From vacancy to rebirth: the transformation of Antioch Center Mall to Antioch Crossing in Kansas City, Missouri

Antioch Center in 2005, Kansas City, Missouri.Photo byCloversMallRat at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Another shopping center in northern Kansas City, Missouri (near the border of Gladstone) has been gone for some time. The Antioch Center Mall opened in 1956 with about 500,000 square feet. It was the first mall to open north of the Missouri River. By 2005, it was close to empty. Most of it was demolished in early 2012. Two stores remained, Burlington Coat Factory and Sears. I do remember going to this mall decades ago.

Antioch Center was an open-air shopping center when it opened. There were two levels that housed about 80 stores. Sears joined the mall in 1974. In 1978, the mall was enclosed, similar to what was done to the now-defunct Blue Ridge Mall.

Interestingly, a lot of the stores had an entrance on both the inside and outside. One of the anchor stores for the mall was Macy's (it was the first anchor store). In 1986, it became a Dillard's store. Then, in 1992, it was converted to Burlington Coat Factory.

Remember Levitz Furniture? It used to be at this mall too. The popular home improvement store at the time, Payless Cashways, was also there.

ShowBiz Pizza Place opened its first location at this mall. The mall was also the first suburban location of the restaurant chain, Forum Cafeteria.

So what happened?

During the mid-1990s, tenants were leaving and the mall wasn't as popular and it was going downhill in the sense that it was less visited. There were only three stores left which were Catherine's Plus Sizes, Sears, and Burlington Coat Factory.

In 2004, it was announced that the area was going to be a complex that was going to be open air and it was going to have different big-box stores.

A big-box retailer is a retail store that occupies an enormous amount of physical space and offers a variety of products to its customers. (Source.)

Walmart is an example of a big-box store.Photo byGabriel Vanslette, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

This progress of the redevelopment was hindered due to the effects of the economic recession in 2008. The entrance was blocked off and it was an empty mall of a long time. It was finally demolished in 2012.

In 2014, the site of the mall began undergoing some redevelopment. It's called Antioch Crossing now and besides the Burlington Coat Factory, there's also a Walmart Neighborhood Market, and a Vintage Stock. Sears was gone in 2017. Other retailers on the site include Starbuck's and Bank of America. It's located near the intersection of Antioch and Vivion Roads.

Thanks for reading!