LEAWOOD, KS-AMC Theatres has confirmed plans that it will move out of its current headquarters in downtown Kansas City, MO and into the $350-million Park Place development here. The movie theater chain will expand from 90,000 square feet and into a 130,000-square-foot, $30-million new four-story building.
Sources tell GlobeSt.com that the company’s current office location at 920 Main St. is too outdated and cramped. The company began looking last year for new space downtown, but the reset of the offices are no real improvement, the source says. The firm was founded in downtown Kansas City, MO in 1920; and with 360 theaters across the United States and Canada, had revenues its past fiscal year of $2.4 billion.
City and Missouri officials tried to provide incentives to entice the company to stay in the downtown. However, an AMC spokeswoman tells GlobeSt.com that the company likes the Park Place area, and the firm is also going to receive an incentive package in the “mid-$40-million range,” she says.
The company will take over 115,000 square feet at its new office, and have another 15,000 square feet to grow into, the spokeswoman says. “We really like what is offered at Park Place, it’s near shopping and dining, and an existing AMC theater,” she says. We knew if we were going to move 400 people, we should make it worthwhile.”
Park Place was created in 2004 by developers Jeffrey Alpert and Melanie Mann of Leawood. The two started then to create the 30-acre mixed-use site.
Alpert tells GlobeSt.com that the $350-million project has gone through a few phases since then, and will ultimately have about 200,000 square feet of retail, 350,000 square feet of office, 350 residential units and two hotels. Currently, about 65% of the commercial is completed, an Aloft hotel has been built and the residential is still going through zoning, Alpert says.
The movie theater firm is still in negotiations to lease its new building for 12 years, and the company will be the largest office tenant at the site when the offices are finished in April 2013, Alpert says. “We’re still in the early design stages on the building.”
He says office demand has been good for the site, even though “we opened the same day as the recession started.” In July, law firm Douthit Frets Rouse Gentile & Rhodes LLC announced it will lease 20,000 square feet there, as well as Generali USA, which is moving its corporate headquarters from Lenexa, KS to a new $15-million building here this year. Other tenants include the regional headquarters of IBM and Northwestern Mutual Life.
Retail hasn’t done as well, Alpert says, though restaurants have flocked to the site, including California Pizza Kitchen and Ra Sushi. “We’re going to open another three restaurants here in the next five weeks: Gordon Biersch, 801 Chop House and Mestizo by celebrity chef Aaron Sanchez,” Alpert says.
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