fix it up and sell it off. Everything we do right now is to fortify the asset for the next 15, 20, 30 years,” he said.
O’Briant said no institutional money is involved with its Plaza ownership.
The CREW KC Panelists take questions from attendees regarding the future or the Country Club Plaza. Photo credit: Marcia Charney
“What we saw was something unique to Kansas City that we’re not bringing in a Wall Street firm offering institutional money. We’re teaming up with local people - it’s important that we share things with our neighbors. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much interest and excitement in buying real estate. This is not like real estate. This is truly like we’re coming into a community that wants to be involved and wants to help morph and transition this into something that’s really unique,” said O’Briant.
O’Briant said the first battle the new owners will fight is security because neither tenants nor customers will come to the Plaza until they feel safe.
He said they meet with the police regularly. There also have been meetings with the prosecutors and judges.
“You’ll start seeing now that we’re relighting the parking garages, restriping the parking garages. We’ve already started working on that. It’s brightening them up, lightening them up. Put more signs out, more cameras out,” he said.
HP Village Partners already has installed Flock Safety cameras, which are license recognition cameras, at some garage locations.
“Police can look for a certain car. If that car pulls in, it automatically notifies the police. They don’t have to look for them. They know they are in this garage,” said O’Briant.
“We need more police officers. Communication is really big. Communication with other owners in the area. . . Why are we not talking to each other, making the tenants more aware? We’ll have people come in and do personal training on how you can store your stuff or show your stuff inside your store so that it creates less of an opportunity for someone who’s just looking for an opportunity. There are little things that we can do, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to get more people to the Plaza,” he said.
O’Briant said it’s important to get more Plaza offices leased, and he has a little more than $2 million slated to create some spec suites.
“We need to get some office leasing going quickly, and that’s kind of a low-hanging fruit. We’ll start bringing in retailers. We’ll start bringing in restaurants,” he said.
With regard to the planned tenant mix, O’Briant said the new owners want local tenants who bring local flair along with a mix of national and luxury tenants. He said they’ve already met with many local chefs.
One of dozens of fountains found throughout the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo. Photo credit: Country Club Plaza
“We work with a lot of restaurants that are very unique places that you would drive 20 or 30 minutes to go eat at because it’s unique and different,” he said.
O’Briant said there are plans to reskin some of the buildings that don’t have the Plaza’s signature Spanish motif and to expand the sidewalks.
In addition, HP Village Partners will be tackling some capital improvements that have been neglected.
Although the improvements to the Plaza will take several years to complete, HP Village Partners plans to stick around.
“I think what you’ll see is a cleaner, nicer, healthier market, a more secure market and more vibrant market,” O’Briant said.
With plans to improve the Plaza underway, other investors will be undertaking more development in and around the Plaza.
According to Mesmer, during the last five to 10 years, it’s been harder and harder to make that investment.
“I think that today, though, what we’re seeing is that there’s a much greater level of civic support, whether it’s the mayor’s office, with the city staff helping to break down some of those barriers that make it a little more challenging to do business there than it might be in other municipalities. That’s a big change. But, really, for us, now that the Plaza has returned to someone with a long-term outlook, and someone who is going to be a generational owner of the Plaza, that is very much aligned with how we invest,” he said.
And, harkening back to the Plaza’s early days when trolleys transported people to and from the Plaza, the streetcar soon will be dropping off an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people a day into the Plaza District.
“The streetcar is going to change everything,” Marshall said.
Header Image: The panelists at the CREW KC luncheon last week from left to right: Tyler Enders (moderator), Mark O'Briant, Kate Marshall and Aaron Mesmer. Photo credit to Elizabeth (Liz) Wampler.