I trust that most of you have read or heard about the newly unveiled plan of Cerner Co. executives to redevelop the Bannister Mall site as an office park, with 12,000 to 15,000 employees.
The first two phases of the “Three Trails Redevelopment Project” would cost about $200 million and cover 236 acres — all but 15 of which have been acquired by a company established by Cerner Chairman Neal Patterson and Vice Chairman Cliff Illig.
It’s great news for Kansas City, and for southeast Kansas City in particular.
The road to hope for the Bannister Mall site has been circuitous and neck snapping, as most of us know. And today I heard a story that might hold the key to the crumbling of the earlier redevelopment plan that Patterson and Illig abandoned in 2009.
Indeed, the story I heard could explain a sequence of events that led to the pivotal, 2009 decision by Patterson and Illig to take their huge Cerner office complex and Sporting Park soccer stadium to western Wyandotte County.
This is a single-source story, but it’s from a knowledgeable businessman with a wide network of connections. He cannot be identified because…well, he doesn’t want to be. But he says of this story: “You can put it in the bank.”
So here it is:
The Cerner-Sporting Park proposal came along, in the mid-2000s. In 2007, Mark Funkhouser was elected mayor. Slowly and surely, you will recall, his wife, Gloria Squitiro, installed herself as his de-facto chief of staff, working as a “volunteer” and maintaining a desk just outside her husband’s 29th-floor office.
Squitiro’s overbearing and over-controlling manner prevented the office from working effectively, and it got worse after one African-American employee, Ruth Bates, sued the city for discrimination because Squitiro called her “Mammy.” The city ultimately settled the suit for about $500,000, but before that, Squitiro was forced to move out of City Hall.
But Funkhouser — ever the loyal husband — decided she was so important to the functioning of the office that he (and she) began holding important city meetings at their home on 57th, between Main and Wornall.
Coincidental to the brouhaha on the 29th floor, the Patterson-Illig plan was bogging down.
As development reporter Kevin Collison recounts it in today’s Star, “Kansas City and Missouri offered a $273 million incentive package, but the developer was unable to attract enough retailers to generate the tax revenue to finance the plan.”
So, it started crumbling. But it wasn’t altogether dead. Sometime in 2009, after Squitiro had been banished from City Hall, a last-ditch meeting took place between city and Cerner officials. It took place on 57th Street, at the mayor’s home. The subject at hand, apparently, was whether the city was willing to boost the proposed subsidy.
Squitiro
Attending the meeting, my source said, were Illig and three other Cerner representatives and Funkhouser, Squitiro and a city development official.
During the meeting, Squitiro — remember, she was not a city employee in any way, shape or form — did a lot of the talking. So much so that, along with the setting, it gave Illig and the other Cerner representatives the heebie jeebies.
Soon afterwards, as Collison put it in his story, “the deal jumped the border.”
***
So how do you feel about that?
At the time, as I recall, Squitiro’s meddling was viewed mainly as an irritating sideshow.
But what if Gloria, in her own “I’m the queen” way, effectively altered the landscape of southeastern Kansas City and western Wyandotte County?
Is that a good thing? I think most Jackson County residents would say, “Hell, no!” while most Wyandotte County residents would say, “Why, thank you, Gloria!”
Fortunately, it looks like southeast Kansas City is going to be made whole, so to speak, and the ghosts of Bannister Mall will be laid to rest.
But the ghost of Gloria still hangs in the air.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Yes, Mike Burke runs this OLD story into the ground at every opportunity. Go write a book on it.
Fitz,
I have faith in anything you would in a newspaper or a blog…If your source does not want to ne identified fine…any critics or cynics (I may be the most cynical person I know) want to diminish your “single source,” fine. WeloveMike” could be the former Mayor’s wife. Nice job Jim.
I feel confident that the meeting took place, Larry…Was it responsible for Illig changing his mind? Who knows?
In her mind, Gloria was portraying “Theodora” at the right hand of Justinian Funkhouser. In reality she was just another harpy, whose unwanted and unneeded desultory efforts in city government in combination with her barefoot perambulations around City Hall produced a “Honey Boo Boo” reality side show that embarrassed our city and citizens.
Ruth Bates filled the literal and metaphorical vacuum at City Hall when she saw Gloria’s supercilious weakness with the standard race baiting accusations and litigation that never fail to pay off. Cha Chiing!!
Mark Funkhouser is the embodiment of the Peter Principal, elevated one station too far, accompanied by his “polio blanket” wife. We were all crippled by the side show. Very funny.
The psychological pathologies shoved down our throats on a sometimes daily basis by this couple in the media left me cringing and confused, then just sad.
How many times, I wonder, did people listening to their car radios, reading the newspaper or watching TV, say out loud, “Just get her the fuck outta there!!”
If Peter was the “Principal” he would flunk me.
