Anyone who drives along 435 near Bannister Road is familiar with the former Bannister Mall site. Once a million-square-foot retail mall, the Bannister Mall officially closed down in 2007 and was demolished in 2009. The site has been vacant since then and has come to be considered an eyesore by many. That’s all about to change as Cerner Corporation recently closed a deal to redevelop the property into a 4.5 million-square-foot professional campus that spans over 250 acres.
“We’re very excited to be investing in Kansas City,” Cerner president Zane Burke said. “This is creating brand new jobs for our local economy. The project will serve as the hub of innovation to improve the health care and wellness of the communities we serve.”
The proposed campus would be the largest office development in Kansas City history. Plans call for it to be built in 14 phases over the course of the next 10 years, with construction due to be completed in 2024. When finished, the development is expected to be larger than the Sprint campus, which totals 3.9 million square feet of office space across 200 acres. It would also be more than 3 times the size of the 42-story-tall “One Kansas City Place,” the tallest skyscraper in the state of Missouri. According to documents filed with the TIF Commission, the new campus plans to bring in over 15,000 jobs.
Cerner Corporation is already a fixture of the Kansas City economic landscape. The international healthcare IT giant’s world headquarters is in North Kansas City, just across from the North Kansas City Hospital, one of their first hospital clients. They also have several other locations in the Kansas City metro area.
The plans outline a high-tech integrated office campus, complete with a variety of workplace amenities including fitness centers and an on-site, 75,000 square foot “Cerner Kids” daycare. The plans include 370,000 square feet of retail space and the expansive site allows for extensive surface parking, precluding the necessity of building parking garages.
Along with retail, the plans call for a total of eleven office buildings totaling 4.1 million square feet, two data centers, and a service center. When completed, the campus is estimated to be valued around $4.3 billion.
Sources: Cerner, KCStar, KCTV5, Fox4KC
About Cerner
Cerner Corporation is an international health care information technology corporation that specializes in providing complete systems for hospitals and other medical organizations to manage and integrate all electronic medical records, computerized physician order entry (CPOE), and financial information. With offices worldwide, Cerner’s world headquarters is in Kansas City, Missouri.
