Ray and Becky Hanf are in the midst of a “retirement sale” as they prepare to close up their shop, Mission Fresh Fashions women’s boutique on Johnson Drive.
They’ve been in Mission for nearly a quarter century, many of those years spent waiting, hoping and praying for something to happen at Mission Gateway, the site of the old Mission Center Mall just down the road at the busy confluence of Johnson Drive, Roe Avenue and Shawnee Mission Parkway.
“We’ve certainly lost (traffic and) customers through the years due to the mall being gone,” Becky Hanf said. “Anything that they could do with that property would be great for small businesses here.”
The mall closed in 2006, and development plans to build on the prominent site have repeatedly failed or run into problems.
The most recent: the New York-based developers behind the Mission Gateway plan are facing a foreclosure suit from one of their lenders, a New York bank, putting the long-term future of the project very much in doubt.
For the Hanfs, they may be closing up shop themselves, but they, like many other small businesses along Johnson Drive in downtown Mission, are still hoping that something good will come of the Mission Gateway project.
But they say they have also learned to stop worrying about such things they can’t control, and they urge other local, small businesses to do the same.
“As a small business owner, you can’t hang your hat on what others are doing,” Becky Hanf said. “You can’t ever worry about what’s happening elsewhere, even if it’s just down the street.”
Missed opportunities
Over the course of a week soon after the news of the foreclosure lawsuit broke, the Post spoke with more than two dozen small business owners along Johnson Drive about how they were feeling about Mission Gateway’s prospects and the scuffling development’s impact on their business.
Most of them confessed that they were no longer following the issue closely and weren’t surprised at news of the latest setback.
Jeff Driver has been a Farmers Insurance agent since 1987. His office is technically in neighboring Roeland Park, but it sits directly across the street from the Mission Gateway site, where concrete pilings rise up out of muddy ground and a hulking whitewashed structure — meant to be a future entertainment center — sits unfinished and mouldering.
Driver says the situation is well beyond any cliches, at this point.
He claims he doesn’t care what they end up doing with the site, but when he looks out his windows, he sees all of the missed opportunities over the years to turn the valuable property into something practical.
“They probably could have had a Walmart there years ago,” Driver said, alluding to a previous plan for the site. “I think the city of Mission wanted it to be a lot like Brookside [in Kansas City]. I’ve got all of the registered letters they used to send me about the progress.”
Driver keeps the letters and diagrams he’s received over the years framed in his office.
A danger to the community
While some, like Driver, may still be able to muster a smile and joke about the ongoing debacle, others are less sanguine.
Mason Hans co-owns three businesses in the same strip on Johnson Drive: Mission Board Games, Urban Prairie Coffee, and The Primrose cocktail bar.
He remembers going to the Mission Center Mall as a kid but now sees the site as nothing but a danger to the community.
“It’s now just a public safety hazard,” Hans said. “A kid could fall off that (parking) structure. It’s horrible.”
Hans, a graduate of Bishop Miege High School nearby, joined many other business owners in hoping that the property could be repurposed down the road into public use, say, a city park.
But he admits that any plan like that would only come to fruition years down the line, after the property was ripped away from investors’ “cold dead hands.”
Pride in growing downtown
Many local business owners in downtown Mission say they are quite pleased with other developments happening in town, beyond Mission Gateway.
They point to the apartment complex construction along Martway, on the site of the old Mission Bowl, as well as improvements happening at area parks.
Cindy Long of financial firm McLiney and Company, is also a Mission resident and echoes the most common refrain about the property.
“It’s just an eye sore, let’s face it,” Long said. “There’s so many neat things happening around town, and we all just want to see something happen there. Everybody’s united on that.”
Long recalls frequent trips to the old mall to get her nails done. It was a convenient place for shopping and dining, she says.
Long was in attendance in January when the Mission City Council approved changes to a redevelopment agreement for the fifth version of the project, after the previous one expired late last year.
She says she no longer has faith that the “New York people” — a reference to the Cameron Group, which is behind the Mission Gateway project — can bring anything to life on the site.
“Someone has to step up (from here in town),” Long said. “We have to find someone locally to develop it. We have to get rid of the New York group.”
‘Stopped paying attention years ago’
Tom Harris, a lawyer and neighbor of Jeff Driver’s Farmers Insurance on Johnson Drive since 1999, recalls the demolition of the old Mall outside his office
“They dropped those slabs so hard that my building shook,” Harris said. “My computer crashed. It’s been a nuisance ever since. I stopped paying attention years ago.”
Harris has heard all of the plans through the years, from new hotels to a new bowling alley (to replace the old Mission Bowl nearby, which burned down in 2015, and is now the site of a new apartment project being constructed.)
He refrains from saying much and adds that he’s content to just hear about the foreclosure situation through his wife.
Nearby is Green Clean Maid Services, owned by Camille Reneau.
The family-run operation opened three years ago across the street from what many of the locals call “that giant hole in the ground.”
It was the onset of COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, which stopped work on the Mission Gateway site. It hasn’t picked back up in the three years since, leaving the half-built structures there open to the elemets.
With her business still in heavy demand, Renaeu mirrors Ray and Becky Hanf’s approach to the ongoing situation across the street.
“We’re not going to dwell on it,” Reneau said. “I see it from my desk everyday, but we’ve given up having any expectations. Yes, (something like) an entertainment center would be nice, but if it doesn’t happen, it’s not going to affect our operation.”
