As hard as I rooted for Mayor Mark Funkhouser not to be re-elected, I never thought I’d be cheering him on his last weekend in office.
But today, two days before he likely will pass forever from Kansas City’s political scene, I’m shouting from my rooftop for his veto of Thursday’s ordinance that would allow for razing of the Neptune Apartments and construction of an eight-story office building.
With this action, the mayor is leaving office on a high note. He’s standing up for the average citizen against the vested interests, and he’s defending the integrity of Kansas City’s crown jewel, the Country Club Plaza.
Opponents of the rezoning cheered this afternoon’s announcement of the veto.
“I’m a sailor, so I would say it’s sort of a freshening breeze,” said Michael L. Koon, a lawyer who is a volunteer leader of opposition group, Friends of the Plaza.
The new council, which will be sworn in Sunday, will have two weeks, Koon said, to override the rezoning ordinance, or it will die.
The outgoing council on Thursday approved the rezoning on an 8-3 vote, and it takes eight votes to override the mayor’s veto. However, seven new members are coming on board. That could greatly change the equation. Five of the six who are staying on voted in favor of the rezoning, so they need to pick up three more votes, if they are determined to push ahead.
The new members are Mayor Sly James and council members Jim Glover, Scott Wagner, Scott Taylor, Dick Davis, Jermaine Reed and Michael Brooks.
Asked how he thought the new council would approach the issue, Koon said, “I have to say we are cautiously optimistic that this group will be more receptive to the concerns that we’ve tried to raise.”
One of those incoming council members, Jim Glover, who previously served three terms on the council, strongly opposes the rezoning, mainly because he does not want to see the Plaza lose existing residential space.
“I just don’t like losing the bodies,” he told me in a telephone interview.
In its high-handed, sandpaper-rubbing way, Highwoods has already stopped renewing the leases of Neptune residents, and the building could be empty in a couple of months, unless Highwoods changes its tune.
Glover said it was important to keep a good balance of residential, office and retail on the Plaza, just as in other parts of town. He cited Quality Hill, the River Market and Crown Center as examples of a good balance of mixed use.
When a mixed-use area starts to tilt too heavily toward office buildings, he said, “it deteriorates.”
Glover pointed out, as other opponents have, that there are several other possible sites on the Plaza, already zoned for office space, where a new office building could go up. One of those is the West Edge, the aborted office building that auto dealer extraordinaire Cecil Van Tuyl recently picked up for less than $10 million. It has 900 below-ground parking spaces.
In the development business, parking is golden, and the West Edge runneth over. Even if it meant “scraping” the main existing, unused office structure at the site, the first order of business on the Plaza should be to make the West Edge viable.
Along with other opponents of the Neptune site, I would urge the new council to turn its attention to the West Edge — by far the worst example of blight we have ever had on the Plaza — and do whatever it can do to spur reclamation of that project.
Yes, Cecil Van Tuyl is a fat cat, just like a lot of the people who want to rezone the Neptune site, but his building is already there, and that eyesore needs to be fixed.
Correction: The council has until next Thursday, May 5, to override the veto, not two weeks.
Jimbo,
As one who never has been a fan of Mark Funkhouser,
I have to tip my hand to him, for his last act as mayor!
Vetoing this was the right thing to do, as this issue
has and will polarize the starting of a new Council and
Mayoral term.
A referendum is a waste of time, energy and money
for KCMO. I believe we can accommodate the needs of
Polsinelli still on the Plaza, and yes, the tearing down
of the poorly thought out office component (now blighted) in West Edge,
is a perfect solution for all.
I guess the Funk (FINALLY) does have a “sense of
political correctness” as he rides into the sunset of KC
history.
This is not the first time Highwoods has proposed a master plan amendment to allow an inappropriate building and gotten it approved by a city council against the advice of a Planning Board. See these articles on a high-rise in Orlando.
http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2008/11/24/story6.html
This last one is in the top 10 most read Florida cases in Judicial View web site.
http://www.judicialview.com/Civil-Procedure/Highwoods-DLF-Eola-LLC-v-Condo-Developer-LLC/10/21059
Sure, chase those jobs right to Kansas, Funky and Jimmy, et al. This may have been the last non-taxpayer-subsidized development proposed for KCMO, and you would chase it away over a couple of stories on a building? Short-sighted, to say the least.
For sixty years I have lived on the Kansas side of the state line (because my husband’s boss told him that was where the company wanted him to be living). As a very young child I believed that Kansas City, MO, was the center of the universe (because that’s where my grandmother lived) and despite being a non-Kansas City voter as an adult, I continue to want Kansas City to be the brightest and the bestest of the midwest. I grieve everytime Kansas City loses something meaningful, like the FAA moving out, and rejoice when something great happens, like the Royals having a good season. Thanks for your observations and insight on Kansas City doings. Keep posting.