New owner shares vision for Country Club Plaza

The new owners of the Country Club Plaza will place a special emphasis on security as part of their strategy to revitalize the venue, installing more than 100 surveillance cameras and employing a more visible security force with the ability to make arrests.

Ray Washburne, president of HP Village Management, which took over the landmark property last Friday, said restoring a sense of safety was a central theme of his company’s considerations during six months of negotiations.

“Ultimately, we had to make a decision,” he said Monday. “Can we make this a safe place for people to shop and come back?

“There were shootings during the contract period, that’s no secret, and there were delays. We found that with the right measures we take in our other centers, we can overcome that.”

HP Village purchased the Plaza from national mall operators The Macerich Co. and Taubman Centers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The previous owners paid $660 million for the property in 2016 and defaulted on a $295 million loan in May 2023. Jackson County now values ​​the property at $179.6 million for tax purposes.

“We have spent the last few months in an agonizing negotiation process with the seller while also talking to neighbors about their wishes,” Washburne said.

“We will bring a local focus back to the Plaza through the restaurant and retail scene.

“We will also make it a preferred office location and try to attract the people who live in and around the Plaza back so that they come here and walk all the time.”

Plaza plans

HP Village Partners owns the Highland Park Village shopping center in Dallas. While it is much smaller than the Plaza — 250,000 square feet versus nearly 1 million square feet — it has a similar history.

It was developed in the 1930s with similar Spanish-style architecture. The company is also redeveloping Know Street in Dallas and owns the Phillips Place shopping center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Plaza’s most striking new development is expected to occur on what is now known as the Nordstrom site, a large, undeveloped parcel of land at the Plaza’s west end that was formerly occupied by the Cinemark movie theater complex and other tenants.

Washburne said an office building with ground-floor retail is planned for the site. He also said the rest of the former Cinemark theater complex across Jefferson Street will be converted to offices.

There are no plans to bring a cinema back to the shopping district.

The planned office building will anchor the western end of Nichols Road and make an important contribution to restoring the Plaza’s architectural splendor.

“The Nordstrom site has a 1,200-space garage and we can easily build an office tower there,” Washburne said.

“We are planning an architecturally significant building at the end of the street. It will not just be a simple office building, but something whose architecture fits in with the rest of the plaza.”

“If you walk through downtown, you see a lot of bad architecture from the ’70s and ’80s in the Country Club Plaza,” he said.

“We plan to re-clad many of the old buildings and rebuild them … and put up storefronts that look like they’ve been there for 100 years. When we’re done, the whole thing will look very consistent in the original style.”

A boutique hotel is also being considered for the block that formerly housed Starbucks, as well as Nichols Road and Central Street. Details on the scope of the project and how much space it would take up on the block have not yet been finalized.

One attraction planned for residents of the Plaza district is the return of a small grocery store to the Plaza.

HP Village also plans to undertake a major renovation of the streets and sidewalks in the plaza. These plans include widening the sidewalks, building at least some paved streets, and creating landscaping. They also call for more parking on the sloped streets.

A detailed landscape plan is expected to be published this autumn.

“It feels like a lot of concrete right now,” Washburne said.

Incentives on the table

The new owner of the 15-block shopping district, which opened in 1923, has also secured tens of millions of dollars in commitments from the city for infrastructure improvements, including roads and sewers.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas attended the press conference and said city officials have been holding weekly discussions with HP Village.

“One of my biggest goals in my second term as mayor was to make sure we get this deal done,” Lucas said.

The mayor said he expects the city to invest “tens of millions of dollars” in improving the plaza’s infrastructure and possibly create a tax increment financing district that would draw on sales, employee revenue and other income generated there.

The TIF Commission and other development authorities, including Port KC and the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority, which use incentive tools such as property tax abatements, will be involved.

The Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department would also be asked to increase its maintenance and programming at nearby Mill Creek Park and the adjacent Brush Creek Parkway.

