The year 2023 is nearly in the books, but before we say goodbye, let’s look back on some of the news that defined our Johnson County community over the past 12 months.
If you believe the phrase “all politics is local,” you would have been vindicated in 2023.
This year was defined by developments at the city, neighborhood and even street level. And it got heated at times.
From intense debates about housing policy to drama inside local city halls, it was a year of major shifts and change at the hyperlocal level. Some of Johnson County’s biggest cities elected new leaders, local students again used their voices to advocate for change inside their schools, and one of the county’s most-watched development projects may have finally gone kaput.
Here were some of the Post’s most read stories of 2023:
Housing debate heats up
Housing affordability was one of the Post’s top stories last year, but debates over the topic, if anything, grew more prominent in Johnson County in 2023.
Nowhere was the discussion more intense than in Prairie Village, where disagreements over how (if at all) the city should tackle housing affordability and zoning morphed into a struggle over city governance and control of the city council. Ultimately, candidates backed by residents opposed to zoning changes won the majority of city council seats on the ballot in November.
Meanwhile, other cities — with somewhat less fanfare — began dipping their toes into conversations about housing and zoning, including Overland Park, Shawnee and Leawood.
At the county level, the commission made addressing housing and homelessness a priority this year, and ended 2023 by moving to purchase a hotel to be converted into Johnson County’s first and only permanent, year-round shelter and service center for people experiencing homelessness.
Read more:
- Prairie Village’s housing recommendations have split the city — How did we get here?
- Stop Rezoning Prairie Village group turns sights on remaking city council
- Overland Park developing pilot to encourage more diverse housing
- As debate over housing rages, development in Shawnee cools
- Leawood to consider smaller, more affordable cottage home options
- Johnson County commission OKs several housing affordability measures
- ‘Beacon’ or ‘band-aid?’ Johnson County moves forward on homeless shelter plan
Shawnee City Hall weathers rough year
Shawnee was in the news frequently in 2023, and that wasn’t always a good thing.
The Post reported earlier in the year on how internal tensions with some city councilmembers prompted several high-level city hall staffers to leave, resulting in an uptick in vacancy rates for city staff positions.
Tensions also surfaced during city council meetings over the council’s move to preemptively block outgoing Mayor Michelle Distler’s appointments for city boards and commissions for the remainder of her term.
Then toward the end of this year, the city council voted to fire City Manager Doug Gerber after an anonymous person sent a sexually explicit video of Gerber to city staff, an incident which went unreported to the city council for more than a month.
By November, voters seemed to have tired of all the drama. They elected three city council candidates and a mayoral candidate who all ran on changing the status quo.
Read more:
- Shawnee City Council blamed for ongoing staffing ‘crisis’
- Shawnee council blocks mayor’s appointments for rest of term
- Shawnee city manager put on paid administrative leave following report of explicit video
- Shawnee City Council fires city manager Doug Gerber
- Mickey Sandifer defeats Mike Kemmling to become next mayor of Shawnee
Students stand up, walk out
Johnson County students used their voices (and feet) in 2023.
In May, dozens of students at Shawnee Mission North High walked out in protest over a teacher’s op-ed accusing the district of indoctrinating students with “woke ideology.”
Then, a student walkout at Shawnee Mission East the week after Thanksgiving drew local and even national attention, as students protested the school’s handling of a fight in which a white male student was caught on video calling a Black female student the N-word and hitting her.
At Blue Valley North, students pressed the school and district to do more after racist and antisemitic graffiti was discovered on the school football stadium’s press box around the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
The debates about diversity played out at the ballot box, too, where proponents of local districts’ approaches to equity and inclusion swept to comfortable victories for school boards in Shawnee Mission, Blue Valley and USD 232, seemingly ending — for now — conservatives’ challenge to Johnson County school districts’ management.
Read more:
- Blue Valley student wants more to be done after racist, antisemitic vandalism
- Shawnee Mission North students walk out in protest over teacher’s anti-‘woke’ op-ed
- Student fight at Shawnee Mission East sparks outcry. Here’s what we know
- Shawnee Mission East students to school board: ‘We aren’t going anywhere’
- Defenders of diversity approach coast to wins in Shawnee Mission school board race
A final nail for Mission Gateway?
This year may have (finally) been the beginning of the end for the long-beleaguered Mission Gateway project.
The year began with guarded optimism, as the city of Mission inked a new development agreement with Mission Gateway’s New York-based developers, in the hopes that work on the mouldering site could finally restart for the first time since 2020.
