Perched beside I-670, the former KC Star printing press pavilion at 1601 McGee Street has become a facet of the downtown skyline and, in recent years, found itself in the middle of change and controversy.
Follow along as we trace the building’s origins and what its latest tenant — an AI data center promising tech hub status for KC — says about the city’s future.
Where it all began
As major interstates I-35 and I-70 snaked their way through Kansas City’s downtown core in the mid 20th century, locals spread out to the surrounding suburbs and left the city center in disrepair. Parking lots, office buildings, and not much else dotted downtown by the 1990s, leaving even cultural institutions like Union Station on the brink of demolition.
Luckily, Y2K ushered in more than just low-rise jeans for Kansas Citians, as locals began to push for major revitalization efforts to the tune of billions of dollars. Think: KCPL Central Branch (2004), H&R Block headquarters (2006), Power & Light (2008), and the Kauffman Center (2011).
The Kansas City Star’s $200 million printing press pavilion was officially christened in 2006. Four state-of-the-art German built printing presses churned out hundreds of thousands of daily editions until news industry upheaval resulted in... well, that’s another story.
Subscriber decline led to the building’s sale in 2019, though the Star continued to lease it until 2021. Since then, the giant green-and-glass monolith has sat more-or-less empty on prime downtown real estate.
Royals stadium saga
KCtoday covered this from beginning to its failed ballot measure, but here’s a complimentary refresher:
Around this time last year, rumors started surfacing that the Royals were considering a third location on their hunt for a new stadium spot and by February, those rumors were confirmed.
Locals were pitched the idea of a “neighborhood ballpark” in the Crossroads at 1601 McGee St., catty-corner from the T-Mobile Center and Power & Light District — all its owners needed was a sales tax extension. Ultimately, we know how this ended.
The future of 1601 McGee St.
While its owners originally hoped for a baseball diamond, news broke in recent weeks of the site’s future tenant: Kansas City-based Patmos.
Thanks to its existing infrastructure as a large-scale printing facility, the site was primed for the needs of AI, which require massive amounts of electricity to power.
No sale number has been released, but we do know the building will undergo a $1 billion retrofit to house a 100+ megawatt AI data center and cloud provider, with future plans to expand into a tech co-working space.
Its former owner, the Kansas City Star, reports that Patmos CEO John Johnson aims to make the site unlike other “eyesore” AI data centers by incorporating historic machinery, a wall of former headlines, and by using the space for community events like “real-time AI-generated art” showings.
Construction will bring the center up to partial capacity within the next 18 months, a completion date is TBA.
