Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library officials are experiencing the dark side of a $62.3-million public-private deal to have a local real-estate developer build a new central library at the base of a nine-story office complex: The developer, Copaken White and Blitt, has been unable to secure a lead tenant as required in the January agreement.
The library has granted the firm a 10-month extension on its July 1 deadline to break ground. “We’d rather the project start right away, but we think they’ve been working in good faith, and so have we,” KCPL Executive Director Daniel J. Bradbury said in the May 31 Kansas City Star.
During a May 31 city council committee meeting on the $14.4 million in tax increments the firm will receive for building the library, several area residents criticized the plan. “Either you can have freedom, or you can have corporate domination,” Margie Eucalyptus said. Councilman Jim Rowland responded, “Sometimes you have to break the mold, and sometimes that’s difficult for people to accept.”
Correction, June 17, 2002: The new facility was slated to be a branch, not a new central library as originally reported.
Posted June 5, 2000.