Perhaps the nastiest and most prominent blemish on the face of Kansas City is the northwest corner of 63rd and Prospect.
That’s the site of what a pair of crooked developers envisioned years ago as an $80 million, 35-acre shopping center, featuring a grocery, homes, restaurants and other retail businesses.
It was nobly called Citadel Plaza.
Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? If you hadn’t seen it and knew nothing about it, you might say, “What is this Citadel Plaza? Is it anything like the Country Club Plaza?”
Well, no. It’s 35 acres of junk, including run-down houses, weed-covered fields and asbestos detritus.
The toll that this particular site has taken on the city, particularly East Side residents, is much worse than what most other sections of arid, city landscape have taken. The curse of that site goes back almost 20 years.
Consider this:
* In 1994, one of Jackson County’s most respected and talented Circuit Court judges, H. Michael Coburn, died after falling into an unsecured elevator shaft of a boarded up, abandoned building on the site. Carrying a flashlight and leading a group of people, Coburn was inspecting the building as part of a court case. I believe that the guy who owned the building, a dentist by the name of Thomas Wrenn, is still doing dental work in a partially boarded up building — not the same building — that is on the Citadel site and facing 63rd Street.
* In 2008, the City Council voted to provide $20.5 million to a development outfit called Community Development Corp. of Kansas City. The idea was to jump start the project. Turned out that the principals, William M. Threatt and Anthony Crompton, were crooks. They ended up pleading guilty to violating the federal Clean Air Act by improperly removing and disposing of asbestos-containing materials while demolishing numerous homes on the Citadel site. Crompton was sentenced to three years probation and five months in a halfway house. The Kansas City Star’s electronic library does not show what Threatt’s sentence was, as far as I can tell.
*Despite their own legal problems, Threatt and Crompton sued the city for refusing to deliver the $20.5 million. In November 2011, the City Council approved a $15 million settlement to resolve lawsuits involving the development’s creditors and to give the city clear title to the land.
Fortunately for taxpayers, none of that money went to Crompton or Threatt. But that’s the only fortunate thing that has come out of the Citadel Plaza debacle.
The most pathetic part of the situation is that the site remains just as junky and just as asbestos ridden today as it was when Threatt and Crompton inflicted their damage on it.

I took this photo of the northwest corner of 63rd and Prospect in February 2012. The view is east, across Prospect, toward a BP station.
In Tuesday’s Star, City Hall reporter Lynn Horsley reported that “the long-awaited cleanup of the failed Citadel Plaza site…is finally set to begin, at least in a small way.” Horsley said that “test pit activity” will start today, Wednesday, on four to six lots out of the 68 vacant lots that have been identified for possible buried asbestos. If contamination is found, city officials told Horsley, it will be disposed of properly.
So, two years after the $15 million settlement was approved, the city is finally getting around to testing some sites for asbestos, not actually digging it up and getting rid of it.
That is pathetic.
At least the bureaucrat in charge of the project, Andrew Bracker, had the decency to acknowledge that the cleanup is taking longer than expected.
Horsley wrote: “The city has a $500,000 federal grant for cleanup and some bond funds available, but Bracker said the city wants to conserve as much money as possible for work needed before development begins.”
Now, just what the hell does that mean? It’s gobbledygook. Wouldn’t it make sense for the city to clean up the area as soon as possible precisely so that development can begin?
As I read Horsley’s story, I hesitated when I saw Bracker’s name. It sounded familiar. I went back to a blog post I wrote about the Citadel mess two years ago, and, yep, there was Bracker. I had run into him at the site while doing some reporting before writing the post. He had recently taken charge of the cleanup and was familiarizing himself with the site.
At the site, I chatted with Bracker for a few minutes, and he gave me his business card.
An hour or so later, I sent him an e-mail, asking when the cleanup might begin and how much it might cost.
The plan, he responded, was to “clean up the site as soon as practicable.”