But the situation quickly turned sour again when a New York bank in April sued to foreclose on the site, saying the developer failed to pay back a $26 million loan.
The final straw came this summer when the city terminated the agreement it had just finalized in January over more than $450,000 in unpaid local taxes.
What happens now at Mission Gateway still remains up in the air with the foreclosure case in court, giving neighboring businesses on Johnson Drive an all-too-familiar sense of stasis and uncertainty.
Read more:
- New Mission Gateway plan gets final OK. When will work start?
- Bank moves to foreclose on Mission Gateway site, city ‘monitoring’ situation
- Johnson Drive small business owners rue latest Mission Gateway setback
- Mission Gateway developers on clock (again) to pay late taxes
- City ends latest Mission Gateway deal — What happens next?
Comings and a going on Metcalf Avenue
It was big year of change on one of Johnson County’s busiest commercial arteries, with prominent new businesses opening and one rather unexpected closing.
The highly anticipated SERV project — an outdoor pickleball and entertainment venue — opened in February, bringing a new look to the area around 91st and Metcalf in Overland Park.
There was also action at the site of the former Sears, the last vestige of the old Metcalf South Mall near 97th Street. A Texas Roadhouse restaurant and the metro’s 100th QuikTrip opened there, the vanguard of a larger mixed-use development centered around a new 93,000-square-foot Life Time athletic club that has been promised.
Further south, Walmart announced in May the abrupt closure of its long-standing Neighborhood Market at 103rd and Metcalf, a major change for that commercial complex which the retail giant had anchored for two decades.
Read more:
- SERV, Overland Park pickleball venue, opens this week
- Here’s what is in plan to remake Overland Park Sears site
- Texas Roadhouse opens in Overland Park
- QuikTrip opens 100th KC-area store on Overland Park’s changing Metcalf corridor
- Walmart to close Overland Park store on Metcalf
A changing of the guard
Regardless of who ultimately won, we knew going into November it would be a change election in some of Johnson County’s biggest cities.
Two of the county’s longest-serving mayors — Mike Boehm in Lenexa and Peggy Dunn in Leawood — opted against re-election, choosing to put periods on public service careers that both spanned more than a quarter century.
Other cities were also bound to see change, too.
In Shawnee, Mayor Michelle Distler announced early on this year that she would not seek another term after a sometimes-tumultuous eight years in office.
And Olathe also elected its first new mayor in more than 20 years, picking a successor to Michael Copeland, who died in 2020.
Read more:
- Mike Boehm, Lenexa’s longest-serving mayor, won’t run again
- Shawnee Mayor Michelle Distler will not run for re-election
- Leawood Mayor Peggy Dunn will step aside after 25 years in office
- Olathe elects first new mayor in more than 20 years
Honoring a fallen officer
Tragedy struck the Johnson County law enforcement community late this summer when Fairway Police Officer Jonah Oswald died from wounds suffered in a standoff with a suspect at a Mission QuikTrip in August.
The standoff was preceded by a high-speed chase that began in Lenexa, involving multiple local agencies.
The Johnson County District Attorney in December ruled against criminally charging two officers who fired on the suspect, Shannon Marshall, killing him.
After Oswald’s death, hundreds turned out for a procession of law enforcement and first responder vehicles through northeast Johnson County, culminating in a vigil at Harmon Park in Prairie Village.
Read more:
- Suspect killed, officer critically injured in exchange of gunfire at Mission QuikTrip
- Northeast Johnson County comes together after Fairway officer’s Jonah Oswald’s death
- Hundreds mourn Fairway officer Jonah Oswald at parade and vigil
- DA rules 2 officers justified in fatally shooting suspect who killed Fairway officer
Other big stories we covered
We covered other noteworthy stories, as well, from an impactful summer wind storm that uprooted trees and did major damage through large swaths of northern Johnson County, to the abrupt resignation of Overland Park Police Chief Frank Donchez, after he had a run-in with the mother of a teenager killed by a former Overland Park police officer.
- Johnson County feels lingering impacts of storm — Why was this one so bad?
- Overland Park had started firing police chief when he resigned last week
- $2B Brookridge project in Overland Park officially breaks ground
- Shawnee consignment sale reopens outdoors after building shut down for safety concerns
- Overland Park couple nixes Paulie’s Penguin revival following complaints
- Jackson Mahomes arrested in Johnson County on sexual battery charges
- Overland Park Farmers’ Market vendor suspended over anti-semitic social media posts
