Crown Center attracted nurses, let NCAA slip

Crown Center remade 85 acres of Kansas City in Hallmark’s image. It also provided competition for real-estate developers.

The subject of this week’s feature, Crown Center introduced significant new hotel, residential, retail and office space. Upon its completion in 1971, the five-section, seven-story building that unfolds alongside Pershing Road added 660,000 square feet to the commercial real-estate market.

City boosters tend to operate under the notion that a new office park or shopping mall creates economic activity out of thin air. More likely, the shiny new thing simply moves an existing business from one side of town to another.

Waddell & Reed, the financial services company, was one of Crown Center’s first major new tenants. Founded in 1937, Waddell & Reed moved to Crown Center from the New York Life building, the striking Renaissance Revival at Ninth and Baltimore. The New York Life building eventually became vacant and needed taxpayer assistance to be rescued.