PrintWeathering the Storm
In December, workers at Park Place, Leawood’s mixed-use development at 117th and Nall, were busy putting the finishing touches on the new headquarters of Muller, Bressler & Brown, a Kansas City advertising agency.
It was a fitting end to a very busy year for Johnson County’s New Urbanist gem. Since December 2010, with the addition of RPS Financial Group Inc., the local network office of insurance giant Northwestern Mutual, Park Place has added 120,000 square feet of office space, says Park Place co-developer Melanie Mann.
Park Place has managed to attract myriad businesses, restaurants and retailers from all over the metro area, including Crown Center, Corporate Woods, Brookside and downtown KC to this hip area despite a rock-and-rollercoaster economy. Park Place, which boasts Johnson County’s only outdoor skating rink, has become an ultra-popular destination for everyone from nightlife-seekers to high-profile chefs and business owners.
Muller, Bressler & Brown, however, is a transplant from the city’s crown jewel of development: the Country Club Plaza. The iconic outdoor shopping area, known by Kansas Citians as merely the “Plaza” was, as it happens, one of the primary inspirations for Park Place, says Jeff Alpert, Mann’s business partner.
“When we were planning Park Place, we looked at projects all over the country, and one of the best examples happened to be in our own backyard,” Alpert says. “After 85 years, the Plaza still has the highest-value real estate in Kansas City.”
Now in its fifth year, Park Place has a ways to go to catch the Plaza. But despite its beginnings on the wrong side of the housing bubble and the historic recession that followed, Park Place is holding its own—and then some.
“It was unfortunate that we opened in 2008, but we’ve endured the downturn better than most,” Mann says. “We’re really proud of what we have. We’ve held true to our vision.”
Being a mixed-use development has helped tremendously, Alpert says. When the housing market tanked, the luxury condominiums, lofts and townhomes planned for Park Place had to be put on the back burner.
Fortunately, the other pieces of the puzzle — restaurants, shops, offices, an award-winning hotel — fell into place. Park Place rang in 2012 with 17 shops and services, 9 restaurants and The Ice at Park Place.
On the restaurant front, in the last three months of 2011 alone, Park Place added three: powerhouse brewery Gordon Biersch, 801 Chop House and Mestizo, which is owned by Food Network star Chef Aarón Sánchez.
“Park Place is becoming a restaurant destination,” Mann says. “Our collection of eateries is doing extremely well.”
Retail isn’t doing too shabby, either. The latest addition is TallulahBelle’s, a store that sells art, much of it wearable, from around the world. It fits perfectly, Mann says, with her and Alpert’s vision of supporting locally-owned, one-of-a-kind stores.
“There’s nothing like it in Kansas City,” she says.
The same could be said for Park Place as a whole. In a world where people communicate more and more via digital devices, it’s important, Mann says, to create spaces that foster face-to-face contact. That’s what tenants, shoppers and diners say they like about Park Place.
“It’s an environment that provides connections with people,” she says.
The New Year promises more great things for Park Place. In 2012, the Kansas City law firm Douthit Frets will move into the top floor of a new retail/office building, now under construction. The building’s second floor will be home to The Archer Foundation, a non-profit charitable organization whose mission is to advance entrepreneurial achievement in Kansas.
Further down the road, in 2013, movie theater giant AMC will move into its new headquarters in a building, yet to be built, on Park Place’s northwest corner. A second Park Place hotel will go up next door. Alpert hopes to make an announcement about the hotel in the first quarter of 2012.
Given the risky hand Park Place was dealt—opening on the edge of the greatest economic slump since the Great Depression—Alpert and Mann look back four years on, and the view’s not bad at all.
“In this environment, I never expected anything like that,” Alpert says, referring to Park Place’s recent successes. “We’re extremely pleased. And the payoff for us is just being able to see the wide variety of people who have taken to it, who come here on a daily basis to enjoy it.”
“One of our objectives was to create an enduring place,” Mann says. “We both feel we’ve done that.”
HOUSING: BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
Six years ago, when Jeff Alpert and Melanie Mann were sketching in the details of the dream that would eventually take form as Park Place, the condominium market was red hot.
Times have changed, to say the least. In 2012, on the other side of one of the worst housing slumps in U.S. history, Alpert and Mann admit that they look back and say, “We thought we’d be further along than we are.”
Further along on the condos, the lofts and the townhomes that from the beginning, were central to their vision.
It may be later than they thought, but the dream is about to start coming true. This spring, Park Place will begin construction on its first 177 housing units, with plans for 200 more to follow.
The units will be rentals, which was not the original plan. By the time they’re built, the residential piece of Park Place will look very much like what Alpert and Mann envisioned.
“We expect a similar balance,” Mann says. “The timing is just different.”
For more information on Park Place, visit www.parkplaceleawood.com.
