The Landing is a 1960’s era mall in Kansas City, Missouri. Located at the intersection of four major thoroughfares (Troost Avenue, Meyer Boulevard, The Paseo and 63rd Street), the Landing is still an active mall. However, none of the mall’s original tenants have a presence at the now thrift-centric and outdated shopping center. The building’s unique split-level, indoor/outdoor structure sees businesses facing the parking lot like a modern commercial strip and facing an interior hallway like a suburban mall.

The Landing’s location along 63rd Street is shown in the below map. What struck me the most was just how much the Landing, as well as the other commercial sites along the corridor, stand out among the sea of single-family homes West of the site. Furthermore, the extent to which these parcels of land and the surrounding grid of streets, break apart and become larger blocks with non-linear street patterns is striking. The Landing and the intersection of 63rd and Troost really is the beginning point of this transition.

This point is further proven when looking at the area immediately surrounding the Landing. This reverse figure ground diagram below shows just how quickly the area transitions from a residential neighborhood to a ‘suburban’ retail experience. The diagram also shows how spread out the buildings are from one another and from their fronting streets and sidewalks. This area was obviously designed for the automobile and not the pedestrian, which makes sense considering the time period when the site was originally developed – the 1960’s.

When we walked around the site, I noticed two different ways that The Landing appears from the sidewalk. The first, in my opinion, was more positive. When walking West on 63rd Street, you see a sign on the side of the building signifying that you’ve reached the shopping mall. By using the same font style that dates back to the mall’s opening in the 1960’s, the sign shows the mall’s historical significance. To me, the sign also gives the mall a sense of unity and identity. Together, these ideas give me a positive and inviting feeling.

The next picture that I took shows a not so inviting view of the mall. Blocked by an inaccessible ramp, pedestrians walking along Troost Avenue have no easy way to get down onto the lower level of the mall. The view from Troost is also one that looks down into the site. From the sidewalk, you can see the vast parking lot and the tops of the buildings including all of the rooftop equipment. By simply cleaning up some of the overgrown brush, opening up the ramp and screening the rooftop equipment, The Landing could give pedestrians a much more intriguing entrance, similar to the one on the East end.

Despite the declining state of the mall from its original state, The Landing and its site do have a number of positives.

• Location – bounded by four major thoroughfares
• Parcel size – parcels of this size are hard to come by in the area. redevelopment opportunities are endless
• Neighborhoods – surrounded by Citadel, Western 49-63, Blenheim and Morningside neighborhoods
• Institutions – Hogan Preparatory Academy, Convent of Christ the King, Ewing Marion Kauffman School and various other hospitals and schools surround the site
• Tenants – Cornbread Buffet opened in the mall in August 2018
• History – Originally developed by JC Nichols in the 1960’s as a suburban shopping mall – one of the first of its kind