The Mission Gateway debacle keeps getting worse
The developer of Mission Gateway keeps shrinking Johnson County’s endlessly stalled development project, but still expects taxpayers to grease its wheels.
Tom Valenti, the man who owns 26 acres of prime real estate upon which the Mission Center mall once stood, returned to Mission this week to speak to that suburb’s leaders. The news wasn’t good.
The Pitch earlier this year reported that the project’s apartments were on the ropes. Valenti wouldn’t confirm it at the time and instead complained about this newspaper’s pointing out his inability to proceed with construction on land he has owned since 2005.
Last night, he announced that, while the proposed Walmart store at Johnson Drive and Shawnee Mission Parkway could get slightly bigger, more elements of the project have disappeared.
Dan Blom of the Prairie Village Post has the scoop of Valenti’s visit to a joint meeting of the Mission Planning Commission and City Council on Wednesday evening.
Saying “we have no alternative but to get going,” Mission Gateway developer Tom Valenti revealed a radically different plan for the site Wednesday. The Walmart anchor is still part of the proposal – in fact it gets bigger – but most other aspects of the original proposal are gone. A small hotel is added to the plan. Valenti is still asking for city support in financing the project.
“This is not what we first talked about,” Valenti told a joint city council-planning commission meeting. “Quite frankly, we have no choice.” The new plan is scaled back to a $100 million project from the original $170 million proposal that yielded construction estimates well over $200 million.
Eliminated in the new proposal is a Sprouts Farmers Market grocery, a Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill, a fitness center, a multi-deck parking garage and most of the other retail components. Also gone are plans for 300 market-rate apartments that would have occupied about 310,000 square feet on the property in a multi-story residential component with retail on the first floor.
Over the years, Valenti has said that the following would replace the Mission Mall he tore down in 2005:
• A massive aquarium
• Class A office space
• Market-rate apartments
• A fitness center
• Sprouts Farmers Market
• Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill
• A 16-story hotel
• A movie theater
• A bowling alley
We’re probably missing a few others.
Valenti once promised that he would sign one-of-a-kind retail tenants to Mission Gateway. Then, when he got Walmart, the ubiquitous retailer, to sign a letter of intent to anchor his project, Valenti said it would be a one-of-a-kind Walmart.
Now he won’t even say that. He told Mission officials, according to Blom’s report, that the Walmart he wants to open could look like the one at 159th Street and Metcalf.
“This is just an example to show you that a Walmart does not have to look like a big box,” Valenti said on Wednesday, according to the Prairie Village Post.
We went to the Walmart that Valenti referenced in south Overland Park on Thanksgiving morning two years ago. We needed to buy a candy thermometer so that we could fry a turkey that afternoon. Aside from some stone flourishes on the outside facade, that Walmart looks just like any other Walmart. It looks only somewhat nicer than the Walmart in Roeland Park, which could close if Valenti ever manages to get his built.
Oh, and Valenti wants $25 million in public assistance for his project.
Can the Mission City Council be taking this seriously?
