Fun Factory was definitely the shit...

The whole concept of malls is all but obsolete.
Benjamin Plaza has very little shopping to sustain any kind of business let alone a mall. Best Buy is gone. Circuit City is gone. Just For Feet is gone. Walmart is gone. It's insane.

Someone will buy that property up with a couple singles and turn it into something profitable in time though.

I'm more pissed about the KC area possibly chasing Legoland away. That park would be a cash tree for the area.

I grew up in that neighborhood from 87-03 and saw it change so much, it is now such a shithole.

Metcalf South is weird... it's like it has been frozen in time with all of the signs of previous stores still there. It looks like it could just reopen in a weeks notice.

Legoland is going to Lee's Summit

There is alot of money to be made over there once the city starts to drive the criminals further south and further east.

I lived in the area from 1991 - 2001. Used to be a cool neighboorhood. Buit it was getting trashy near the end.

Which is in the KC area.

And the latest news sounds like it's not going to Lee's Summit and that they're not coming to the Midwest at all now. Apparently the State pulled funding and the city of Lee's Summit isn't fully behind the idea anyway.

http://www.lsjournal.com/articles/20...ews/02lego.txt

LS is a small town full of small minded people that don't like change. The new comers like myself and others think they need some frigging retail revenue to take some of the tax burden off us.

It's too bad that Legoland can't go to the Banister Mall site.

Criminals ay?
Priceless...

I drive past the Bannister Mall every day going back and forth to work.

It's been useless as a real mall for several years. Nothing but flea market stuff in ther the past couple years.

BM died for a couple reasons. It started going down hill when people were getting mugged and carjacked in the parking lot. When that happened, people from Grandview and Raytown and from across the state line in JoCo stopped going because of safety concerns.

Then Lee's Summit built a mall on Chipman Road, and JoCo has plenty of shopping south of I-435. That whole area just withered away. Not only the mall, but all the other stuff that was built around the outskirts of the mall too. Now it's a ghost town.

Shame, because all that land used to be part of Benjamin Ranch, where you could go horseback riding and the trails were plentiful and stretched a long way. That land is part of the original Santa Fe Trail, so back when it was a horseback riding ranch, it was cool, because you could ride on the original Santa Fe Trail. Now its all just asphalt and empty strip mall buildings. Even Wal-Mart bailed out, because they flattened the Blue Ridge Mall and built a Wally World on the property. Now all the slime from South KC goes to the Blue Ridge Mall for Beef Jerkey, Doritos, Smirnoff Ice and diapers.

I've heard rumors that the city would like to take over that land, flatten the mall, and build the Wizards a soccer stadium, but nothing concrete has come around on that yet.

Yes it does kind of suck to have to walk or drive from store to store when its hot outside. I live in San Antonio, so i know all about heat. But these open air malls are the hot thing right now. They have built two or three in this area in the past 4 or 5 years and they are huge.

I guess most the kids these days congregate at the 30 Theater multiplex's.

Dayum, you'll find anything here. A Serengetti fan.
I've worn their H2Optix for 8 years, a couple years ago, my mom sat on them in the car and broke them. Found out, they've been bought by Bolle, who actually centered in Lenexa, dropped over there and they gave me a brand new replacement pair.
Great customer service.

It was the place back then, One of my first jobs were at the Bannister. Worked a couple of years selling Electronics at Sears, and was an Ast Mgr at Tape World, f#@king funny cassette tapes were the format of choice back then. Also remember was the first place a saw replica jerseys and hats at Mearle Haron's Fan Fare, dropped lots of cash there over those years.