We’re still waiting for Mission Gateway. And waiting. And waiting

If Tom Valenti says something, you should listen.

What the New York developer behind Mission Gateway says about the retail project at Roe Avenue and Johnson Drive, in Mission, isn’t really an insight of what will happen at the 26-acre site. It’s a strong indicator of what won’t happen there.

Valenti bought the Mission Mall site in 2005 and tore it down, promising to remake it into all kinds of different things that haven’t panned out. Only last summer did dirt start moving at the barren site, which has been covered by weeds for the last eight years. But in mid-December came another announcement of yet another delay.

Anyone who has followed this project — even from afar — shouldn’t be surprised.

Delays in development projects aren’t unusual. But Valenti has broken more than his share of promises regarding what the site would be and when construction would start. He’s getting $37 million in public money — and possibly more — to build Mission Gateway, so it’s not just a matter of a private businessman who’s slow to get his plans moving.

The Pitch looked back into local media archives, dating back to 2005, to reality-check Valenti’s statements of what would happen at the Mission Gateway location. Here’s what we found.

“The mall will be torn down. I am hoping the development will reopen — or open — in August or September of 2007.” (October 22, 2005, The Kansas City Star)

Valenti was partly correct. The Mission Mall site did come down. And in its place Valenti proposed a 16-story hotel-condominium tower, along with an office tower and some other retail. But nothing got built there in August or September or any month in 2007. Or in subsequent years, for that matter.

“[Valenti] is seeking locally owned merchants who aren’t the ‘same old run of the mill tenants,’ he said.” (October 10, 2006, the Star)

What could possibly be more run-of-the-mill than Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, which has emerged as the anchor tenant for Mission Gateway? Twenty Wal-Mart stores are in the Kansas City area. Other tenants that have been announced at Mission Gateway are hardly unique to the metro: Sprouts Farmers Market, also going to Overland Park’s Corbin Park development; Aspen Fitness Center, which has locations in Olathe, Lee’s Summit, Liberty and the Northland. Also, Mission Gateway will be the only place in Kansas City to boast a Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill, but only because its previous location at Harrah’s Casino closed.

“Gateway Developers managing member Tom Valenti said he hopes the Gateway will open in fall 2008. However, he said, spring 2009 may be more realistic. ‘There are always zigs and zags,’ he said. ‘And you try to accommodate the market.'” (April 25, 2007, the Star)

With the original 2007 deadline long overdue, Valenti zigzagged his sights to later in 2008. In the tradition of over-promising and under-delivering, Valenti had scaled down the 16-story hotel-condo idea to a six-story hotel. The original 350 residential units became 145, and the proposed office space was cut in half.

“With the aquarium, we think the project works.” (September 1, 2007, the Star)

Valenti sweetened the Mission Gateway pot in 2007 with the idea of a grandiose, 2.5-million-gallon aquarium. It was obviously a ploy to fetch sales-tax revenue (STAR) bonds from Kansas officials. STAR bonds are lucrative inducements that plow local and state sales taxes generated within a development back into the project itself. STAR bonds go only to projects likely to attract visitors from faraway places, such as the Kansas Speedway in Wyandotte County. Valenti would later hire a consultant who posited that the Mission Gateway aquarium would attract more than 3 million visitors a year, a million of whom would come to northeast Johnson County from more than 100 miles away. Only five attractions in Kansas City — the Power & Light District, Ameristar Casino, Harrah’s Casino, Kauffman Stadium and Worlds of Fun/Oceans of Fun — attract more than a million visitors a year from anywhere, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.

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“I think this is poorly planned by the Kansas City economic development people or whoever is pushing this. We’re going to win the race.” (August 19, 2008, the Star)

Valenti poked a stick in the eye of Kansas City, Missouri, officials who coveted an aquarium of their own. Read on to find out if his pronouncement of victory in the Great Kansas City Aquarium Duel worked out.

“I’m hopeful in the spring (of 2009) we can build the whole thing.” (October 31, 2008, the Star)

Lehman Brothers started its implosion in earnest by mid-2008, a tangible sign of the economy collapsing that year. Valenti rode the wave of the credit crisis to explain another stalled deadline to breaking ground at Mission Gateway.

