AREA BlogKeeping you up-to-date on Kansas City commercial real estate trends.

Grand Place, the $98 million redevelopment of the Kansas City Star building, has signed its first pad site occupant.  BOK Financial plans a two-story, full-service banking center at the southeast corner of 17^th Street & Grand Blvd.  The new location will best allow the bank to reach more customers, while bringing the life back to the once undeveloped corner and investing into the city with their long-term commitment.

The first floor of BOK’s new space will include a full-service branch with a drive-thru off 17^th street, as well as office space for BOK’s Corporate Trust division. The second floor will include a 75-person presentation room; a pre-function space; and a patio with skyline views. Construction is slated to break ground in summer, with an opening date around second quarter 2023.

The overall plans for the Grand Place development include: a rooftop patio with bar and skyline views; a clubroom with breakfast and lunch service for tenants, guests, and private events; a boiler room converted to an upscale barbershop, spa, and locker rooms; a European style market and food hall with 15 kiosk kitchens, a bar, lounge and cafe; and finally, a private plaza drive for guest arrival and pick-up items from the the future market. Along with the main building amenities, the redevelopment will also include a future restaurant, office building and BOK Financial.

AREA’s Tim Schaffer and Sean Craven represented Grand Place in this transaction.

To read the full article in the Kansas City Business Journal, click here.

AREA’s Sean Craven recently had the opportunity to sit on the Table of Experts panel for The Kansas City Business Journal’s Future of Kansas City: America’s New Main Streets. President and CEO of The Downtown Council of Kansas City, Bill Dietrich, moderated the panel, who’s focus was on economic development and positioning the KC metro for continued growth. The discussion followed a national virtual event led by best-selling author, economist and urban studies theorist, Richard Florida.

Some of the topics discussed included getting people back in the office; enhancing collaboration with hybrid work model; attracting new talent for the future; how small & mid-size companies are navigating the changing business climate; downtown development catalysts; neighborhood connectivity and the Kansas City Streetcar.

A few key takeaways from this discussion:

• Employers are now competing for talent with the home office. Is a company willing to offer that work-life balance and what does their employees’ time spent in the office look like? Employers are focusing on flexible floor plans, quality amenities and break areas to promote collaboration and mimic home offices.
• The remote or hybrid work model works for many, but not all. The mentor-mentee and training relationships suffer from this business model, especially for the younger employees who are not trained or proficient and don’t yet know their goals. They need an environment where they are making business contacts with people that can help them with their careers.
• Many companies are also planning and thinking about what the next generation of talent will want when they enter the workforce. They are making decisions based on both the environment within their office as well as outside of it. Are there entertainment and restaurant options outside their front door? Are they downtown or in a walkable neighborhood?
• There are development challenges with construction costs and mixed incentive perceptions that may hinder the development progress that our city is making. Without development incentives, the types of projects being built in our city may not be the cutting-edge and forward-thinking projects that our city wants and needs.
• Over the last 15 years Kansas City has made its urban core more attractive to employees and residents with projects like The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, T-Mobile Center, the future waterfront stadium for the KC Current Women’s professional soccer club and the Kansas City Streetcar. The Streetcar line is creating real estate development opportunities, but is also an investment in public transit, with a predisposition that is changing. This change and acceptance of public transportation may change the elements of future development projects in the sense of parking needs now versus five years from now.
• In the next five years Kansas City needs to focus on connecting neighborhoods. The streetcar addition will further advance this. We also need to focus on creating more public spaces downtown. Urban area investments create a synergy that sparks development, more investments, additional amenities and a sense of community. An important urban catalyst could be the investment in a downtown ballpark for the Kansas City Royals.

America’s New Main Streets discussion also featured co-panelists Brian Hoban, chief commercial banking officer for Country Club Bank’s and Doug Stone, attorney for Lewis Rice LLC’s .

Click here to read the full discussion. Click here for the PDF version of the article.

Brad Woods joined AREA to spearhead a new entertainment and experiential retail division in the middle of the pandemic. At a time when this type of retail was uncertain. If you asked him then if we would be where we are today not only thinking through new concepts, but talking to clients about new concepts, he wouldn’t have imagined this would be the case.  The trends of people getting back out and getting their feet back on the ground, experiencing things together is on the rise.  While this trend is up, there will be a few crucial keys to a successful return to normalcy:

• Indoor and outdoor entertainment venues will be the true sweet spot and a huge growth segment.  Think places like Chicken N Pickle, where you can eat and play outside and inside.
• Determining adequate retail floorplan size, while adding in experiential components to bring in traffic and enhance the entire shopping experience. Think of virtual or augmented reality experiences within places like Scheels or Cabela’s.
• Pop-up stores within stores to utilize the retail space potential will be crucial. Think ULTA inside of Target or Starbucks inside of Barnes & Noble.

With the rise of omnichannel purchasing, the consumers’ preferences must be kept in mind. One thing that came of the pandemic was the ease of buying online and picking up curbside or instore.  With the rise of BOPIS, retail spaces also need to be set up with adequate space for the return experience.

Overall, the general population is ready to get back to normalcy and get back together; consumers are wanting to be able to see, touch and feel products in person before they purchase. With these factors in play, Woods is confident we will see a brick-and-mortar entertainment & experiential retail renaissance.

To read more about the reawakening of experiential and entertainment retail, click here.