What Should Happen With the Mission Mall Site

Here it is as it stands right this moment. Still. It is still and it is still basically an ugly lot.

What should happen with it?

What should happen with this now-eyesore is that it should be given up, sold, I suppose, to the city for some reasonable fee and made into a park. It should be made into a city park. It would be a fantastic entrance into the small city, and it would enhance the entire area around it.

What should have happened, years ago, is that the mall should never have been torn down and leveled into the, again, eyesore it is now and has become and that it has been for some time. Even without hindsight it should have been known it shouldn't have been leveled and wasted. It needed upgrading, improving, but it fit the site, it was not ugly, it wasn't an ugly mall, it wasn't run that run down and vacated.

No doubt the developer got greedy. He no doubt thought this would somehow be a great idea and make him loads more money.

Man, was he wrong.

Sure, the 2008 financial collapse brought this mess on, too, but the whole notion of leveling a functional and again, not completely unattractive shopping center just so someone could, hopefully, make boodles more money was short-sighted and just downright greedy.

Now?

Now Walmart has backed out of the plans to locate in what the developer thought was going to be an upcoming, new center. Good luck finding another large tenant now. I feel certain there are and were plenty, plenty of Mission residents who didn't want the Walmart/Roeland Park customers coming down the hill to this site, anyway.

Another point, have you seen the latest reports on retail this week? Where retail is headed, it seems clear?

Retail collapse: The 23 biggest chains 

closing stores this year

"Retailers Are Running Out Of Time"

Cramer warns the collapse 

of department stores 

cannot be dismissed

Retail Collapsing Nationwide - 

Massive Layoffs

Heck, even Walmart is hurting.

With 269 Stores Closing, 

Is this the Beginning of the End 

for Walmart?

And here's why.

Online Sales Soar while 

Brick-and-Mortar Stores Crumble

So yes, this is what should happen. Turn it over. Make it into a park. They could even call it Mission  Gateway Park.

It won't but that's what should happen.