Why did the city let bannister mall collapse? (Kansas City, Independence: low income, section 8)

[kcatheart]

As far as I've read/heard, Bannister mall was one of the hottest mall in the country back in the 70s early 80s.
So why did the city allow the surrounding areas to deteriorate which I'm sure cause the failure and subsequent demolishing of a once Vibrant area?

[PVPete]

What specifically do you think should have been done?

IIRC, there were a few crime incidents that led to the precipitous decline of Bannister.

[kcatheart]

Originally Posted by PVPete

What specifically do you think should have been done?

IIRC, there were a few crime incidents that led to the precipitous decline of Bannister.

Didn't the city start placing low income families in the area? If that's true, why would they with history showing that it would eventually bring down that whole area. If not, and the area just started to decay on its own, why wouldnt they start to build or influx new improved developments?

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by kcatheart

Didn't the city start placing low income families in the area? If that's true, why would they with history showing that it would eventually bring down that whole area. If not, and the area just started to decay on its own, why wouldnt they start to build or influx new improved developments?

This is exactly what happened.

First, you are right, Bannister Mall was one of the largest and most successful regional malls in the entire nation in the 80's, but it didn't open in the 70's. It opened in late 1980. The reason I bring that up is because of how short of a life span the mall had. It was an incredibly rapid rise and fall that I'm not sure has occurred too many other times in the country. Older malls have died, but Bannister was a new, very large mall surrounded by some of the country's first "power center" big box shopping plus Hypermart.

Personally a few things led to its demise, the biggest thing being as you mentioned, KCMO's saturation of section 8 housing into South KC.

Southeast KCMO was a rapidly growing middle class suburban area. Districts like Raytown and Hickman Mills were highly sought after and the area was in high demand.

1.) KCMO began taking down its high density "projects" and dispersing the residents into single family homes in areas like Loma Vista, Ruskin and Hickman Mills. The city purchased many homes, way too many homes in too small of a area and rented them out to section 8 tenants without properly maintaining the homes are requiring tenants to maintain the them. The cancer spread. Homes became less and less valuable and crime began to increase. White flight took off like a wild fire and new growth came to a grinding halt. This is why you have a lot of infrastructure out there, but also a lot of empty land. The city thought it was going to continue to boom, but growth abruptly stopped. Very little has been built in all of SE KCMO since the early 80's. It's okay to have section 8 housing mixed with market rate, but you can't overdo and and you can't just rent property out and not enforce the rules and maintain the properties. KCMO's HUD had always had problems and they were recently taken over by the federal government for recent problems.

This is also why areas like Raytown and Grandview are still not bad areas. They were never a part of the massive migration of section 8 housing. But the image of South KC eventually took its toll on Raytown and Grandview and have hurt their property values as well, although not near as much as parts of South KCMo.

2.) Another thing that killed the Bannister Mall was not the mall itself but the Walmart Hypermart that opened. That Hypermart was almost twice the size of a modern Super Walmart and it was too big and the concept failed. One of the main reasons was theft. The place was so large that they couldn't keep merchandise from walking out of the store, they couldn't keep the place clean, merchandise looking nice on shelve etc. It just looked "ghetto". So you take gigantic walmart that gains a reputation for easy pickings that brings in some of the worst demographics in the region and place next to a regional mall that draws a more affluent shopper from the entire metro. Then you run every busy city bus line you can straight to the Hypermart (where bored Hypermart shoppers would eventually loiter in the mall, theaters etc in the area). Hypermart became one of the biggest destinations for inner city residents because it was accessible by transit and most people from the inner city were normal shoppers. But it also brought out the thug element to SKC where they preyed on shoppers. This showed how undeserved the central city is by retail, but this is not how you deal with it. The inner city needs normal sized neighborhood retail, not a giant single place where they all have to take a bus to. Between the Hypermart and creating a situation where the only place for inner city people to shop was at that one Hypermart combined with all the section 8 housing in the area what happened?

3.) Things were not great due to the things I mentioned above, but the press and residents blew it way out of proportion. The TV channels would not leave Bannister Mall alone even though crime there never really got any worse than most major regional malls. The Mall then also knee jerked and justified the image the press was giving the mall by creating a police state there with dozens of tall security towers etc. The press scared away the regional customers and the area around the mall while solid middle class was a modest working middle class that would not sustain such a mall alone. Bannister mall needed to pull from close to a million people, not just the south KC area. The crime (other than shoplifting and occasional spikes in auto thefts) never got all that bad, but it looked bad to most people. Shopping carts strung all over the place because people would take them to the bus stops and the shopping centers wouldn't bring them back (a silly aesthetic thing that would have helped the image of the area a lot).

