Dec

18

H&R Block moving Downtown

December 18, 2003 |

HR BlockToday saw two big developments in the resurgance of Downtown KCMO. H&R Block announced plans to replace it’s County Club Plaza headquarters with a new buildng at 13th and Main Streets. The $120 million, 500,000 square foot building will open in 2006, with a 250,000 sqf expansion in 2013. H&R Block’s new building will be in a new entertainment district, also formally unveiled today. This “Kansas City Live!” development will include restaurants and bars along 13th Street in the South Loop area of the downtown freeway loop. Both projects will fill in an empty area that is surrounded by increasingly popular residential areas like Quality Hill, The Crossroads, and the Library District.

Business Journal: Block picks Downtown
Star: Downtown development plan unveiled


Comments

4 Comments so far

  1. Rhetorica on December 18, 2003 3:51 pm

    Now what we need is a pedestrian skyway like the one in Minneapolis. Combined with the growing downtown residential space, such a development could turn KC into the kind of city we know it can be. I hope I live to see it.

  2. dangerboy on December 18, 2003 9:01 pm

    I don’t know about Minneapolis, but Des Moines also has a skywalk system, and it’s not an entirely good thing. It leaves very little street life, so your first impression is that downtown is almost a ghost town, unless know that all of the action is up in the sky. KC’s weather is mild enough that even in extreme summer or winter it’s not intolerable to walk outside between buildilngs.

  3. Rhetorica on December 19, 2003 2:41 pm

    Dangerboy– Well, we can’t lose what we don’t have, re: street life. And I would argue that the Minneapolis street life beats KCs easily. While much traffic happens above ground, the fact that a skyway attracts foot traffic means there’s more for the street, too. At least that’s what a week in Minneapolis looked like to me.

    Des Moines’ skyway is cute. And, being such a small city, I’m not surprised it takes away from the street life–although its difficult to imagine what that would look like in Des Moines.

  4. dangerboy on December 22, 2003 10:21 am

    Actually, Des Moines’ downtown street life is probably comparable to Kansas City. While it’s a smaller metro area, their downtown still has something lik 50-60% of that city’s jobs, compared to 20-30% for downtown KCMO. Plus, the smaller metro area means that even the outer suburbs are at most 20 minutes away from dowtnown, compared to 30-45 minutes for places like Olathe, Lee’s Summit, Kearney, etc.

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