JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

This got by the local news media, like a lot of things do these days, but ownership of the Country Club Plaza, or at least 50 percent of it, has changed hands.

You might remember stories from February 2020 that the nation’s largest shopping mall operator, Simon Property Group of Indianapolis, had reached an agreement to buy all of Taubman Centers and part of the Taubman family’s ownership interest.

Taubman Centers of Bloomfield Hills, MI, owned half the Plaza. Another real estate investment trust, Macerich of Santa Monica, CA, owns the other half.

The deal was supposed to close in mid-2020, but after Covid-19 took hold with a vengeance, Simon said it was backing out.

That led to a court fight, but in late December the deal went through, with Simon paying $43 a share for Taubman instead of the earlier agreed-upon price of $52.50 a share. (I stumbled across the news while researching Plaza ownership because of a City of Fountains Foundation project I’m involved in.)

The total price tag, Reuters reported, was $2.65 billion.

Now, in effect, Simon and Macerich are equal partners in the Plaza. This at a time when the future of shopping malls is very cloudy. Last year, the Macy’s store at the Prairie Village Shopping Center closed, and the Plaza has a lot of empty storefronts, including the Nichols Road Nike store that closed last Sunday.

In addition, plans for Nordstrom to open on the west end of the Plaza appear to be shaky. The projected opening has been pushed back a few times and now is scheduled for 2023.

When Simon pulled out of the Taubman deal last June, it looked like a good time to be getting out of the mall business. And yet, if the stock market is an indication, it appears Simon made a good deal. Since the transaction closed in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Simon’s stock price (SPG) has risen more than 40 percent.

In a January story on a Motley Fool website, reporter Maurie Backman said that after Covid vaccinations became widespread — which they have — “there’s a good chance mall traffic will explode once consumers feel more confident with the idea of in-person shopping.”

The day of mall-traffic explosion is still down the road, but I’m sure a lot of people are sick of looking at the tired, old clothes they wore during the pandemic and are eager to get back to the stores, where they can touch and feel materials and try on new clothes.

Simon already owned two malls in Missouri — Battlefield Mall in Springfield and Osage Beach Outlet Marketplace — and it previously owned Independence Center. With the acquisition of Taubman, it picked up the former Taubman Prestige Outlets on I-64 in Chesterfield.

In Kansas, it owns Towne East Square in Wichita.

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I suspect Simon, being the largest mall operator in the country — it has about 200 properties — will take the leading role in operation of the Plaza. But it’s unclear, and, curiously, the Plaza folks seem to be in denial about the change of ownership.

Earlier this week, I put in calls to Taubman and Simon to try to get a clearer picture of how the partnership might unfold. In short order I got an email from a vice president at FleishmanHillard, the Kansas City-based p.r. company that represents the Plaza.

In one email, the v.p. said, “Let me run this down for you.”

The next email said, “Taubman and Macerich each own 50% of Country Club Plaza.”

Well, that’s not the case and hasn’t been for five months. I don’t know why the Plaza management or its p.r. firm would state something that is flatly incorrect.

Maybe, like the local media, they missed the news.