“Kansas City is committed to the long-term success of Plaza,” Lucas said, “not only because of the business tax revenue it generates … but also because of its central importance to our single-family housing market.”

Lucas added that he is working with the Kansas City Police Department and the Police Commission “to make sure there is a fantastic partnership between private security and law enforcement.”

A community improvement district would be created that would give plaza owners greater control over their sidewalks and allow private security to make arrests when necessary.

“We have our security people patrolling the property,” Washburne said. “The first thing we noticed a year ago was that there were no security people walking the sidewalks. You see security people patrolling all the time.”

The plan also calls for installing 100 to 150 security cameras in the plaza. Washburne said similar cameras at the company’s smaller Highland Village Park mall in Dallas have proven extremely effective in deterring crime.

“There is no attention on the (plaza) property at the moment,” he said.

The new owner pointed out that all public investments would pay off many times over for the city through the increase in value and the planned business expansion on the plaza.

“When the Plaza was sold a few years ago, it was valued at over $600 million. Now it’s on the tax rolls at $170 million,” he said. “Look at the reduction in property tax and sales tax.”

“We’re starting with a very low threshold to reinstate it. What the city will invest, it will get back in abundance in the form of additional sales and property taxes.”

Make changes

The new owners said improvements would be visible quickly as security patrols had already been increased and negotiations for new tenants were underway.

“The asset has been undermanaged for some time and we look forward to investing heavily in it,” said Stephen Summers, who heads leasing for HP Village and is Washburne’s brother-in-law.

“We want to put a local focus on the cuisine again. We will try to break away from the big restaurant chains.”

Summers also said the new owners want to be more flexible with rents to attract local businesses.

“We want the right tenants,” he said. “We don’t sign a lot of national tenants like the previous landlord did. We want the right tenant, not someone with a huge balance sheet.”

Kate Marshall, president and founder of the new Plaza District Council, an organization supporting the Plaza and surrounding neighborhoods, attended the HP Village press conference.

“We are thrilled with the new owner and are very confident that he has what it takes to make the Plaza a destination again,” she said.

Although HP Village is based in Dallas, it has strong ties to the region.

The partners of HP Village are Washburne, Heather Hill, Stephen Summers and Elisa Summers. The two women are sisters and descendants of legendary Texas oil magnate HL Hunt, father of Kansas City Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt.

“We are very proud to be stewards of this incredible asset,” Summers said. “It means a lot to our family.”

“My mother grew up on West 60th Terrace and my grandparents are from here. The Hunt family is also there, of course. Kansas City has a special place in our hearts.”

Hunt Midwest, another company affiliated with the Hunt family, will serve as a co-developer on the new projects planned at the Plaza.

The new owners said that in addition to attracting local retailers and restaurant owners, they will not neglect attracting the high-end retailers for which Highland Park Village in Dallas is known.

These include Carolina Herrera, Cartier, CHANEL, Christian Louboutin, Dior, Fendi, Goyard, Harry Winston, Hermès, Jimmy Choo, Ralph Lauren, Rolex, Tom Ford, Valentino, Van Cleef and Arpels.

“The Plaza will accommodate the best locals and eventually upscale brands,” Summers said.

“For example, this is the largest market in the US without a Louis Vuitton and Gucci store. We will approach them even if they don’t come today, the luxury market is weak at the moment.”

Washburne knew firsthand how poorly maintained the Plaza was when he closed the popular Mi Cocina restaurant he owned there a decade ago.

“The reason we left about 10 years ago is the reason we bought it today,” he said, adding that it was a lack of investment in the Plaza’s infrastructure.

“I know there are a lot of things wrong with the sewerage, the roofs and other things, and we’re going to spend over $100 million just to upgrade the basic infrastructure of the square.

“We would like to bring Mi Cocina back as soon as we have a functioning sewer system.”

Flatland contributor Kevin Collison was previously founder and editor of CitySceneKC.