4.) Final nail in the coffin. New suburban malls began opening in suburban Kansas and eastern Jackson County. Independence Mall after a slow start gained in popularity. Kansas shoppers pretty much stopped going east of state line for any reason (shopping wise) by the early 90's. The mall had no chance. Game over.

Having said all of this. That area should be redeveloped and retail would be a very viable option as part of the project. A super regional mall with four department stores and several million sq feet of retail will never happen again, but SKC could EASILY support half million to 1 million sq ft retail district of basic modest big box stores including a normal sized target or walmart. This is why I hate the Cerner project so much. I think you could do a lot of good for all of South KC by building a major mixed use project (incorporating Cerner). Cerner alone without fresh retail and residential will do nothing for SKC except make look a little better from 435.

So there you go if anybody actually reads that .

[vinix1999]

Originally Posted by kcmo

This is exactly what happened.

All good points. I would add that quite a few Walmart stores look dirty and disorganized; it's why so many people I think prefer Target. I have never been to a Target that looked anything less than immaculate. Maybe the Hypermart was even worse; I was only in there once.

Also, the "guard towers" were the most ridiculous, stupid things the mall management could have built to alleviate the bad image of the place.

Finally, the immediate area around Bannister was never particularly prosperous, unlike the two remaining big malls (Oak Park and Independence Center).

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by vinix1999

All good points. I would add that quite a few Walmart stores look dirty and disorganized; it's why so many people I think prefer Target. I have never been to a Target that looked anything less than immaculate. Maybe the Hypermart was even worse; I was only in there once.

Also, the "guard towers" were the most ridiculous, stupid things the mall management could have built to alleviate the bad image of the place.

Finally, the immediate area around Bannister was never particularly prosperous, unlike the two remaining big malls (Oak Park and Independence Center).

Target and Walmart bring two very different demographics. The Target by Independence Center is across the street from a Walmart there and the people in the two stores are like night and day. They are both cheap places to shop, but Target is a little more expensive and I guess it's just enough make a big difference.

I mentioned the area around Bannister not being great. But actually the areas around Oak Park and Independence Center are not what you might thing they are either. The difference is Oak Park and Indep are still super regional malls. Those malls could easily fail in a matter of years due to reputation alone especially as more and more options open in newer more affluent areas. This is why both of those malls are so careful in how they react to kids hanging out there, any incidents that happen etc.

[denverian]

Originally Posted by kcmo

Target and Walmart bring two very different demographics. The Target by Independence Center is across the street from a Walmart there and the people in the two stores are like night and day. They are both cheap places to shop, but Target is a little more expensive and I guess it's just enough make a big difference.

I mentioned the area around Bannister not being great. But actually the areas around Oak Park and Independence Center are not what you might thing they are either. The difference is Oak Park and Indep are still super regional malls. Those malls could easily fail in a matter of years due to reputation alone especially as more and more options open in newer more affluent areas. This is why both of those malls are so careful in how they react to kids hanging out there, any incidents that happen etc.

Yes, Target and WM attract such different demographics. We have one of each near us and they're night and day. The WM near us is always messy and everyone in there looks like they're on food stamps. Plus very high shoplift rate.

The last time I remember going to Banister Mall was around 1984ish. The main reason we rarely went there was because we lived near Metcalf South and Oak Park. I don't think Banister had anything those two malls didn't have.

[kcatheart]

But this is what I don't get? Why WOULD the city bring in so much section 8 to an area that was so hot? They would never do that to the plaza, correct? They must have known by bringing in so many low income/section 8, it would ultimately destroy the area? It seems that they intentionally brought down one of the most uprising section of the city at that time. It doesn't make sense to me to intentionally destroy a good thing!?

[CSD610]

Bannister Mall was a shopping mall in the southeast corner of Kansas City, Missouri opened on August 6, 1980. After nearly 27 years of operation, the mall closed on May 31, 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannister_Mall


Per Wikipedia

[CrownVic95]

Annie's Santa Fe was a big attraction there in the early 80s and good enough that I went out of my way to take customers there back then.

The Bannister Mall story is a sad one indeed. But even more sad is that nationwide there are malls that are dead and dying long before their time as our dwindling middle class buys more and more online.