The nearly 50-year-old Quivira Square shopping center at the corner of 79th Street and Quivira Road in Lenexa is on track to get a revamp.

The large retail center is currently home to Element Fitness, a physical therapy studio, an animal clinic, Hillcrest Thrift Shop and donation center, Third Coast Pizza and Iglesia de Dios Ministerial.

It’s in a stretch of Quivira Road — between 79th and 95th streets — identified in 2018 as a potential redevelopment corridor.

The Lenexa Planning Commission last week unanimously approved a final plan for the upgrades. The plan wasn’t individually discussed, but approved alongside a series of other procedural planning items.

Quivira Square’s three buildings will get upgrades

• There is roughly 54,000 square feet of retail space in the Quivira Square shopping center, which was built in the mid-1970s.
• The facade of the three buildings will be modernized, painted and re-clad with synthetic wood and stone.
• The buildings will be more of a neutral gray color with wood accents instead of the orange tone they are now.
• The plan will not touch Margarita’s Mexican Restaurant, which sits at the northwest corner of the intersection of 79th and Quivira.
• Nearby shopping centers and the Reserve at 77 apartments will also not be touched.

Parking will be a major focus

• As it stands now, the parking lot makes use of diagonal parking spaces, which will be replaced with perpendicular ones.
• The entire lot will also be resurfaced.
• With 216 parking spots planned, there are about 30 fewer parking spaces planned in the new layout than Lenexa city code allows for with the current use of the shops.
• Lenexa planning staff support the deviation given the general improvements planned for the lot, according to city documents.
• New sidewalks will also be added to connect more readily to 79th Street.

Next steps:

• This proposal does not require approval from the Lenexa City Council.
• Actual work on the project will require a few additional administrative approvals.

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