This is the second of a seven part series on the Great Mall of the Great Plains. Read parts one, three, four, five, six, and seven.
An aerial view of the land the Great Mall of the Great Plains would eventually sit on, 1991.
If you have read Romeo and Juliet, you probably remember the classic line, “A mall by any other name would smell as sweet.” That’s not exactly the line, but it’s something like that. Anyways, I have to assume that phrase was on everybody’s mind in October of 1992 when Jordon Perlmutter & Co. announced that in a joint venture with fellow developers Petrie Dierman Kughn of Washington D.C. they would be building a one-story, 1,000,000 square-foot outlet mall in Olathe. They intended to buy another thirty-four acres from the Olathe-Santa Fe Partnership soon. Construction was expected to start in the fall of 1993, and the mall would be open by the spring of 1995. The mall would feature outlets for high-end department stores, seven to nine anchors, discount retailers, a food court, and possibly also a movie theater. No tenants were signed yet, but developers were optimistic.
And the mall’s name? “Southpark Plaza” was out. Now it was going to be (cue trumpet fanfare) The Great Mall of the Great Plains.
By 1992, after a few years with a sluggish economy, American shoppers were flocking to outlet malls. The Lawrence Riverfront Plaza Factory Outlet had opened in 1990 and enjoyed enough success that another company built an outlet mall basically just across the river in the early ‘90s. All around the country outlet malls were a bright spot in otherwise cloudy retail atmosphere. Regular shopping centers in general were considered overbuilt, and it made sense at the time for the developers and Olathe to bet on an outlet mall, even if it was unconventional for one to be so close to a highly-populated area.
At the time there was an unwritten rule called the “sensitivity barrier” that discouraged outlet centers from building within 40 miles of places where regular department stores existed, since the outlets would potentially be selling the same merchandise for much less. (They at least wanted to make you drive for it!) But if it was unconventional at the time, it seems that retail norm was eroding, because as the Great Mall was being pitched, the owners of the ailing Indian Springs Shopping Center in Kansas City, Kansas (a mere twenty miles away) were considering converting their mall into an outlet mall. This upped the pressure on Olathe to act quickly in getting everything approved for the developers.
This time the Great Mall’s developers requested $85 million in industrial revenue bonds (which would make them eligible for tax abatements under Kansas law), and property tax abatements to the tune of 50% for ten years. They said the property tax incentives would help them draw in tenants, and they couldn’t finalize their additional financing for the project until they had commitments from half of their tenants.
According to a city report, the mall was going to generate $2.7 million per year in property taxes for Olathe (without abatement). It could be expected to generate as much as $207 million in retail sales annually, and employ 1,800 people. In other places, outlet malls had been popular with tourists, and from the Great Mall’s beginning it seems that bringing in tourists was recognized by all parties as an essential part of the mall’s success strategy. The report estimated that half of the sales in the mall would be to people living outside of Johnson County, although the developers did tell the KC Star that the 2 million people in the Kansas City area alone should generate enough business to sustain the mall.
In December, the Olathe City Council voted unanimously to approve of the $85 million in industrial revenue bonds and the property tax abatement. However, there was a catch. The City Council included a performance agreement, saying that if the mall failed to produce a certain amount of sales tax revenue, the city would be allowed to end or reduce the property tax abatement. They also required that the developers open the mall by 1996, lest they lose at least a year of abatement.
Some citizens, journalists, and officials from surrounding cities criticized the tax incentives to varying degrees, saying that they were cheating residents by lowering the amount of money that could have gone to public services. It was also argued that existing Olathe retailers who were paying full property tax would now be at an unfair disadvantage when competing with the mall. The criticism voiced by a handful of officials from surrounding cities was that this meant they would probably also have to start offering greater tax incentives to draw businesses in, and there was mild concern that they would lose sales tax revenue as Olatheans started shopping in their own city more (which, for Olathe, was the main point of the mall).
However, proponents pointed out that residents wouldn’t benefit at all if the mall wasn’t built. In the KC Star, Charley Vogt of the Olathe Chamber of Commerce was quoted saying, “50% of something is a lot better than 100% of nothing.” Many Olatheans were also happy because if abatements secured a mall, and the mall paid off for the city, the tax burden of homeowners stood to decrease. No less than Olathe’s mayor, Jacob F. Ruf, weighed in on the matter, writing in to the KC Star to defend the decision and provide some optimistic numbers. He said that the City of Olathe had carefully considered the mall investment, and believed it would be good for Olathe, Johnson County, and the entire metropolitan area.
