Country Club Plaza

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kansas City's Country Club Plaza

The Country Club Plaza (often referred to as the Plaza) is an upscale shopping district in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. It was the first shopping center in the world designed to accommodate shoppers arriving by automobile.^{[citation needed]} The 55-acre (223,000 m²) site is about four miles (6.44 km) south of downtown, between 45th and 51st streets to the north and south and between Broadway and Madison Street to the east and west. The Kansas state line is one mile (1.6 km) to the west. Established in 1923 and designed architecturally after Seville, Spain, the Plaza comprises high-end retail establishments, restaurants, and entertainment venues, as well as offices. The neighborhoods surrounding the Plaza consist of apartment buildings and upscale houses, especially those of the Country Club District built along Ward Parkway on the Plaza's southern and southwestern side. The Country Club Plaza is named in the Project for Public Spaces' list 60 of the World's Great Places.

1 History
2 Layout and use
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

The Country Club Plaza was named for the associated Country Club District, the neighborhood developed by J.C. Nichols which surrounded the Kansas City Country Club (now Loose Park). It is situated at the northern terminus of Ward Parkway, a boulevard known for its wide, manicured median lined with fountains and statuary that traverses the Country Club District. J.C. Nichols selected the location carefully to provide residents with a direct route to the Plaza along Ward Parkway.

Brush Creek on the Plaza at Night

Nichols began acquiring the land for the Plaza in 1907, in an area of Kansas City that was then known as Brush Creek Valley. When his plans were first announced, the project was dubbed 'Nichols' Folly' because of the then seemingly undesirable location; at the time, the only developed land in the valley belonged to the Country Day School (now the Pembroke Hill School), and the rest was known for pig farming.^{[citation needed]} Nichols employed architect Edward Buehler Delk to design the new shopping center. The Plaza opened in 1923 to immediate success, and it has lasted with little interruption since that year. New Urbanist land developer Andres Duany noted in Community Builder: The Life & Legacy of J.C. Nichols that the Country Club Plaza has had the longest life of any planned shopping center in the history of the world.

For its first four decades, the Plaza combined some higher-end shops with a mix of more mainstream retailers such as Sears and Woolworth's, as well such quotidian enterprises as a bowling alley, movie theater, and a grocery store to serve the daily needs of residents of the district.^{[citation needed]} Starting in the late 1960s, competition from newer suburban shopping malls led management to reposition the Plaza with luxury boutiques, higher end chain restaurants, and upscale retailers. On September 12, 1977, a major flood of Brush Creek caused severe damage to the Plaza and resulted in a number of deaths. The flood prompted a vast renovation and revitalization of the area that has allowed it not only to survive but to thrive.

In 1998, the J.C. Nichols Company sold the Country Club Plaza to real estate proprietor Highwoods Properties.

[edit] Layout and use

Giralda Tower, inspired by the original from the Cathedral of Seville

The basic design of the Country Club Plaza reflects classic European influences, especially those of Seville, Spain. There are more than thirty statues, murals, and tile mosaics on display in the area, as well as major architectural reproductions, such as a half-sized Giralda Tower of Seville (the tallest building in the Plaza). The Plaza also includes precise light fixture reproductions of San Francisco's Path of Gold streetlights. Other works of art celebrate the classics, nature, and historical American themes such as westward expansion.

Although the Plaza was designed and built to accommodate visitors arriving by automobile, it is unlike modern shopping malls with sprawling parking lots: parking is discreetly concealed in multilevel parking garages beneath and behind the shops, or hidden on the rooftops of buildings. Thus the Plaza does not suffer from the sprawl that afflicts modern shopping centers, and this design makes it friendly to pedestrians.

In 1925 a tradition began of outlining the Plaza in colored lights to celebrate Christmas. The yearly lighting ceremony is called Plaza Lights. On Thanksgiving night, thousands of people visit the Plaza to enjoy the local entertainment and to watch the lights initiate the winter season.

The Plaza was also the first shopping center to use the percentage lease, where rents are based on a percentage of the gross receipts of tenants.^{[citation needed]} This concept was novel at the time when J.C. Nichols invented it, but it is now a standard practice in commercial leases.