A commercial area of Shawnee that has stagnated over the past decade is expected to get new life with the city council’s approval of a new tax increment financing district.

On Monday, the Shawnee City Council unanimously approved an ordinance to create a TIF district for an area near Interstate 435 and Midland Drive, including the Midland Entertainment District. The vote was 8-0.

Mostly located along the intersection of Interstate 435 and Midland Drive, the TIF district includes 25 already-developed commercial parcels, including B&B Theatres Shawnee 18, restaurants like Rize N Shine and Minsky’s Pizza and hotels like the Fairfield Inn and Hampton Inn.

The area is viewed by city officials as a critical commercial corridor, right off of I-435.

It also contains multiple undeveloped parcels, as well as various tracts that are either currently under development or may be later developed for residential, multifamily or other uses, said City Manager Paul Kramer.

The district’s importance to the city is expected to grow, as the Kansas City Chiefs build their new stadium in Kansas City, Kansas, about 11 miles away, also off of I-435, near the Kansas Speedway and The Legends shopping center.

“(With) the future home of Kansas City Chiefs’ stadium planned in that same area, even more attention, traffic and investment will be focused on the I-435, corridor for the next several years. So we need to be ready for that,” Ann Smith-Tate, CEO of the Shawnee Chamber of Commerce, said during Monday’s meeting.

The TIF district’s purpose would be to encourage development and redevelopment in the area, as it reimburses the private developer of a property or a defined area for eligible project and infrastructure costs using the increased property or sales tax revenue generated by any future development.

The TIF district is meant to address problems that have plagued the area, including blight, a lack of development over the past decade and antiquated parking lot designs and landscaping.

“While it had been and still remains a strong development for Shawnee, it has stagnated over time,” Kramer said.

The length of a TIF project is typically 20 years, but can be shorter, depending on the size and scope of it.  There was no discussion Monday about how much money it is expected to generate, though Kramer said that “at least two” projects are expected to be proposed this year.

“Once word got out that we were looking at this, developers contacted us, and they said, ‘We want to invest in Shawnee. This is a tool that we’re interested in,'” Kramer said.

The city hopes to spur visitors to Midland area

The area around the Midland Entertainment District has been a passion project for Kramer since the city council hired him in 2024.

“When I started, one of the first meetings that I had with the Chamber of Commerce and the governing body, (I said) ‘How do we breathe new life into the Midland Entertainment District?'” he said.

In his presentation to the governing body on Monday, Kramer made the argument that despite its placement right off the highway, residents are passing up district for newer developments in Lenexa City Center, the Legends in Kansas City, Kansas and businesses along Shawnee Mission Parkway in Merriam.

“(These) other attractive options are making Shawnee dollars leave Shawnee,” he said.

At that time, businesses in the district were already being avoided because of a 16-month-long I-435 highway bridge replacement project that shut down parts of Midland Drive, making local business owners angry. After meeting with them, Kramer said he got a better idea of the work that needed to be done in the area.

“While we didn’t always agree on what was going on out there, I believe we listened to each other, and we talked to them about the development of this corridor,” he said.

Among the area’s problems, Kramer said, are pothole-pocked parking lots, overgrown vegetation, antiquated traffic flow patterns and a lack of walkable paths with little connectivity to the rest of the city.

To address these issues, Kramer worked with the city to come up with a TIF proposal.

“TIF helps you with a combination of vacant ground redevelopment and unique infrastructure challenges like we have,” he said.

In researching financing tools for the district, Kramer said he looked at multiple options, including a Community Improvement District, which uses revenue to reimburse some development costs through an extra sales tax applied on all purchases in a defined area for a set amount of time.

Because a TIF district uses the increased property or sales tax revenue generated by the development, that felt like the better option, Kramer said.

“We kept coming back to, ‘We don’t want to put additional tax on the residents and visitors going to the restaurants or the movie theaters,'” he said at the meeting.

The TIF would be administered by the city, and each TIF project would be considered by the governing body, Kramer said.

The district will be the eighth active tax increment financing district in Shawnee, according to the city’s economic development dashboard online. Other existing TIF districts in the city include districts created around the revamped Westbrooke Greene shopping center and the Sixty16 apartments near downtown.

City must probe Midland area is “blighted”

To create a TIF district, Kramer said the city had to prove it was a blighted area in accordance with Kansas law.

