The Midland Entertainment District<\/a>, which sits off Interstate 435 and Midland Drive, was first developed in the mid-1990s. The commercial corridor is made up of 25 parcels, 19 different owners and multiple undeveloped plots of land.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
While the city identifies it as a major commercial corridor, the last large-scale development \u2014 a series of hotels \u2014 came 10 years ago, City Manager Paul Kramer told the City Council on Monday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt acts as an economic and functional liability to the city,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cConsidering it\u2019s an area that has great access, visibility and traffic flow, there has simply been little to no investment in this large-scale area.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Other nearby attractions \u2014 like the Lenexa City Center, The Legends Outlet Mall in KCK, and Merriam\u2019s work along Shawnee Mission Parkway \u2014 is \u201cmaking Shawnee dollars leave Shawnee,\u201d nor luring visitors in, he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just not taking advantage of those assets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In order to spark new development, the City Council unanimously approved creating a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district at the blighted site to make it easier for developers to build or redevelop parcels of land.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
TIF districts do not charge visitors an extra tax, nor does the city provide dollars to build the project like other tax incentives, Kramer said. Rather, it takes the new revenue generated by the development to cover construction costs for a certain number of years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe value pays for improvements,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cThe other tools seemed ill-suited to bring around the type of development that we required.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What\u2019s wrong with the site?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
In a feasibility study, Kramer said that the city found a 4.8% decrease in commercial property values in the district from 2024 to 2025, unsafe pedestrian infrastructure, deteriorating infrastructure, and inconsistent repairs and patchwork conditions on the site.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When the district was built in the 1990s, it was designed for car access \u2014 with limited connectivity to neighbors and large unused \u201cparking fields,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pavement in there,\u201d Kramer said, adding that building facades have visible deterioration, and the site has limited pedestrian connectivity between the different buildings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a unique commercial district in that there are 19 different property owners,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cA lot of times shopping centers are controlled by one entity. When you look at making repairs \u2026 It\u2019s done as a master plan. When you have 19 property owners, getting that accomplished is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Current building codes would reduce parking maximums and promote \u201cbetter land use,\u201d he said, with opportunities for mixed development with residential, retail and restaurants in order to create a more \u201ccohesive development rather than a disparate collection of individual parcels.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Benefiting businesses<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
While there was some pushback from neighbors about bringing in multifamily units to an area surrounded by single family homes, developers came forward during public comment to share their support for the district.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been playing catch up for the last six years,\u201d said Dennis McIntire, the vice president of strategic development for BNB Theaters, a locally owned movie theater chain with a location in the district. \u201cThese are not easy concepts to put together, and they\u2019ve (staff) done a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When BNB came to the Midland Entertainment District, they conducted a $5 million renovation in 2016 and 2017. McIntire said he\u2019d like to see more investments come through something like a TIF district.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Midland business owners have faced challenges in recent years, including just last year with the Kansas Department of Transportation restoring the I-435 bridge decks over Midland Drive for about a year \u2014 making it harder for people to visit those businesses.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a difficult summer,\u201d Kramer said about the construction. \u201cThere have been a lot that haven\u2019t turned over. We\u2019re thankful for the service they provide in Shawnee and continue to do great business, we just need to help them out.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While Kramer said the city has been in discussions with developers about potential projects, nothing is set in stone. Any proposal that comes forward would need to go through the Planning Commission and City Council for final approvals before development can begin.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Taylor O\u2019Connor<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The Kansas City Star<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n
Taylor is The Star\u2019s Johnson County watchdog reporter. Before coming to Kansas City, she reported on north Santa Barbara County, California, covering local governments, school districts and issues ranging from the housing crisis to water conservation. She grew up in Minneapolis and graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kansascity.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Shawnee City Council unanimously approved a TIF District for the Midland Entertainment Center to help spark development at the commercial site that\u2019s sat stagnant for years. File photo The Shawnee City Council opted to use a public financing tool as an attempt to breathe life into a commercial corridor that\u2019s sat stagnant for almost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2416292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2416291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Shawnee-creates-TIF-district-to-revive-Midland-Entertainment.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2416291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416293,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416291\/revisions\/2416293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2416292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2416291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2416291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2416291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}