Insurance brokerage firm Lockton confirmed Friday it plans to move to Leawood from its current base at Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza.
The firm, a prominent metro area company founded by University of Kansas City-Missouri graduate Jack Lockton in 1966, plans to move into a new bespoke 34-acre campus near State Line Road and Interstate 435 in 2030.
“As we look to the future, our growth is not slowing down,” said Ron Lockton, Chairman and CEO of Lockton, in a statement from the company. “To keep pace, we need a headquarters that supports our current growth and our plans for the future. One that meets all our needs — in a premier work environment that enables us to service our clients, develop and attract great talent, and support our Associates in the best way possible.”
The $765 million project in Leawood, dubbed Hallbrook North, is set to be built on a currently undeveloped plot of land at the northwest corner of State Lane Road and College Boulevard by the developer VanTrust Real Estate.
It’s centered around a 12-story, 440,000-square-foot office building for Lockton, which currently has a local workforce of roughly 1,500 employees, according to the company.
As part of the plan, Lockton’s headquarters in Leawood will eventually expand with a second, eight-story office building that is pegged to be nearly 260,000 square feet.
Hallbrook North, once complete, will also include a hotel, two apartment buildings, a child care center and retail and restaurant spaces.
Leawood Mayor Marc Elkins trumpeted Lockton’s announcement in a statement Friday.
“We are pleased and encouraged by Lockton’s announcement [Friday] that it has selected a Leawood site for its future world headquarters,” Elkins said. “Lockton is a highly respected, Kansas City–based company with a long history of success, strong values, and a positive reputation in our region and beyond. Their continued growth is a point of pride for our entire metropolitan area.”
Is the “Border War” back on?
Lockton’s move, along with recent talks of the Chiefs and Royals possibly moving to Kansas, is sure to put more fire to the idea that an economic border war between Missouri and Kansas is back on.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas expressed his disappointment Friday in Lockton’s pending jump over the state line, a day after saying the city was working on a “competitive retention package” to keep the company at the Plaza, where it’s had an office since 2000.
“Lockton is an exceptional Kansas City firm with outstanding leadership and outstanding people. I wish them continued success,” Lucas said.
He continued: “I am only disappointed by the misplaced confidence many of us had in the one-time Missouri-Kansas Border War Truce, which was well in effect when negotiations supporting this move began. Regionalism cannot be one sided. The region will only thrive when we look to grow the pie, not rearrange pieces on the chess board.”
A 2019 truce agreed to by Kansas and Missouri stopped the use state-level economic development incentives aimed at luring companies back and forth over the border.
But that detente appears to have waned, following more than a year of wrangling back and forth between the states over enticing the Chiefs and Royals to either stay in Missouri or leave for Kansas.
In September, the Kansas City Council voted unanimously to repeal its local border war truce ordinance, a month after Missouri lawmakers let the state law expire.
A $150M tax incentive package
The Leawood City Council on Monday approved a public tax incentive package valued at more than $150 million for the project, the largest development in the city’s history.
The package includes:
- up to $108.7 million from tax increment financing
- another roughly $10 million from a 1.5% Community Improvement District sales tax within the project area
- up to $18.8 million from the special transient guest tax charged for hotel stays
- and a sales tax exemptions of $14.6 million for designated construction equipment and expenses.
City officials confirmed it is the first-ever tax increment financing deal Leawood has approved.
The tax incentives are contingent on Lockton or one of its affiliates signing a lease for the site by the end of 2026. It was unclear if with Friday’s announcement the company had taken that formal step yet.
Leawood is “open for business”
Elkins noted the property Hallbrook North will be built on once belonged to the Hall family, which founded the company that became Hallmark more than a century ago.
“This site has long been associated with visionary, homegrown institutions that have helped shape the Kansas City region, and it is fitting that it will now support the next chapter of another well-established, well-respected, growing local company,” he said.
He added that the move “reinforces that Leawood is open for business.”
“Our city continues to attract investment because of our commitment to high-quality services, excellent infrastructure, and a quality of life that supports both businesses and residents,” Elkins said.
The project will abut Leawood City Park to the west.
One public commenter at Monday’s city council meeting raised concerns that the project could exacerbate flooding concerns along Indian Creek, which routinely floods in that area of Leawood and Kansas City.
More big moves to Kansas coming?
Lockton’s announcement Friday came at the end of a week of heated speculation about the future of the Chiefs and Royals in the metro and the possibility that one or both teams could jump State Line.
A key committee of Kansas legislative leaders, the Legislative Coordinating Council, is set to meet Monday in Topeka and is expected to discuss a possible $1 billion deal to lure the Chiefs to Kansas, possibly to a site at The Legends in Kansas City, Kansas.
However, officials involved with that meeting have confirmed a Royals deal will not be discussed on Monday.
“We will be talking about the Chiefs,” Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat and a member of the committee, told KCUR. “It sounds like there is some proposal that we will be looking at.”
The Kansas Department of Commerce, which handles such deals, posted on Facebook on Thursday that the state is in active discussions with the Chiefs about “building a new stadium and other facilities in Kansas.”
“No final agreement has been reached, but this would be a massive economic win for Kansas and benefit Kansans for generations to come,” the statement read. “We are aggressively pursuing this opportunity.”
