Transparency granted for Innovation Park

Sheila Solon is pleased.

The Blue Springs City Council member, who for months has been asking for more transparency regarding the proposed Missouri Innovation Park, said Monday night she was happy with the information presented to her by the Blue Springs Economic Development Corporation.

“My questions were answered,” Solon said. “I’m pleased with the information I received. I’ve been wanting more transparency.”

Aside from Ron Fowler, Solon was the only other council member who asked both Brien Starner, president of the EDC, and Brian Foster, provost for the University of Missouri, questions about the project, which has garnered attention ever since The Examiner published excerpts of a confidential letter informing the city that construction of the Mizzou Center has been postponed.

Foster said Monday that the university is still very much committed to the project, one that would eventually see the construction of a 32,000-square-foot facility. For the time being, however, Foster said the university will instead lease about 9,000 square feet of office space at Heartland Financial – a “running start,” he called it and a practical answer to looming budget difficulties facing the university.

“We’re coming to Blue Springs earlier, with a physical presence,” he said, adding after the presentation that 10 to 14 employees will be placed at the site, offering services including university extension, distance education and continuing education.

Foster, who called the move an attempt to build “infrastructure,” said the university plans to lease the space this month.

As pleased as she was with the announcement, Solon still expressed  her concerns about what she called a “contradiction.”

In April 2009, Solon said, she voted in executive session to give the city about $600,000 in additional money to project organizers to further the project, which began with an initial city investment of about $225,000.

“At the time I was told the university was planning on building the center,” she said. “That’s why I voted for that increase. (That is) a lot of money and we have some needs that need met.”

Solon said she became concerned when she read an alumni magazine last spring that announced the university was not going to make any capital investments. Starner said the market has changed considerably – even in the last 60 days, he added.

“Things change,” Mayor Carson Ross said.

Both Solon and Fowler also inquired about an apparent real estate offer made by property owners Steve Gildehaus and Roger Bennett, who own about 104 acres on Lake Remembrance, located on the north side of Interstate 70, which is across from where the proposed park is to be built.

Starner said the project’s former master developer, Trammell Crow, did approach both men about the property.

“They couldn’t get a land contract,” Starner said. “If they’d had a contract, it would have been a different conversation.”

Gildehaus informed the City Council that he and his partner want a shot at working with the city and university. He indicated that they already have a developer.

“We’re all fighting for our lives out there,” he said, an apparent reference to the struggling economy and marketplace.

Starner said the EDC and the Blue Springs Growth Initiative, the group charged with promoting and helping create the project, will look at any city property, though Ross emphasized that the 104 acres isn’t enough to fulfill the ultimate vision of the park: 250 acres of development, anchored by the Mizzou Center, and a 250-acre golf course amenity, Adams Pointe.

“One hundred and seventeen acres is just the first phase,” Ross said.

Council Member Kent Edmondson said the park is a good fit for the property along Adams Dairy Parkway.

“It was envisioned as (such a use),” he said.

In the meantime, both Foster and Starner said the EDC and university will partner to seek corporate, private and alumni investment, which is critical for land purchase and infrastructure.

Local legislators – including state Reps. Bryan Pratt and Gary Dusenberg – have shown support for the proposed 150-acre research park beyond the simple concept, but others in the Senate, including Sen. Matt Bartle, have expressed concern in the manner organizers want to purchase land – by diverting some state taxes to benefit the funding for the park, mostly for land acquisition.

A new bill, called Jobs for the Future, broadens the language and presents the park as a stepping off point for other Missouri communities that may wish to promote such a project.