THE PLAZA PLAN AND THE HIGHWOOD/POLSINELLI-SHUGART CONTROVERSY:

THE PLAZA PLAN AND THE HIGHWOODS/POLSINELLI-SHUGART CONTROVERSY:
                           
                                                       KAYJATTA
INTRODUCTION:

The Plaza is Kansas City’s premier outdoor shopping center. It has a large regional and international appeal, as evidenced by its strong tourist attraction.
The boundaries of the Plaza stretched from 43rd street to 55th street, and State Line to the Paseo.
The Plaza is designed with characteristic low-rise buildings with Spanish architectural theme, adorned with works of art, sculpture, fountains and flowers that beautify the streetscape (sidewalks and public spaces). The Plaza comprises of:
1. Country Club Plaza- developed by the J.C. Nichols Company and consists of restaurants, hotels, offices, retail stores and boutiques.
2. Cultural District- which consists of Nelson Atkins Museum, Art Institute, University of Missouri, and Rockhurst College.
The design concepts that were envisioned by J.C. Nichols and other founding fathers of the Plaza since the 1920s are still basically valid.  This is perhaps why any changes in zoning (the Plaza Plan) purely to accommodate Highwood/Polsinelli-Shugart office building will mark a serious departure from not only good ‘law’ but also a tradition of good planning practice.
The Plaza Plan was originally approved in 1989 by the City Council and reaffirmed in 1995. The purposes of the Plaza Plan, among other things are:
1. To maintain the quality and unique characteristics of the Plaza area.
2. To ensure all new developments are compatible with its existing design features.
3. To conserve and preserve the amenities of the Plaza while accommodating growth and change.
The design characteristics of the Plaza include the following:
1. Low-rise (2-3 storey) bell-towered buildings with similar architectural style and materials.
2. Continuity of shops and restaurants along sidewalks.
3. Display windows and entrances to buildings facing sidewalks to create an active place for window shopping.
4. Inter-connected sidewalks decorated with fountains, flowers, sculpture and other works of art
5. Buildings are adjacent to the sidewalks and facing one another to create a sense of enclosure.

PRESENTATION OF FACTS:

Highwoods, a commercial property management firm proposes to construct a mammoth office building of nearly 205,000 square feet, seven to ten storeys in the area of the Plaza that is zoned District R-5 disallowing general office uses.  This Behemoth of a building-which will require the demolition of the Neptune Condominium and the historic Balcony building-, is to be leased to a law firm, Polsinelli/Shugart LLP. Both the Westport Area Plan and the Plaza Plan recommends only multi-family and retail uses for this area of the Plaza.
Highwoods subsequently petitions the City Council to review and change the zoning to allow its construction project to go through.
The City Council is poised to adopt and grant a zoning change to allow the project to proceed, despite widespread public opposition. The Kansas City Star (newspaper) which is essentially the advertising agent for Highwoods is also in support of the planned construction.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE HIGHWOOD/POLSINELLI-SHUGART BUILDING:

The impact of the project in relation to the Plaza Plan includes the following:
1. Traffic –this building will complicate the movement of traffic in and out of the Plaza area and will require severe modification to Broadway and 47th street.
2. Parking-the project will reduce private off-street parking spaces from 599 to only 46 unrestricted spaces to other Plaza customers.
3. Winter shadowing- a large swath of Broadway will be cut off from the sunlight by this giant building therefore making it harder to clear ice and snow during winter.
4. The Bowl Concept is violated.
5. Height- conservatively measured at seven storeys, but may actually be up to ten storeys, is way beyond the recommended height for this area.
6. Massing- the building has a monolithic form thereby violating the architectural features recommended for this area.
7. Setback-violates the existing building/sidewalk relationship.
8. Pedestrianization- not easily accessible to pedestrians.
9. Property values- the building will obviously affect property values negatively in this area.

PLANNING THEORY: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

Both the Plaza Plan and the Westport Area Plan are comprehensive plans. They have long-range comprehensive goals sweeping across wide ranging development and
environmental issues over a long-term period. The Plaza Plan for example has been approved over 20 years ago and is still the official binding document that guides the development of the Kansas City Plaza with regards to transportation (traffic), housing, business (shopping) and more.
Comprehensive planning, as put forward by Alan Altshuler, requires understanding of the overall goals of the community. In this regard, it could be argued that the City Council’s unitary decision (as contained in the “Staff Report”) in favor of Highwood/Polsinelli-Shugart in this epic controversy is not based on an understanding of the goals of the community. Therefore, Professor Altshuler may have had a point by arguing that “City Planners may have a shallow factual and causal knowledge in public policy than specialist planners”. Consequently, the City Council, without any consultation with specialist or advocacy planning alternatives may have deprived itself of all the facts and thus arrived at a decision that negates public good. This contention is consistent with Banfield’s (1959) characterization of planning as a “rational process of selecting the best means to choose the correct answer”. Peter Marris, notwithstanding, doubts there is any such “right answer”, arguing that the “right answer” is a product of the subjective decision of the decision-making body. The City Council, by using a unitary and arbitrary pro-development decision making process may also have debunked the fine qualities of the “Planning Imagination”  outlined by Leonie Sandercock, namely: political, audacious, creative, and therapeutic.
The benefits of plural plans (Advocacy Planning) as a democratic process as indicated by Paul Davidoff- competitiveness, improvement, and involvement- appears lacking in the City Council’s approach.
Professor Davidoff, himself a consummate attorney and planner decries the unitary, aristocratic, neo-conservative approach pervasive in city planning, and calls for a more contentious, adversarial and pluralistic approach.
The five characteristics of the non-Euclidian planning model-normative, innovative, political, transactive, and social learning-is in agreement with Banfield’s ‘Rational Process’ as well as Davidoff’s pluralistic democratic approach.

CONCLUSION:

Certainly, imposing a 7 to 10 storey mammoth office building in the heart of the Plaza in a flagrant violation of the Plaza Plan, the Westport Plan and all the legal instruments that have been put in place to guide the development and growth of the Plaza, and in the process knocking down the Neptune Condominium and the historic Balcony building, is not going to go down well in Kansas City. The Highwood/Polsinelli-Shugart building is like a new dislocated species in a new ecology; the environmental and economic impact could be severe.
Local businesses, property prices, and the total ‘pedestrian experience’ will be impacted negatively; and interestingly the Polsinelli-Shugart law firm will not create any new employment.

REFERENCES:

1. The Plaza Plan
2. The Westport Plan
3. Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning, Paul Davidoff
4. Advocacy Planning as a Bridge…, Peter Marris
5. Why the Rational Paradigm Persists, Dalton
6. Toward a non-Euclidian Mode of Planning, Friedman, J.
7. Towards a Planning Imagination for the 21st century, Sandercock, L.