New owners of Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza promise ‘immediate’ improvements

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Months of speculation turn into reality as the sale of Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza becomes official.

HP Village Management completed the purchase of the entertainment district from The Taubman Co. and Macerich Friday.

“First thing is we’re going to bring a lot of security back to the Plaza,” Ray Washburne, President of Highland Park Management, said.

The new owners wasted no time improving the safety at the Plaza. Monday morning there was an increased presence of security walking around and that’s just the first step.

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“We’re going to have license plate readers throughout the plaza, so we’re able to find cars going through that shouldn’t be there,” said Washburne, “It will feed directly to the police department, and we think that will take care of a lot of the crime.”

With crime at the top of mind, Washburne said the Plaza’s infrastructure is their next priority, its aging, and they plan to invest over 100 million dollars to improve it, including updating lighting and landscaping, parking garages, preserving the architecture, and eventually redoing the entire street design.

“We really honor the historical nature of the properties, we’ll come in and re-facade. We’ll come in and clean things up and really make it more of the original feel it was,” said Washburne.

Over the years, Kansas Citians have seen stores and restaurants close one by one, most recently it was Chewys. Stephen Summers, who is leading the leasing efforts, said more vacancies means more opportunity.

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“The previous owners went with a big box kind of corporate chain-y direction and our focus is to bring unique brands that don’t really exist in many places,” said Summers.

Summers said that means they plan to have a heavy local focus with a mix of popular national stores, possibly adding in some high-end retail.

Kansas City is the largest market in the United States without a Gucci or Louis Vuitton store so you know to me of course we’re going to target that, that could take five years.”

Although the city is now elated to have new owners, the sale of the plaza wasn’t a breeze... mayor Lucas said there were intensive conversations with the sellers and from neighbors.

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“From the city side, there were times where we thought oh my gosh will it not work out, will there be some challenge. we really had to sit down and figure out all these things,” said Lucas.

But Mayor Lucas said investments have already been happening, like the apartment buildings approved nearby the Plaza, Lucas said that was not accidental and he’s excited for more investments, in in the years to come.

“What you’re seeing is hundreds if not thousands more new units of residential coming to the area, new and renewed office interest to the country club plaza, it is still the signature place to be in kansas city,” said Lucas.

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The new owners said we can see changes as early as fall.

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