The 3-acre property that is home to Kansas City’s 150-foot Ferris wheel and which, for four years, has been the proposed location of the much-ballyhooed but stalled Pennway Point entertainment district, has been sold.
The purchase price has not been released. But, according to Jackson County real estate records, Safranda Mo, LLC, transferred title of the property — tucked alongside Interstate 35 and southwest of Union Station — to ZAGS 26, LLC a Delaware limited liability corporation that provides its address as Essential Properties Realty Trust of Princeton, N.J.
The KC Wheel, which began spinning in 2023, is to maintain its ground lease.
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The sale, which took place on June 8 and was recorded on June 12, raises greater uncertainty regarding the future of Pennway Point, a proposed entertainment district of bars and eateries that since 2022 has been promised to take up residence in what were to be transformed industrial buildings from the 1900s.
Kansas City developer Vince Bryant, a principal with 3D Development, the force behind Pennway Point, originally said the project might be finished as early as 2023. As touted, the district at 2485 Jefferson St. was to include music venues and yard games, beach volleyball and winter skating in the shadow of the Ferris wheel run by ICON Experience of Maryland.
The old Funkhouser Machinery Co. building had been planned to be a 30,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor venue called Talegate Park with a Beef & Bottle restaurant, bars, two kitchen kiosks, an indoor/outdoor beer garden and a mezzanine Funk House club with VIP seating.
The former 6,000-square-foot Pennway Oil Building , with its wood-barreled roof, had been envisioned as Barrel Hall, featuring a Boulevard Brewery bar and tasting experience, a Chef J. BBQ, a whiskey bar and Würstl (a Viennese sausage stand)…