SubTropolis

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SubTropolis

SubTropolis is a 55,000,000 square foot (5,060,000 m³), 1,100-acre manmade cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City, Missouri, United States that is claimed to be the world's largest underground storage facility.

Developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc., it has trademarked the phrase World's Largest Underground Business Complex (TM).

Dug into the Bethany Falls limestone mine SubTropolis is at places 160 feet beneath the surface. It has a grid of 16 ft high, 40 ft wide tunnels separated by 25 ft square limestone pillars created by the room and pillar method of hard rock mining. The complex contains almost seven miles (11 km) of illuminated, paved roads and several miles of railroad track. Currently 5,000,000 square feet (460,000 m³) is occupied and 10,000,000 square feet (920,000 m³) are "improved." About 3.2 acres of available space are added each year as active mining continues.

The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (18 to 21 °C) year-round. The United States Postal Service leases space in SubTropolis for its collectible stamp operations.

On the north edge of the complex Hunt was to develop the Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun amusement park complex. Hunt's extensive business dealings in Clay County were to contribute to the Chiefs having their NFL Training Camp at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri until 1991.

Other facilities like SubTropolis exist although not on the same scale, such as the abandoned mine in Butler, Pennsylvania used by Corbis and the US Federal Government for secure storage. As the room and pillar mining method is used to extract limestone throughout the Midwest, many companies are looking at ways to utilize the hundreds of millions of square feet created in this manner for everything from mushroom farming to crude oil stockpiling.