A Sense Of Park Place
New mixed-use development adds unique offering to Kansas shopping district.
Susan H. Fishman

Park Place will include 125,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space when it opens in Leawood, Kansas, this fall.

An urban-style neighborhood planned for Leawood, Kansas, is expected to bring a distinct shopping experience to residents of Johnson County. Park Place, which is currently in Phase One of development, will feature retail, office, a luxury hotel and spa, parks and gardens. Park Place Developers, LLC was formed by Kansas City-area developers Melanie Mann and Jeffrey Alpert to realize their vision for an urban-style, mixed-use community in the heart of Leawood. Mann and Alpert are local residents and have developed several projects surrounding Park Place, including The Woods, Hawthorne Plaza, Edgewood and Leawood Commons.

“We are niche developers as opposed to merchant developers,” says Alpert. “We had been looking for an opportunity to do a unique mixed-use project for a number of years, so when this piece of ground became available, we felt it was the perfect opportunity to execute what we wanted.”

Scheduled for completion in fall 2007, Park Place will include an upscale hotel with a spa and 120 guest rooms and 32 condo homes; 125,000 square feet of retail and 85,000 square feet of professional office space above shops and restaurants. Architect Richard Heapes of White Plains, New York-based Street-Works LLC, the project’s master designer and retail leasing consultant, expects Park Place to be a working, living, sustainable neighborhood where residents can walk to shops and restaurants for the amenities they desire and the services they require.

Hotels, condominiums, office space and retail will all be part of Park Place. Signed retail tenants include California Pizza Kitchen, Trezo Vino Wine Bar and Bistro, The Gallery at Park Place, two PB&J concept restaurants, Le Reve Nail Salon and The Learning Tree.

Situated on 30 acres near 117th/Nall, Park Place incorporates a significant amount of green space. Phase One includes a “village green” surrounded by shops and restaurants with outdoor seating. The sidewalks are unique in their design, featuring a 20-foot width from the building face to the curb. The idea is that the first 10 feet out from the building provide a clear pedestrian path and easy access in and out of shops, and the next 10 feet from that point out to the curb is for extensive landscaping, large trees, pedestrian furniture and sidewalk dining.

Signed tenants include California Pizza Kitchen, Trezo Vino Wine Bar and Bistro, The Gallery at Park Place, two PB&J concept restaurants, Le Reve Nail Salon and The Learning Tree. W Hotels’ newest concept also makes its way to Park Place. Aloft, scheduled to open summer 2008, is a seven-story hotel with 193 rooms. Great for young professionals and business professionals, Aloft offers stylishly-furnished, loft-style guest rooms, oversized showers, flat-panel televisions and numerous easy-to-use, tech-savvy services. The hotel has a cool bar scene with a hip feel that incorporates well with the urban style of Park Place. A second hotel is also making its home at Park Place. Element, a new extended-stay hotel brand from Westin, combines modern design with smart design features to make travelers’ stays easier, from modular furniture designed to encourage multi-tasking and productivity to swiveling flat-screen televisions. Ideal for families, the eight-story hotel will include 207 rooms that include the signature Westin Heavenly Bed, custom-designed closet systems, state-of-the-art fitness facilities, healthy food options and elevated public areas for guests to relax, rejuvenate and socialize. Each room also includes a kitchenette. Both hotels are owned by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide and will open in summer 2008.

The remaining retail mix will be made up of a combination of unique, local, upscale shops and boutiques, with some nationals thrown in.

“A significant portion of the nationals are already covered in our submarket,” says Alpert.

Hawthorne Plaza, which Alpert and Mann sold about a year and a half ago had a couple of national tenants like Talbots and Jos. A. Bank, but it was made up of mostly small, local players. “That’s really what made the character of the center,” Alpert says. “And that’s what we really envision for the retail portion of Park Place.”

Park Place’s immediate submarket boasts a $100,000-plus median income and has approximately 13 million square feet of office space. There is a nucleus of lifestyle and specialty shopping centers in the immediate vicinity of Park Place. RED Development is working on a center just down the street that will be anchored by the first Crate & Barrel in the market and Town Center Plaza, a 750,000-square-foot lifestyle center by Poag & McEwen, is just down the street.

“Collectively, it’s becoming the premier retail destination in Johnson County,” says Alpert. “It really is a cohesive retail district that is unique in all of Kansas City.”

And Park Place, itself, will stand out in the crowd, adds Alpert.

“There’s nothing like it in Johnson County,” he says.  “It is mixed-use, urban-styled and high density relative to anything else in the market. What we’re trying to create is a sense of place, and the fact that it’s pedestrian-oriented and has structured parking also makes it unique for a retail district in Johnson County.”


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