For nearly half a century, General Motors operated an assembly plant on Kansas City’s southeast side. From the plant’s opening in 1929 until its closure in 1988, more than 8.2 million vehicles rolled off the line in Kansas City’s historic Leeds neighborhood.  

After its closure, the former GM plant was converted into a mixed-use industrial park and warehouse space. Following a 2021 fire, the structure was razed. Then, in 2023, Union Pacific Railroad purchased the property with the intent to turn it into a rail-served industrial park.  

Olsson partnered with Union Pacific and Kansas City-area government and economic development partners to reimagine the site.

Union Pacific was interested in the site for many reasons. Its Kansas City location is equidistant to both coasts and sits along major rail and vehicular corridors. The site’s existing infrastructure included a railyard and two bridges. And it was already connected to public utilities and zoned for heavy industrial use.

Despite these built-in advantages, the site needed work. Here are the four principles we used to give this land new life:

1. Invest in early due diligence to define what is fixed.

As we do with any redevelopment site, we layered investigations to identify immovable constraints and modifiable conditions. After the plant was demolished, its underground structures remained and needed to be inventoried to quantify demolition needs. The existing public infrastructure had been modified and expanded since the early 1900s, so extensive field work, including using video inside underground pipes, was conducted to verify the location and condition of underground utilities.

2. Frame planning based on fixed constraints.

As part of our initial due diligence, we evaluated constraints on existing rail and vehicular access and reviewed how access could be improved or added. Based on the access framework, we developed multiple site options. Corridors for utilities and their connection to existing utilities were established. The framework development now allows for efficient evaluation of potential customer needs and avoids later-stage design challenges.

3. Preserve flexibility when future users are not yet identified.

Throughout the process, we maintained design flexibility with multiple site options. These included rail and utility corridors that could serve different types of end users, building, and site configurations. We also worked closely with Kansas City-area governmental and economic development partners to identify opportunities and understand the needs of companies looking to expand or locate operations in the Kansas City area.

4. Manage risk and control costs by phasing development.

We made early design decisions that supported both near-term development and long-term site evolution. Today, the Union Pacific Leeds Industrial Park site is a development-ready location for warehouse and manufacturing opportunities requiring high-volume rail service.