Since the city is not much farther along now than it was in February 2012, I think it’s safe to conclude that when Bracker says “as soon as practicable,” it has nothing to do with soon.
But I gotta hand it to Bracker for his use of the word “practicable.”
According to OnlineGrammar.com, an important distinction between practical (which means useful) and practicable (which means feasible) is that “practical can apply to people and skills, while practicable only applies to plans or actions.”
Or, in Bracker’s context, should we say lack of plans and action.
Jimmy C. I love it when you talk dirty. DETRITUS!!! Well I thought DEBRIS would have worked just fine but after using my dictionary…you are right on!
John — I first had it as “asbestos remnants,” which would have worked…But then I decided to show off a bit.
This is an article Yael wrote (Credit where credit is due, it is an excellent piece.) about the Citadel 2 years ago.
http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/costly-maddening-citadel-plaza-deal/
Here is another article that is noteworthy in my opinion (From the Business Journal on the depositions. Some of it, hilarious.)
http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2013/07/01/citadel-plaza-depositions-highlights.html?page=all
because about 5 paragraphs down the participants start talking about “Burn Rate.” (Snicker, I love it when guys in suits start throwing the financial nomenclature de jour across big tables with pastries on ’em.) Then the article talks about the first “Tranche”. Goddamn, it is beautiful. What if ya didn’t know what a “Tranche” was and had to pretend you did? If a “Tranche” falls in the forrest and there are no taxpayers there, do we get a bill (Thats right, look it up, I had to.) ?
My favorite quote, from Wayne Cauthen: “This was a project that had a lot of back and forthness…” Kind of like a T Rex rogering you up your butthole I guess.
My favorite Mayor Funky quote. “My opinion on the thing probably shifted over time. I think at the front end I hoped that it might be (a good redevelopment opportunity). By the time we disapproved it, I was confident that it was a very bad project.” I think Hitler said the same thing about Russia in 1944. No shit!!
Terry Riley kicked our azzes on this deal, it was his baby and he should be out there with a dust pan and a broom in an orange jump suit.
The first story, by Yael, is very good. The second one — the Business Journal excerpts from the depositions — is a mish-mash, but it does have a few good lines…For the record, a tranche is “a division or portion of a pool or whole,” like an installment.
The City Council approved this deal with its fingers crossed — high hopes but not a lot of confidence. In retrospect, of course, the council should have put the deal under a microscope to get a good view of the warts and lesions. Easy to say after the fact…Had I been on the council, I might have gone along with Marcason and the others who had their fingers crossed. Just about everybody’s intentions were good…except for Threatt and Crompton, of course. They just wanted to get to the cash.
Jim:
The Citadel Plaza mess is a community disaster. It is a crime what has happened there. It used to be a good place to live.
Hopefully you and Lynn Horsley have stirred some action.
All best,
Laura
Thank you for commiting another act of journalism. Every morning my search for news starts with this blog. I wish you did more in KCK. The dynamics now between an incompetent Mayor/CEO and one of the brightest politicians this town has ever seen are fascinating.
Ann Murguia being the latter? I haven’t been able to keep up with it very much, what with The Star bailing on KCK.
Bingo, that’s why we need you. Hendricks did a nice job reporting on the T-Bones stadium issue. And I think the reporters have figured out that she’s the real player in KCK even if editorial hasn’t.
What an interesting piece. So disturbing on so many levels. The older I get the more I enjoy hearing “the rest of the story” as it evolves over time. In this age of 15 seconds of fame the nuance of background becomes what it’s all about for me. Thanks also to Chuck for the links (hilarious & depressing at the same time) and your many minons for their insightful conversation. Use to be 15 million was something other than chump change but for our civic guardians to pony up the 15, w/o a fight, for blighted contaminated land created with intent whilst they sat and watched says it all. And we argue over investing in transportation lines. Thanks for the reminder of the need to vote early and often.