“The earliest Valenti sees any construction occurring on the high-profile site at Shawnee Mission Parkway and Roe Avenue is spring 2010.” (May 19, 2009, the Star)

Spring of 2009 became the spring of 2010 for Valenti’s groundbreaking. At the earliest.

“‘I intend to be out of the ground by June [2011],’ he said Friday. ‘I’ll make a pledge that I won’t give up on this.'” (December 4, 2010, the Star)

Valenti changed his plans — and his deadline — again in late 2010. This time, he doubled down on office space in Mission by scaling back his allotment of retail space. Retail was still in the doldrums, and two major Kansas City companies were on the market for new office space. It’s likely he was hoping to land law firm Polsinelli Shughart or AMC Entertainment Inc. Neither panned out. Polsinelli was never going to leave the Country Club Plaza — or KCMO — and AMC opted for the tony Park Place development in Leawood.

“We are encouraged that we’re going to be successful. We’re close on several deals and still have the deals we already had in place, but in light of the fact it’s May, our best case is to begin in September.” (May 17, 2011, the Star)

The pledge that Valenti had bandied about in December 2010 — to start building in the summer of 2011 — didn’t last long. By May 2011, he didn’t have his ducks in a row and pushed his start date back once more.

“‘We now have the rocket fuel to get the project off the ground,’ Valenti said, referring to Wal-Mart.” (November 15, 2011, the Star)

Valenti’s decision to sign Wal-Mart to Mission Gateway and Mission’s decision to go along with it were grimly ironic. Real-estate firm Copaken White & Blitt (now Copaken Brooks) owned the old Mission Mall site before Valenti did. The firm tried to sell the site before 2005 to Wal-Mart to build a retail store there. But Mission officials gave the firm enough guff about building another Wal-Mart there that it abandoned the idea. There are already two Wal-Mart stores relatively close to Mission Gateway. One is in Overland Park, just off Interstate 35 near the 75th Street interchange. The other is much closer, as in less than a mile away in Roeland Park, off Roe Avenue and 51st Street. Wal-Mart plans to leave that Roeland Park site as soon as it’s able to open up at Mission Gateway, a move that will cost Roeland Park $700,000 a year in sales-tax revenue. That’s a big chunk of Roeland Park’s tiny municipal budget — so big that some city officials considered, for a time, getting rid of the police force. Kansas lawmakers thought about killing off STAR bonds in 2012 because of Mission Gateway. It’s one thing to poach companies from Missouri using tax incentives, but quite another to use them in a project to lure a neighboring suburban city’s largest tax generator.

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“I’ve got to tell you, I think we’re going to land an office tenant relatively soon. It’s a great location.” (November 15, 2011, Kansas City Business Journal)

More than two years after this statement, office towers aren’t in Mission Gateway’s plans.

“Valenti plans to begin construction this summer if the STAR bond application is renewed and he can lease at least one of the three retail spaces above the Wal-Mart.” (February 28, 2012, the Star)

Construction didn’t start during the summer of 2012. Valenti also didn’t get his STAR bonds. Read on.

“This is our choice. It was market-driven. I’ve been at this since 2005, and I don’t easily give up. It literally breaks my heart to not do the aquarium, because I think it would have been a resounding success, but I didn’t have time to wait. I have to get going.” (June 12, 2012, the Star)

Valenti abandoned the aquarium to no one’s great surprise. Almost four years after mocking Kansas City, Missouri, officials for pursuing their own aquarium and predicting that he would win the race to finally realize one, Sea Life Aquarium got built at Crown Center, and Mission Gateway’s got capsized. That same article included his prediction that construction would start in the fall of 2012.

“Sprouts Family [sic] Market plans to occupy space in the Mission Gateway project, and the developer said Tuesday he expected to break ground on the project by early next year.” (August 28, 2012, the Star)

Valenti missed another promise to start construction by the fall of 2012 and pushed it back to early 2013.

“It’s been a long haul, and we’re just thrilled to get started with work.” (July 17, 2013, the Star)

A half-decade following his first construction timeline, Valenti finally got trucks out to the Mission Mall site and started pushing dirt around. The victory would be short-lived.

“We’re finishing up leasing with potentially new and different tenants. That’s been part of the holdup. Everything is taking far longer than I thought.” (December 18, 2013, the Star)

Mission Gateway is taking far longer than we all thought.