| Location | Kansas City, MO, US |
|---|---|
| Address | 5600 Bannister Road |
| Opening date | August 6, 1980 |
| Closing date | May 31, 2007 |
| Owner | Stanley Spigel |
| No. of stores and services | ~50 (180 at peak) |
| No. of anchor tenants | 4 |
| No. of floors | 2 |
Bannister Mall was a shopping mall on the southeast corner of Kansas City, Missouri that closed on May 31, 2007, after being open for almost 27 years. It was originally anchored by Dillard's (formerly Macy's), JCPenney, The Jones Store, and Sears.
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Bannister Mall was built and opened in August 1980 at 5600 Bannister Road in Kansas City, Missouri between I-435 and Hillcrest Road. The area was once the site of the Three Trails (Santa Fe, California, and Oregon). The mall was one of the largest malls in the Kansas City area in a previously vital and vibrant shopping area. In the early 1980s, Bannister Mall was the "place to go" with a draw over a large area that was mostly from South Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri, and Johnson County, Kansas. In 1988-1990, an area north and east of the mall called Benjamin Plaza was added to the commercial retail area. In 1995, the mall was one of two final candidates to host the filming of Kevin Smith's film Mallrats, but when the management objected to the script, the Eden Prairie Center in Eden Prairie, Minnesota was chosen instead.
By the mid to late 1990s with newer and more desirable developments further south and in Johnson County Kansas, the area began to wane. Also, due to consistent white flight, the area around Bannister Mall earned a bad reputation as being a high crime area. This combination led to the present blight of the area. By 2005, three of the four anchor stores in the mall were gone. Bannister Mall once hosted 180 stores, but by 2007 only 50 stores were open.
In April 2007, it was announced that due to low population and rising costs of operation that the mall would close. At the time, only half of the mall was open, with the northern part blocked off. The failure of the mall was largely due to migration to the suburbs and a perception of the area being unsafe (even though other malls had similar and typical crime rates). The only new construction in the area is the replacement of the Kansas City Fire Department's Fire Station 41, which once was facing Bannister Road and now is facing Hillcrest Road. The nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter closed in January 2007, which was a day before a new Wal-Mart opened on the site of the former Blue Ridge Mall now called Blue Ridge Crossing.[1] The Bannister Wal-Mart was one of the company's earliest Hypermart stores[2], but it later changed to the Supercenter format. At the end of May 2007, Bannister Mall closed its doors.
The mall was demolished in early 2009.[3] In December 2009, the Kansas City Wizards, who had previously planned to build a new stadium on the site, finalized plans to build their stadium in Kansas instead. Lane4 Property Group, Inc. stated that they will continue development of the Bannister Mall site, but as a retail and office project.[4]
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