The next month (January of 1993), the KC Star reported that Kansas representatives were discussing revisions to abatement procedures. The statewide mill levy for schools was allowing “taxing entities” (such as cities) to grant tax breaks without impacting their local schools, as the money would be made up elsewhere throughout the state. Legislators hoped to change that in order to reinstate accountability and make things fairer across Kansas.
That same month, the Aetna Life Insurance Co., which owned the Indian Springs Shopping Center, was discussing expanding their mall and redefining it as an outlet center called The Great Plains Marketplace. Kansas City, Kansas, mayor Joe Steineger specifically stated their wish to get the project started before Olathe’s Great Mall, because the area probably could not sustain two outlet malls. The race between Indian Springs and the Great Mall would continue throughout 1993.
Clearly, the Great Mall was making waves from its earliest days. The mall was not without some controversy, but city officials felt it was worth the risk. Millions of dollars left Olathe every year as residents went to other cities to shop. The mall stood to increase their annual sales tax revenue 50%, from $4 million to $6 million. Revenue like that would help the mostly residential city lower the property tax burden on homeowners, and make Olathe an even more appealing place to live. And on top of that, many city officials hoped that the Great Mall would give Olathe an identity and make it a destination for people in the Kansas City area and beyond.
In January of 1994, the Great Mall’s developers released a partial tenant list of the retailers they had been able to secure. The anchors were SuperSports USA, Linens N Things, Marshalls, Service Merchandise, and Fun Factory (an arcade). Among the smaller stores were Ballard Sports Outlet, Benetton Outlet, Book Warehouse, Claire’s Boutique Outlet, Famous Footwear and No Nonsense Outlet. And, since it wouldn’t be a mall without fast food and candy, the mall would also contain a Mr. Bulky store, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Blue Chip Cookies, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, and Sbarro. Many of these stores were new to the Kansas City area, allaying some fears that the mall would cannibalize already existing businesses.
In addition to the partial tenant list, the developers announced that the newest plan for the mall was that it would be 1.2 million square-feet (the same as the nearby Oak Park Mall, which hadn’t added on its Nordstrom store yet) and have 175 stores. It was now expected to employ around 1,900 people, and would hopefully still enjoy the previously mentioned $207 million in sales every year.
Two days later, the Aetna Life Insurance Co. announced that they were dropping their plans to redevelop the Indian Springs Shopping Center.
By summer, construction of the interchange at 151st St and I-35 had begun, and street, sewer, and waterline projects were underway on the mall property. After some rezoning, grading was planned for the fall, and the mall was expected to open a year and a half later in the spring of 1996. Total construction costs for the mall were estimated at $85 million.
The interchange was completed in November, seven months ahead of schedule. The interchange was expected to open up an economic gateway for Olathe, much like the one at 119th and I-35, not just for the mall, but for all kinds of other economic opportunities. It also made the Olathe Medical Center much more accessible. One of my favorite things that I found while researching the Great Mall came in a November 30th KC Star article by John C. Patterson detailing the celebration of the opening of the interchange: “Two school buses loaded with business leaders and various government officials crossed the 151st Street interchange Tuesday in celebration of the official opening of the $28.5 million exit.” Talk about a party!
Thank you for reading this history of the Great Mall of the Great Plains. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it. I would like to thank all of the journalists at the Kansas City Star, the Kansas City Business Journal, and The Olathe News whose hard work I drew from. I would also like to thank everybody who provided pictures and/or anecdotes. Special thanks to Bryan for research tips and spending countless hours walking malls with me. And finally, thank you to all of the people who made the mall possible, and everybody who worked and shopped there and made it what it was during its all-too-short existence. If you have any memories about the mall you would like to share, please leave us a comment, or shoot me an email at kellerm@jocolibrary.org. Also, if you have any pictures of the mall you’d like to share, please send them my way!
-Mike Keller, Johnson County Library
JoCoHistory Blog 
Such extensive research! I can’t until the next installment.