Planning and traffic experts and a third-party development legal team performed two blight analysis tests in recent months.

Those analyses found that it met six out of nine statutory factors, that focused on blight and antiquated land use, including unsafe conditions, obsolete platting or land use and deterioration of land.

That proved something needed to be done, Kramer said.

“There has simply been little to no investment in a large scale in this area,” he said.

Developers push for district’s approval

Six business owners, developers and people with ties to the area spoke in favor of the TIF district, including developer Steve Beaumont, the original co-developer, along with Jack Waters, of the former WestGlen entertainment center, which contains the movie theater and several restaurants.

Beaumont said it took the help of the city council to make the original development a reality. A new TIF district, he said, will push the area forward again.

“You guys have the exact same opportunity to be the forward-thinking council that does what others have not done, that goes out and makes a decision that others have not made,” he said.

Noting the disrepair of the district, Mark Hembrey, general manager for Paulo’s Italian Kitchen, said action needs to be taken, especially as competition for visitors and residential dollars grows in and around Johnson County

“There’s so many potholes in that district. There are so many dead trees, and I’m trying not to speak with anger and frustration. I’m trying to speak with pride and determination. But this is needed,” he said.

Dennis McIntire, director of strategic planning at B & B Theatres, which took over the Shawnee location after the company acquired Dickinson Theatres in 2014, spoke highly of the district and the need for TIF to encourage more development.

“I’ve done development for being in theaters for 25 years. We’ve used TIFs in many locations, and it is a tool. And when a tool is used correctly, good things happen. If they’re used incorrectly, bad things happen,” he said.

He added that Shawnee was “using this as the right tool.”

Others opposed a Midland TIF district

Three people spoke to the city council to either reject it or oppose parts of the district that they saw as irrelevant to TIF funding.

Former councilmember Tony Gillette asked his one-time colleagues to reject the TIF proposal.

“Investment equals apartments. That’s what they want us to horn into this district, and I know that’s probably not what you want to hear from a former councilmember, but that’s the reality … You can redevelop this area, but there are better ways to do it,” he said.

The city later indirectly responded to Gillette’s apartment remark, stating that no projects have been announced as part of the TIF district.

“There are no project plans right now,” Kramer said.

Although he is not a resident of Shawnee, Ben Hobert also voiced opposition to the TIF district because he believes some areas of the planned district don’t meet the required definition of blighted.

“I’m here as a citizen of Westwood Hills because of concern for the detriment to tax revenue for the county as a whole, and the detriment to the tax revenue to Shawnee Mission School District 512,” he said, referring to the fact that the school district will forego a portion of future tax revenues collected by the development.

He called the Midland TIF project “an impermissible expansion of the TIF statute.”

City Council supported TIF proposal

Councilmembers Laurel Burchfield and Erin Aldridge, representing Ward 4 where the Midland area is, expressed optimism for a TIF district. 

Burchfield saw it as a chance to make positive changes, particularly with more pedestrian access in the area.

“I don’t see the negative connotations of blight. I see opportunity. And I think that the definitions in the way that this is presented before us exemplifies that,” she said.

Recalling how the Midland Entertainment District has played a role in her life, from moms’ nights out at Jose Pepper’s to using the parking lot to teach her kids how to drive and avoid potholes, Aldridge said she believed the TIF district will be used to make thoughtful changes to the area.

“I’m really excited about this. We think that we have a great opportunity as a city to showcase ourselves along this I-435 corridor,” she said.

Councilmember Kurt Knappen, who typically opposes tax incentive proposals like CIDs and TIF, said the Midland project is different and ahd earned his support.

“(TIFs are) not coming from the residents. It’s (developers) getting a tax break on the additional investment that these people are willing to put in to make it a nicer area, to upgrade it, and that’s why I’m leaning toward supporting it,” he said.

“It’s great for Shawnee”

After the city council voted to approve the proposal, Midland Entertainment District business owners gathered outside to shake hands and congratulate each other on what they saw was a win for the area.

“This is exciting stuff. I mean, you saw the support from the Midland entertainment district, the business owners, right? I think that says a lot,” said Matt McQueeny, co-owner of the Rize N Shine restaurant in the Midland Entertainment District.

He added: “The thing is we know this isn’t a short-term fix. It’s going to take time. But I mean, two or three years, we could be looking at a whole new community down there, and it’s great for Shawnee.”