The Plaza Keeps Adding Stores. Why Do So Many Storefronts Still Sit Empty?

On August 26, a construction worker was putting up holiday lights along Nichols Road near the front of Alo. That store had only been on the Country Club Plaza since May. A Kansas City Star photographer captured the moment for the paper's annual look at the Plaza. The picture shows something that is easy to miss on a weekend walk: many of the storefronts behind the lights belong to different tenants than they did last year.

This year's openings have been real, and some drew lines down the block. The share of dark windows has stayed about where it was. On the Plaza, a new store has mostly meant a store that replaced one that left. Two vacancy counts taken a year apart show this. The thing that could actually change the count is a planned redevelopment of the empty former Nordstrom site, and it is still waiting on city financing.

A count that barely moved

In July 2025, a year after Gillon Property Group bought the Plaza for $175.6 million, The Star found about 30% of its retail and restaurant storefronts empty. The paper counted again in late August 2026 and found 28% of 151 storefronts unoccupied, which it called "slightly better than holding steady."

Six weeks later, longtime retail reporter Joyce Smith counted 47 empty spaces in her October 11 KCinsiders Plaza update. That works out to a little over 31% of 151. These are hand counts by two different people, and small differences in what counts as a space can move the result a few points. Still, both counts land in the same range. About three in ten Plaza storefronts sat empty in fall 2026, much as they did in summer 2025.

Over the same period, a dozen or so new names arrived. The count stayed flat because of where they went.

Address by address, the same doors with new names

Look at where the new tenants are opening and a pattern shows up. Most of them are moving into spaces that another business just left, or left years ago.

Psycho Bunny closed at 415 Nichols Road on March 29 after four years there, and Reformation plans to open in the same space this winter. The Victoria's Secret spaces are being divided between two sister brands. Evereve is a return, since the retailer spent about a decade on the Plaza before leaving in late 2024. Each of these deals fills a storefront. Few of them add to the total number of lit windows, because most of the spaces had just gone dark.

What left over the same stretch

The closings list is long enough to cancel out the openings. The Star's August report listed Nike at 450 Nichols Road, which closed in July, Tiffany & Co. at 301 Nichols Road, gone in June, and Beauty Brands at 438 Ward Parkway, which closed in December. It also counted Nickel & Suede, Madewell, Francesca's, Psycho Bunny, Perch and Johnny Was among the shops that closed during the year. Johnny Was was the small corner shop at 320 Nichols Road that recently appeared in the new season of "Ted Lasso."

The most recent departure is a local one. The Star reported that Cupcake A La Mode at 4639 Wornall Road closed on September 26, after 15 years on the Plaza. The shop said it was "unable to reach an agreement on a new lease for our current location." In its farewell note, the shop thanked customers for letting it be part of "birthdays, weddings, first dates, family traditions and those random Tuesdays that simply needed a cupcake."

For every LoveShackFancy that opens, another familiar name tends to leave. That explains why a district with real leasing activity can still show three dark windows in ten.

Who is arriving tells you more than how many

Smith's October list marks Rag & Bone, Reformation, SKIMS and Jaxen Grey as first-to-market tenants, meaning brands opening their first Kansas City store on the Plaza. Gillon's leasing is aimed at stores people currently have to leave town to visit.

When Rag & Bone was announced on September 30 for 4712 Broadway Boulevard, Plaza vice president Scott Keller described the year in a release shared by the KC Chamber as one of "significant retail momentum in 2026." The openings support that. When LoveShackFancy opened at 319 Nichols Road in March, KSHB reported a line of shoppers waiting, and one shopper told the station the Plaza was "becoming more popular with cooler stores."

Here is what a regular Plaza visitor can expect over the next several months, using the opening windows the businesses gave KCinsiders:

1. Open now: LoveShackFancy, J.H. & Sons at 314 Ward Parkway, Alo at 422 Nichols Road, Mersea at 602 W. 48th St., Veronica Beard, and Louie's Reserve, the more elevated version of Louie's Wine Dive.
2. Late November or early December: Vertice, the modern Italian restaurant from locally owned Summit Hospitality Group, in the former reVerse space at 616 Ward Parkway.
3. This winter: Reformation at 415 Nichols Road.
4. Late February: Jaxen Grey at 437 Nichols Road.
5. Spring 2027: Evereve at 445 Nichols Road and Rag & Bone at 4712 Broadway.
6. No date yet: SKIMS at 405 Nichols Road, and The Clubhouse KC, a cards-and-collectibles shop that is taking two spaces at 213 and 225 W. 47th St. and will include a private lounge.

Vertice is the only new restaurant on that list, and its opening window falls in the holiday season.

The space that could change the count is a vacant lot

If storefront leasing mostly swaps one tenant for another, the empty-space total will only move when the Plaza adds new buildings and more people living right there. That is where Gillon's long-term plan is focused.

Its first target is the 3.3-acre vacant parcel on the Plaza's west edge where Nordstrom planned a store before pulling out in 2022. Dustin Bullard, Gillon's vice president of partnerships and place, told KCUR's Up to Date that the lot is "a physical and psychological, you know, detriment to the Plaza."

According to plans reported by The Star, the site would get 250 apartments, 150 hotel rooms, 10,000 square feet of restaurant space and 15,000 square feet of retail space. Developers have said construction could begin there in 2027. Across the whole Plaza, the plan proposes about 824 apartments. Gillon has also described a "plaza-on-the-Plaza," a public square on what is now a surface parking lot behind the Classic Cup, between West 47th Street and Nichols Road.

Paying for it requires two approvals. The first came in late August, when the Port KC board approved up to $1.49 billion in bonds, along with property tax breaks, for a 15-year revitalization. The second is a tax increment financing plan for the 47th and Broadway area, capped at $210 million in reimbursable project costs. The ordinance approving it, Council file 260924, was referred to the Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee on October 8 and placed on the committee's October 20 agenda. The city's legislative record is the place to follow its progress.

While the TIF waits, The Star reported that bulldozers are not likely to show up until at least next year, and the earliest construction start developers have mentioned is 2027. Until then, the 151 existing storefronts are where the changes happen.

Between now and the lights

The lights went up early this year. As of mid-October, neither the Plaza's events calendar nor its press page listed a 2026 Lighting Ceremony. The 2025 ceremony was the 96th, presented by Evergy, on Thanksgiving night, November 27, 2025. It started at 6:30 p.m., with KC Current players flipping the switch at 7:55 p.m. and fireworks after. It was free and open to the public, with the stage at Nichols Road and Pennsylvania.

If this year follows that pattern, the lights will come on around the time Vertice opens at 616 Ward Parkway. People walking Nichols Road this holiday season will see Veronica Beard, Alo and LoveShackFancy open, and construction underway at 415 and 405 Nichols Road. They will also see roughly the same number of dark windows as last year, until work starts on the empty lot west of Jefferson Street.

If you live near the Plaza and want to know how this round of tenant turnover and the coming redevelopment could affect homes in the surrounding blocks, Melissa Rousselo follows these changes closely and is happy to talk through what matters for your street. Let's Connect.