Late for work…
:)
Let’s not forget that Funkhouser was elevated beyond his capabilities for one reason: Yael Abouhalkah got fixated on him and decided that Funk’s no-frills, down-to-the-basics approach was just what the city needed after the high-reaching (Sprint Center, P & L District, Market-Crown-Plaza) Kay Barnes’ years.
I think it was a humbling experience for Yael, who has the city’s best intentions at heart, and I don’t think he’ll ever go all-in like that again.
I wonder how many times he thinks, “I can’t believe what I subjected the city to…”
Fitz,
I definitely agree that Yael played a huge role in Funkhouser’s election. Funkhouser taught us a lesson _ one that the national media should heed to _ and that is people who tout themselves as “mavericks” do not make good elected officials. Many people thought Kay Barnes was dull, but look at the things that got done while she was mayor.
Also, something that I believe was a key moment in Funkhouser’s successful campaign was the first major forum of the mayoral candidates for that election. It was at Park Hill High School the second week of January in 2007. I covered the forum for The Star because, at the time, I covered the Northland portion of KC for the paper. Fitz, you were there. I think you might have been campaigning for Jim Glover.
Anyway, as you recall, there were 12 candidates in that election. Ten showed up at the forum. Many of the questions focused on Northland issues, including the use of tax incentives. When the question of whether $15 million in tax breaks should be granted to the Briarcliff Development Co. for a $90 million hotel/office complex, Funkhouser provided the forum’s most lively moment when he emphatically replied “No!”
“It’s the silliest thing I have ever heard of,” he said.
Funkhouser’s message resonated well at that forum because he scored the highest amount of points in a scorecard that people in the audience filled out after watching the candidates speak. He scored 2,438 out of 3,850 possible points, nearly 400 points ahead of the 2nd and 3rd -place scorers Henry Klein and Becky Nace. Katheryn Shields scored the lowest. The scorecard was highly informal, but I think it helped serve as a harbinger for that election.
Ah, what a great memory that is, MIke! Yes, I was there on behalf of Burke, and the spontaneous cheering that Funkhouser’s response generated was truly riveting. Each of the other candidates, including Burke, hemmed and hawed with their answers, and I recall that a Northland favorite — a lawyer whose name I can’t recall — lectured the crowd on the intricacies of tax increment financing. And then Funkhouser, a Fourth District guy, knocked the ball out of sight.
The only thing I remember differently than you was that his first two words were, “Hell, no!”
At that point, I should have realized that my guy, also a Northlander, wasn’t going to win.
Fitz,
Mike Burke was not a candidate in the 2007 election. And the “Northland favorite” that you referred to was John Fairfield, who at that time was a councilman. The candidates in 2007 were Funkhouser, Klein, Nace, Shields, Janice Ellis, Fairfield, Chuck Eddy, Stan Glazer, Alvin Brooks(who got through the primary), John DiCapo, Albert Riederer and Jim Glover. Riederer, who had just entered the race, and DiCapo were the only ones who did not attend the forum.
And maybe Funkhouser did say “hell no!” but we both know that I never would have been able to get that into the paper. I’m going by the story that I wrote that appeared in the Jan. 13, 2007 of the Northland Neighborhood News editions.
I stand corrected, Mike…Burke was a candidate in 2011, of course. I was there, as you said in your first comment, on behalf of Glover. That was a forgettable campaign.
I knew you’d come up the name of the guy I was thinking about — Fairfield. He was touted to be such an up and comer — until that moment when he began lecturing the crowd on TIF. It was about the fastest implosion of a candidacy I have ever seen.
My brother worked on Funkhouser’s successful mayoral campaign and at least for a time was hopeful of landing a position on his administrative team there at City Hall. In retrospect, however, it was no doubt a blessing in disguise that he wasn’t picked to be a part of “Funkytown”.
Yael has yet to come clean on the whole Funk disaster–his role, his use of the Star to further his guy, etc. He wrote a lukewarm column on how he was wrong, but his actions in the run up to the election have never been put out there. And you would have thought that after 18 years working for the city and the interaction Yael had with Funk he would have at least seen Gloria in all her glory. The fact that he didn’t or choose to ignore it says a lot.
Every council member that voted to give Ruth Bates a half a mil should have been impeached. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
I disagree with you, Jennifer. I think Yael came completely clean. He overstepped his role and admitted it, and The Star ran a big editorial (Yael’s) saying essentially, “We were wrong.”
As for Gloria, I don’t think anyone, including Yael, sensed that she would emerge from the Funk’s shadow and try to take the reins at City Hall. Looking back, of course, you can say that she had a big ego, a thirst for power and a sense of entitlement. She wouldn’t be the first political wife to be like that, but she was the first, as far as I know, to shove tradition aside and elbow her way to the front line. (Well, Hillary did that with the Clinton health care proposal, but it was just one issue.)
