‘Can we make this a safe place?’ Country Club Plaza’s new owners spell out changes

At a packed press conference Monday, the new owners of the Country Club Plaza laid out sweeping plans to revitalize the 101-year-old Spanish-styled shopping district, beset by problems in recent years, but long considered an iconic part of Kansas City’s landscape.

“One of the things we pride ourselves about is being place-makers,” said Ray Washburne, one of four principals in HP Village Partners, the Dallas firm that on Friday bought the Plaza for an unknown price from its previous co-owners, The Taubman Co. and Macerich. “We create places that are inclusive for everyone.”

Washburne appeared along with partner and brother-in-law Stephen Summers and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas at the press conference held at the Polsinelli Law Firm on the Plaza’s western edge.

Among changes that Washburne announced, some coming within a year:

More security cameras and officers

Washburne said to expect as many as 150 cameras on the Plaza, which are likely to include automatic license plate readers, as it does in its other properties, such as the luxury shopping center Highland Park Village in Dallas.

He said security was a prime issue in determining whether to purchase the Plaza.

“I mean at the end of the day, we had to make a decision. Can we make this a safe place for people to shop and want to come back to?” he said. “While we were under contract, there were shootings. No secrets. It was in the paper. There were holdups.

“And we determined that we could overcome that with the proper steps that we take in our other centers.”

Highland Park Village, he said, is a quarter of the size of the Plaza’s nearly 1 million square feet of retail space over 15 blocks. That shopping center, he said, has 50 to 75 cameras.

“We have license plate readers that go directly to the police department,” he said.

“The first thing we noticed when we came up here a year ago on this, there’s no security on the sidewalks walking around. You will see a constant presence of security officers walking a beat on the sidewalks.”

Return to Spanish facades

Washburne said that when they walk around the Plaza now, they see “a lot of bad architecture,” with facades from the 1970s and 1980s that do not fit the Mediterranean, Spanish style that has defined the Plaza since it opened, as a J..C Nichols development, in 1923.

He said HP Village intends to tear away facades that don’t fit and recreate them in the Spanish-style. He specifically cited the facades on the former Halls department store, now the Nike store, as examples.

Filling the Nordstrom ‘pit’

The company envisions a new office tower in the spot where Nordstrom had planned to build a department store, before pulling out of the deal in 2022. The office is to have retail on the first floor.

“The idea is that the Nordstrom site has a 1,200-car garage. We can easily add an office tower there,” Washburne said “We are going to do an architecturally significant building that, as you go down the street, you look up to it, it won’t just be a plain Jane looking office building. It will be something that architecturally fits in with the rest of what the center looks like.”

The HP Village group also believes there is room for a new boutique hotel somewhere on the Plaza.

The return of 2 restaurants

The partners made no guarantees, but said they would be in talks with the Hillstone Restaurant Group, which closed Houston’s on the Plaza in 2017, despite its vast popularity. Its former space on the Plaza has been dark ever since.

“We have a very good relationship with the Biel family,” Summers, who is in charge of marketing and leasing, said of the the chain founded by CEO George Biel. “I’ve been whipping them constantly, trying to get them to come back. So we’re working on trying to find a solution. It’s no guarantee. They’re very, very deliberate. But, of course, that’s going to be a target.”

Added Washburne: “The reason they left, it wasn’t because they had bad sales or didn’t have a loyal clientele. They had all kinds of leaks in their building — roof and underneath — and the landlord wanted to invest no money.”

It is the same reason, Washburne said, that Mi Cocina restaurant closed on the Plaza. The chain is owned by M Crowd Restaurant Group, with Washburne as a partner.

“You’ve got to invest in your property. And they just wouldn’t do it,” Washburne said. He also expects to bring Mi Cocina back once repairs to infrastructure are made.

$100 million in infrastructure

As The Star previously reported, HP Village anticipates the Plaza will receive about $100 million in inew roofs, facades, landscaping, streets and sewers, a figure that includes overdue maintenance from Kansas City.

Lucas said he expects to tap into tax incentives through TIF (tax increment financing) PIAC (the Public Advisory Committee) and Port KC.

New food market, but no movie theater

“Historically, the Plaza has always had a grocery store. We’d like to bring a store back in,” Washburne said. “You’re not going to do a full, you know, 50,000-square-foot type, but a great convenience store.

“Because, I mean, you can’t even go down there today and buy a Coke anywhere. I mean there’s no convenience there whatsoever. So we do plan on bringing a small grocer back in.”

Cinemark’s movie theater on the Plaza went dark in 2019. Washburne said a new theater is unlikely to replace it. “That whole business has gone away,” Washburne said. He does anticipate bringing in other unspecified types of entertainment venues.

“They’re going to be focused more on the demographic we’re trying to get. So we’re not going in there and putting in, you know, pinball places and things like that. But there are a lot of higher-end entertainment that are big footprints that would like to come in.”

Local restaurants over more chains

As also reported previously, Washburne and Summers will be looking to attract more unique local restaurants and retailers over chain stores.

“We are going to try and go away from huge chain restaurants, which kind of are populating the Plaza,” Washburne said. “I think nobody gets terribly excited about some of these restaurants. That’s the feedback that we’ve gotten.”

Pedestrian friendly sidewalks, diagonal parking

Ideas have been floated in recent years to close off streets and perhaps make parts of the Plaza available to pedestrians only. Washburne did not speak to that, but did say, “We’ve got to redo the entire street design.”

He anticipates taking parallel parking and turning it into diagonal parking, while broadening sidewalks.

“If you see what we did in the Highland Park Village, as far as breaking streets and rolling out curbs, that is very much what the pedestrian experience will feel like,” Washburne said. “It’s bringing in a lot more landscaping. Right now, if you go down there, it just feels like a lot of concrete. So we want to get it to where pedestrians have a nice walking experience.”

He said HP Village expects to roll out a landscaping plan in the fall to be shared with the public.

Lucas called news of the new ownership and their plans “thrilling.” He said that city staff has been meeting with HP Village representatives each week since December.

“Today is vital and today is an exceptional sign of progress for Kansas City, our region and, of course, the Country Club Plaza,” he said. “We have been fortunate to get to know Ray Washburne and his team at HP Village Partners since they discussed their interest in the Plaza.

“They have done the work. The work isn’t just negotiating with the seller — which has been an intensive conversation — but it’s also meeting with community organizations, meeting with city leadership, council members, mayors, so many others, to say, what do you want the plaza to be? And consistently from people — everyone around Kansas City — says they want to make sure it continues, not only to be the crown jewel of our region for shopping, lifestyle, office, residential experiences, but also it’s a place that is unique, that is special, where we can tell stories that we remember for a lifetime.”

At this early stage, stakeholders that include the Plaza District Council — a confederacy of residents and businesses working to maintain the vitality of the Plaza and its surrounding neighborhoods — see the new ownership as providing fresh hope.

“I think these guys are authentic,” David Westbrook, communications director of the council, told The Star last week. “I think the buyer has family interests in growing and appreciating the asset here so that children and grandchildren can be proud of it and benefit from it.”

Washburne said that they will be working with Kansas City area companies, including the development firm Hunt Midwest and others yet to be determined, regarding projects and leasing. The four principals in HP Village Partners are Washburne and his wife, Heater Hill Washburne, and Summers and his wife, Elisa Summers.

Heather Hill Washburne and Elisa Summers are sisters and descendants of the late oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, father of Lamar Hunt, founder of the Kansas City Chiefs.