Bannister Mall 1980-2009

I barely ever went to this mall, i have subtle memories of it. I remember going to see the first Batman movie here back in 1989. "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. The site will be reused for a new Kansas City Wizards soccer stadium

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[citation needed], the Eden Prairie Center in Eden Prarie, Minnesota was chosen instead.

By the mid to late 1990s with newer and better deployments 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 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 is largely due to migration to the suburbs and the general demise of the indoor mall concept. 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. Even 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.[2] The Bannister Wal-Mart was one of the company's earliest Hypermart stores[3], but it later changed to the Supercenter format. At the end of May 2007, Bannister Mall closed its doors.
Demolition of the mall began on January 21, 2009. The demolition is expected to take four months to complete.[4] As of July 2009, very little of the mall remained, and it is no longer standing. The site will be redeveloped as The Trails and will include a new stadium for the Kansas City Wizards, twelve soccer fields for tournaments, 1,500,000 square feet (139,000 m2) of office space, and one million square feet of retail space. The redevelopment is being financed partly through $230 million in local tax increment financing approved by the Kansas City Council and $30 million in state tax credits from the state of Missouri."

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• bannister
• mall
• goodbye
• gone
• demolished
• failed
• empty
• sad
• economy
• structure
• money
• abandoned
• vandalized
• shopping
• center
• kansas
• city
• eerie
• dead

[indyfan22k]

What killed it ? and what's built on it now?

[Archmetal06]

@indyfan22k other more popular malls with flocking crowds to those malls destroyed this one i would say. also crime and corruption in the Bannister area was bad, so it lead to big losses in businesses. Currently there is nothing built there, there were plans for a soccer stadium but that was postponed i also hear there are plans now for a complex that will contain commercial and residential occupants all in one structure. Sort of like loft apartments above the commercial/retail offices.

[Archmetal06]

it sure was a big ugly mall. too bad it's gone.

[MissMaddy881]

@Archmetal06 it looked like a nice mall to me. the mall where i'm from is doing great. where was the movie theater located?

[Archmetal06]

@MissMaddy881 it was somewhere in the mall.

[scottieray]

I lived in KC in the late 80's. I remember going to Banister. One thing I do not miss about KC or St. Louis is the racism. I have lived in Arkansas for 20 years now and you hardly ever hear such blatant racist remarks. Can't say all things are equal down here between all people, but I can say that the upper Midwest is shockingly racist. Maybe that is why the Northern States are continually losing population and jobs while the Southern States are prospering.

[Archmetal06]

@scottieray that's interesting. KC is very diverse now. The only area which would be Johnson County, the people of Johnson County have median or above incomes , stuck up and white. Some probably moved from the Missouri side which has more black to the kansas side for that reason. I do believe that. It does not necessarily make them racist though. They probably just feel more comfortable being around people of their own race. I'm sure blacks feel the same way.

[sitka77]

HOW could they possibly destroy such a beautiful work of art as these malls???! Everytime I see a mall destroyed that retains such retro design or see these new (redone) malls with white and silver and everything is white or cream.. it drives me crazy! Why can't we retain some of the 70s designs.. with orange, brown and red like we used to remember?? This decade has no design trademarks to remember. These malls need to be saved!

[mrboholt]

Yes, I realize there is a deeper problem here to solve, but personally, I'm sick and tired of having to watch society "devolve" to where we have to go back to shopping in unenclosed malls, subject to the whims of the weather, to discourage this loitering of the thugs and the gangs. I'm also tired of no one having the guts to stand up and mention the elephant in the room!

[Jadika1979]

Thank you so much for posting this video. I'm 33 now and grew up going to this mall pretty much every weekend. And if there was ever a song to put to those pictures that would be it. It gave me chills to hear that music while looking at those pictures. So many memories good and bad. I sure hope when we die we get to visit old places because i would damn sure be hanging out in this mall again. RIP Bannister Mall.

[jw1999jw]

Do you know what kind of elevators were at this mall? I am guessing Westinghouse because Westinghouse elevators were really popular in the early 80's.

[sup1990able]

if i could walk the halls of bannister mall one last time. All my childhood memories were there.....i wish i could relive those moments again

[sup1990able]

im 20 now but i remember my mom taking me and a bunch of my little cousins to bannister when the robotic dinosaurs were there...man this takes me back to memory lane :.(

[luv2boral1]

Mall owners were bullies though, telling store how long they had to stay open, increasing rent beyond reasonable, too greedy and now lots of empty and abandoned space. Paper shuffling short term thinking commercial real estate thinking. Many mall owners were their own worst enemies, but that happens a lot in many different industries, the hard lessons eventually crop up. Good posting/video, thanks!

[luv2boral1]

Malls had a huge impact on the old main street shops. They were good for part time jobs, places to hang out for all ages, not just kids. They seemed like the answer in the 1970s to the 1990s. Seemed like direct store entry strip malls were becoming popular, but they are not doing so well. Many new ones have long term empty slots Now online shopping has hurt many of these, but you don't get the employment opportunities that brick and mortar retail stores give. Too lean and selective for jobs

[troymontague]

This was such a beautiful mall. It held the dubious destintion as being Americas largest mall when built. (for a short time) Unfortunately, Developers built it in a "not so great" part of Kansas City. I recall news snippets from the early 90's about a string of parking lot muggings and other crimes that brought the mall to its knees, Also, there was the "ethnic demograph" that took its toll as well. No one wants to visit a mall that is populated with thugs and gangsta wannabes loitering about.

[awesome1353]

soccer is gay

[UJusWannaBMe]

that made me so mad that they tore down Bannister, they didn't even try to save it. It was a good mall. What really made me mad was that they decided not to build the soccer stadium there.

[KeithCindyPanama]

To bad after 20yrs I wonder if that is the youngest mall. I love the wood work.