Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 4 to include comments from Southwind CEO and cofounder Josh Herron.
Southwind Management, a Kansas City-based home services firm, has changed some of its plans but still intends to make the old Waddell & Reed office building in Overland Park its new headquarters.
The firm has removed its special use application, which centered on plans to park about 50 of its trucks and commercial vehicles in the parking lot for a 10-year term. Previously, the Overland Park Planning Commission also recommended denial of the application, and it was headed to the Overland Park City Council for consideration on Monday.
That being said, Southwind cofounder and CEO Josh Herron told the Post that the company will use the office space for its corporate headquarters. In fact, some employees on the finance and sales teams could move in starting this week, now that building renovations are complete.
Neighbors of the site, primarily residents in the nearby city of Mission, had strongly opposed Southwind’s proposal to park commercial vehicles at the site, calling it incompatible with the area and voicing safety concerns about truck traffic. At a spring planning commission meeting, one neighbor suggested that the application was trying to “ram” industrial uses into an office park.
That pushback — taken with the recommended rejection from the planning commission — ultimately led Southwind to withdraw the application to park their commercial vehicles overnight at the property near Shawnee Mission Parkway and Lamar Avenue.
“We heard that loud and clear,” Herron said.
Instead, those commercial vehicles used by the employees who work in the field will be kept at a different facility.
“We’ve modified our operations to allow for us to still function as the headquarters there, and continue to operate the business without having to park the trucks there overnight,” he said. “We were able to find a solution that works for everybody.”
Southwind wanted to lease the Waddell & Reed HQ
The building at 6300 Lamar served as a training center for the now-defunct Trans World Airlines before Waddell & Reed took over the building, according to county land records.
Southwind wants to move its corporate employees to the office building, taking up about 120,000 square feet. To go along with that plan, the company had requested a special use permit, seeking permission to park commercial vehicles in the parking lot overnight and on weekends.
The company oversees five home service businesses, including 1-800-GOT-JUNK, DreamLawn and You Move Me.
An earlier iteration of the plan was to put up to 84 of those vehicles on the northern side of the property nearest to Shawnee Mission Parkway under a 12-year special use permit. That version was continued by the planning commission in Feburary. An amended application that returned in April lowered the request to 41 vehicles on the southern and western sides under the terms of a 10-year special use permit.
Neither proposal would have allowed for the exterior storage of materials at the site, and they would have barred Southwind from parking semi-trucks at the former Waddell & Reed site.
Waddell & Reed left 6300 Lamar
Before Southwind came along, the office building at 6300 Lamar had been empty for several years since the financial services firm previously headquartered in Overland Park left the site.
However, the future of the building was uncertain even before the COVID-19 pandemic changed how firms use their large office spaces because Waddell & Reed had already planned to move out of its Overland Park headquarters space to a new $140 million office building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
Those plans were eventually scuttled when Australia-based financial services firm Macquarie Asset Management acquired Waddell & Reed in 2021. That same year, several local Waddell & Reed employees were laid off.
Now what?
Southwind has removed its application to park commercial vehicles at the site entirely from city consideration. If the home services company changed its mind and decided to obtain a special use permit to park vehicles at the Waddell & Reed building, then it would need to restart the planning process from the beginning, including returning to the city’s planning commission.
As for the actual office space, Herron said he expects it to serve Southwind’s needs long into the future.
A few years ago, when the company was starting to outgrow its old space in Lenexa, the 6300 Lamar property was an early contender, he said. That’s in part due to the room for growth the office building offers the company.
“This gives us the space to continue to grow the headquarter function,” Herron said, adding that Southwind plans to continue a recent push to hire more corporate employees.
Southwind has signed a 12-year lease with the owner, WR COMPANY, LLC.
Looking back: Overland Park deals blow to KCMO company’s plan to repurpose old Waddell & Reed HQ
