Mission City Council to decide Wednesday whether to hit Mission Gateway developer with $600,000 annual assessment
Once upon a time, Tom Valenti made a deal with Mission officials: If the city made $12 million worth of stormwater improvements on the old Mission Mall site, the Mission Gateway developer would repay the city’s investment with a portion of the public incentives the plan would receive.
Moreover, the city would get the first $6 million up front in tax-increment financing and community-improvement-district funding, with the rest coming over the next few years.
Like a lot of agreements Valenti makes, this one fizzled out. The 26 acres upon which the Mission Mall once stood have remained vacant ever since Valenti bought the land almost 10 years ago. The city held up its end of the deal: Mission issued bonds to fund the stormwater project at Shawnee Mission Parkway and Johnson Drive. Valenti has done plenty of talking about what he hopes to accomplish, but has delivered nothing — certainly not anything that can start to drum up revenue to repay the city for its investment.
Mission is in a weird position: Valenti owns the land, so there’s not much the city can do to cajole him into action. But there’s one trump card the city holds, and it looks like Mission may be ready to play it.
On Wednesday, the City Council will hold a public hearing on whether it should hit Valenti with a $600,000 annual special assessment over 20 years. The math works out to the city’s recouping its investment in 20 years, which is a long time. But sitting around waiting for Valenti to get his wagons in a row takes a long time, too.
It’s interesting that the Mission City Council chose to take up the assessment matter before it publicly analyzed Valenti’s latest plan for Mission Gateway, which now centers on a Wal-Mart (adding to the nearly two dozen already in Kansas City) and a boutique hotel to accommodate all that pent-up demand for overnight stays in Mission.
In Valenti’s current Mission Gateway plan, he wants $25 million in public assistance but doesn’t want to have to agree to pay the city up front this time around.
If the assessment passes, Valenti would have to pay $600,000 within 30 days. If he doesn’t pay, he’ll notice the $600,000 charge on his next property-tax bill from the Johnson County assessor. The line item would be hard to miss because it’s so much more than what he owes in property taxes. For 2014, Valenti owes the county $101,339 (which is due today, Tom).
