At 39th Street and Main, the plywood may finally come off the historic Hawthorn Plaza building

Howard Fischer is reminded constantly of his struggles to redevelop Hawthorn Plaza. He lives five blocks from the empty, 10-story building at 3835 Main Street. 

“I have to see it every day, multiple times a day,” he tells The Pitch. “I walk to Broadway Café almost every morning, and I have to walk by that and see it and know we’re paying the mortgage on it every month for 13 years. It’s hard all the way around.”

Fischer and his business partner, Mark Sloo, bought Hawthorn Plaza in 2005. The historic building was shabby after years of renting to tenants who received Section 8 housing subsidies; it was common to see an ambulance or a police car parked outside the entrance. Fischer and Sloo imagined an extensive renovation, with 56 units rented at market and affordable rates.

The building emptied, but the renovation work did not begin. To both the owners’ regret and the neighborhood’s, Hawthorn Plaza remains an inactive husk. A sidewalk shed to protect pedestrians from falling bricks and other debris has been up for so long that Fischer cannot immediately recall which year he ordered the plywood. City inspectors found more than 20 violations — loose brick, cracked windows, rotting boards — on a visit in 2015.

In 2013, the Historic Kansas City Foundation included Hawthorn Plaza, which was built in the late 1920s, on its most-endangered list. As preservationists worried, neighboring property owners grew more agitated. “I think as it sits today, it’s a detriment to all the property owners in the area,” says Jeffrey Kieffer, owner of the Madrid Theatre.

Fischer and Sloo, who are admired for the care and class with which they have renovated smaller apartment buildings, understand the frustration. They are hopeful that Hawthorn Plaza has reached a darkest-before-dawn moment. A plan to use historic tax credits to convert the complex into market-rate apartments is in the works. A partnership with another development company may be announced within 30 days, according to Robin Martinez, an attorney for Fischer and Sloo.

“This is really a large project for them,” Martinez says. “So, consequently because of that, the better part of wisdom has been to go through and essentially develop a partnership with a more experienced developer that can work with them to get this done.”

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Hawthorn Plaza is one of the most recognizable buildings in midtown. In addition to its size and location, the building features fanciful terra cotta ornamentation on the portals and at the roofline. The architect, Robert Gornall, also designed the Uptown Theatre.

The building opened as the Netherlands Hotel and served a bustling corridor between Union Station and the Country Club Plaza. The name nodded to the Dutch bank that took ownership when the original builder ran out of money. 

In 1981, a group led by a banker and lawyer named J. Nelson Happy bought the Netherlands and renamed it Hawthorn Plaza. Most units were rented by people who received Section 8 housing vouchers. 

Happy’s bank failed, and later he became the dean of the law school at Regent University, which was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. Hawthorn Plaza, meanwhile, changed hands and began its slide. In 1999, The Pitch described complaints from tenants, many elderly and disabled, about the building’s crummy conditions and lax security. Legal Aid got involved on the tenants’ behalf.

Later, the building figured into the schemes of Brent Barber, who received a 12-year federal prison sentence for various mortgage frauds in midtown and on the East Side in the early 2000s. Barber scammed an associate by misrepresenting Hawthorn Plaza’s purchase price.

Fischer had moved into the neighborhood in the mid-1980s, when the area around 39th and Main was on the upswing. There were boutiques and a Baskin-Robbins. Bringing low-income housing into a building as large as Hawthorn Plaza killed the momentum, Fischer says. “One of the reasons we wanted to get the building when we bought it was we knew someone else would get it and it would be a Section 8 project immediately,” he adds.

Fischer and Sloo had a stake in the neighborhood. In 1999, they bought the Illinois, a turn-of the-century apartment building near 38th Street and Walnut, and turned the units into spaces sought by high-earning professionals. Their company, Frederick-Lanell Distinct Properties, owns five properties with high occupancy and low turnover.

Fischer and Sloo specialize in properties that have fewer than 10 units. In purchasing Hawthorn Plaza, they took on a bigger challenge. To make the numbers work, they sought various tax credits and abatements. In 2008, the city approved tax-increment financing to help pay for a parking garage at 3831 Main, where the Naughty but Nice adult store once stood. (It’s now a surface parking lot.)

Fischer says the redevelopment plan’s troubles began when a financing arrangement fell apart after the lender merged with another bank. “You’d never buy a building like that without financing in place,” Fischer says.

As another construction loan was being arranged, the financial crisis hit. The city, meanwhile, balked at a request for an additional $3.3 million in tax-increment financing.

Fischer and Sloo struggled to come up with a plan that made financial sense and would be welcomed by the Old Hyde Park Neighborhood. “They don’t want just a building occupied,” Fischer says of the residents. “They want a building and occupied and to be the best use for the building.”

Potential buyers expressed interest on occasion. Fischer says he and Sloo were reluctant to sell the building to a developer who cared mostly about profit. “Take the neighborhood out,” he says. “We wanted something we would be proud of.”

Though it has no tenants, the building produces some rent. Telecommunications companies lease space on the rooftop for their antennas. A lawsuit that Distinct Properties filed against T-Mobile in 2006 indicates that the carrier was paying $1,573 a month.

Distinct Properties earned credibility from its success in renovating and maintaining the Illinois and other properties. “The buildings Howard does are absolutely phenomenal,” says Courtney Beaumont, a real-estate agent and MainCor board member.

Still, Hawthorn Plaza’s idleness has tested people’s patience.

“If it were someone else that I just thought was taking advantage of the system, then I’d be all over them,” Beaumont adds. “But with Howard, it’s not like that. I know he’s trying.”

Eventually, Fischer and Sloo recognized that they needed a partner.

“We realized about four or five years ago that we were not going to develop the building on our own, that we were going to do it with someone that the neighborhood would like and that we would be comfortable working with,” Fischer says.

Fischer is reluctant to discuss details as negotiations continue. The word in midtown is that Distinct Properties’ potential partner is interested in other nearby properties, including the Church of Scientology building at 2 East 39th Street.

Hawthorn Plaza is structurally sound, according to Fischer and his attorney. Martinez says workers stabilized the brick on the façade and corrected other problems raised in the inspection. “From an overall structural standpoint, the building is solid,” he says.

Fischer is optimistic that the project has turned a corner. Looking back, he says that he “probably” would not have bought Hawthorn Plaza if he had it to do over again. 

“But I’m happy with where we’re at now and where we’re going with the project.”