$25-Mil Office Plans In Doubt After Sale

KANSAS CITY-DST Realty Inc. has acquired another property in here and possibly two with the decision by the Tax Increment Financing Commission to agree to let it take over plans from Highwoods Properties Inc. to construct a $25-million office building on the south edge of the Country Club Plaza. DST Realty will also be allowed a two-year lease and option to buy on the 12-story existing structure located next to proposed building site in the 4900 block of Main Street.

Earlier plans filed by the J.C. Nichols Company in 1997 before being purchased by Highwoods Properties, called for Nichols to construct a 180,000-sf office building with a 530-car parking garage at the 4900 Main St. site.

At the TIF commission meeting, a spokesman for DST Realty indicated the company had no immediate plans for the site, but would eventually come up with its own project. He did not specify what those plans would entail.

For the immediate future, it is believed that DST Realty will use the building at 4900 Main St. for one of the subsidiaries of its parent company, DST Systems Inc. A possible user is EquiServe Limited Partnership. DST Systems Inc. provides record keeping services for companies in the mutual fund industry and last month acquired controlling interest in EquiServe.

The building at 4900 Main St. was soon to lose one of its biggest tenants, Sprint PCS which occupies 172,000 sf of space. Sprint has said that this branch of its wireless division will be moving to the company’s new corporate headquarters in Overland Park, KS.

In another move involving a south of the Plaza property, last August, DST Realty gained control of the Kirkwood Circle project from Highwoods Properties. Under the previous TIF plan, that project was to include a $50-million apartment complex to be built on 10 acres between 49th and 50th streets, Wyandotte Street to Wornall Road.