Ruth Bates had a strong case; she would have won at trial. The City Council, in my opinion, was handcuffed. Gloria took everyone for a long, bumpy ride, including her husband.
I was thinking there should have been a “This is what I did to get Funk elected and why it was wrong” column–rather than “WE were wrong” on the endorsement. There wasn’t any falling on the sword come to Jesus moment on Yael’s part at all. But that’s not unusual.
I’m pretty sure he did write that column, Jennifer…But I can’t access The Star’s electronic library for a while; I used up my monthly quota running down other stories for this post.
“Fortunately, it looks like southeast Kansas City is going to be made whole…”
Do you mean “whole” à la the KCP&L being “profitable”?
Or do you mean “whole” à la the Union Station being “profitable”?
Or perhaps you mean “whole” à la the Stadium Complex being
“profitable”?
Or the way Mayor James’ new trolley will be “profitable”?
Or the way the proposed MCI reconfiguration will be “profitable”?
Because if you do, you can keep the Bannister Mall redevelopment plan; it will be just another in a long list of line items that I will foot to little or no recompense. And this in a city whose mayor has to beg the public for additional levies to pay for basic services. Little or no differnce from his last 4 predecessors (not including Gloria’s henpecked husband.) Thank you, no.
I understand ‘intangibles’, I understand civic pride, indeed I even understand progress and the need to invest in the future.
But I also understand the difference between those things and being the town pump.
I guess you don’t live in southeast KC, Will…Those poor people have been hosed for years.
For what it’s worth I grew up just off 87th, a quarter mile east from the old Benjamin ranch; this was when the road was a simple two-lane, mind, with the deadliest downhill S-curve in the city, and nothing but trees on either side, long before I-435 was carved across it.
If it were possible to restore the area to that state, to repair the damage initiated by ol’ man Benjamin selling the city his ‘west 40’ (as it were) I’d be on board. But the truth of the matter is that the Cerner panacea is more of a land grab, and will be –at best — just another business park, more or less occupied as economic forces dictate, said putative tax benefits of such accruing to SouthTown deferred for years, perhaps decades, after construction is completed.
If it ever is.
And those 12 to 15K worth of jobs? Five will get you eight that less than .01% will be filled by SouthTown residents.
Other than physically removing the crumbling concrete detritus of the old mall, what exactly makes this a win for that area?
Well, now, that’s a good question. Certainly a business park can’t compare, as a community asset, to a soccer stadium. But there is a lot of value in having a viable business in the area. It should generate some retail, particularly restaurants, in the area. Plus, there is a lot of value in eradicating the landscape eyesore that once was a very successful mall. With the eyesore gone, the memory will start to fade, quickly. Just like the eyesore that thousands of people passed every day, for a few years, when Bernstein’s West Edge project fell apart on the Plaza. Its successor, the Plaza West project, appears to be no more than a month or two from opening.
Normally I would agree with your reasoning. However there is an equivalency issue at play here: Plaza ≠ SouthTown.
Which is another way of saying that enterprising businesses, to include both retail and restaurants, will indeed look at opening (or expanding their base) in the area (assuming the project comes to fruition.) Due diligence will be effected and then those (potential revenue generating) worthies will run screaming for the hills (or the Plaza, or Leawood, or PV), having been unable to bleach from their vision the carnage that caused their predecessors’ ruination (not just in the old mall per se, but along the outlying areas as well) in the space of a couple short years; the origin of said downward slide being the populace of the surrounding neighborhood’s casual attitude toward property rights.
Without digressing into a discussion of the root causes for this behavior (though poverty has certainly laid a heavy hand on the area), little has changed in that part of town. Indeed, if only anecdotally, things may even be worse now than at the height of the ‘loot and pillage’ days near Banister Mall’s end.
My guess is that any business that dares the region would be strictly 9-5, including restaurants; plying to the carriage trade then getting the hell out. End result, nominal revenue addition for the area, yet more money lost throughout the rest of the city via some outrageous TIF.
If the city must help a multibillion dollar company expand, perhaps we could contribute a one-time, lump sum fee toward clean-up of the eyesore. That, one would think, should suffice.
However I contend we must leave some part of the rubble intact; perhaps that magnificently hideous slab of concrete that backstops the rustic Santa Fe art easily espied from I-435. You wouldn’t think so but it seems we need to be constantly reminded of our collective folly.
Bannister Mall was hardly collective folly, Will…It was great while it lasted and a tremendous asset when it was prospering. It would have been difficult to predict the outcome, at least so soon. It served a good purpose while it lasted, just like Indian Springs — which is another eyesore that should be eradicated. It was the first mall in the KC area, I believe…Anyway, nice discussing this with you!
One last thought: wasn’t Blue Ridge Mall the first?