James Fowler's Commentary

This was the first shopping center North of the River in Kansas City, Mo. First developed as outdoor mall in the 1950's. Woolworth's on one end, Macy's on the other. I went there with my parents for school clothes and such through the 60's.

Sometime after I left Kansas City in the 1970's, Antioch expanded and became "enclosed". Sears set up a large operation and Antioch doubled in size. Upon returning to KC in 2007, Antioch is a barren wasteland with only the Sears store (and the tell-tale kiss-of-death, Burlington Coat Factory) still in operation.

There is absolutely no reason to put any energy into rebuilding this operation as a traditional mall. The 120 acres of parking lot form a blighted solar furnace in the summertime.

Best use for this property - dig down twenty feet and build all underground parking. Then build a deck on top to use as a pad for several low-rise apartment/townhouse/condo clusters and several smaller footprint local shopping clusters, medical clinics and professional offices. The location is perfect for empty nesters looking for a walking community as well as new families looking for a neighborhood to start their families. Biggest store should be a grocery store. Connect all these clusters with sidewalks surrounded by lawns, tree planters and flower boxes. Everything visible should look like a "car-free" village. Business could survive on the resident population. Should be able to get 500-700 housing units. All commercial deliveries and car traffic would be underground - you could drive right up to the entrance of the particular cluster you wanted via underground. That would end the hideous rainwater run-off problem that destroys local creeks and end the ridiculous expense of snowplowing in the winter. There would be enough surface area to install large scale geothermal heating/cooling system plus solar-panel roofs throughout. Affordable housing and the chance for a real neighborhood rather than the failed "single-use" development pattern that Malls themselves represent.

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