@BlogKCAs latest West Edge Plan falls apart, it’s time for the City to step in and fix this hot mess.
The Business Journal reports that the latest attempt to finish Plaza’s giant West Edge development has again devolved into lawsuits between the development partners. If there was any doubt before, it should be clear now that the private development community is simply not capable of untangling this project’s many problems and intrigues.
Now it’s time for the city step in and use its tools like condemnation and eminent to domain to seize the property and wipe the slate clean for a new developer to takeover free of the past drama and legal entanglements.
I’ve wondered lately where the “Save The Plaza” people were when this monstrosity was approved.
Let me think… there’s a large law firm with reasonably deep pockets, who wants a new building on the plaza, but the site they propose isn’t well suited for the purpose. And currently, there’s a stalled partly-completed construction project on the plaza with no tenant, no money, no direction. Gee, if there was only a solution…
This site will be know has a giant lawsuit. I think it will never be finished.
If the city were to acquire the site, it would be responsible for paying its “value” – which would result in tremendous taxpayer expense just to help rich developers out of their unwisely incurred debts. I didn’t get them into this problem, and I don’t want to pay to bail them out.
Tacitus, unfortunately, not many people want a building that will most likely be functionally obsolete in a decade, if its not already. Giant atriums, etc. This is why most modern owner users build with some type of exit strategy in place. Berstein, unfortunately, like a lot of people during the boom thought they could play developer. The timing of the recession mixed with naievity doomed this project.