For a business that should have been on the verge of closing, Downtown Market is doing a brisk business.
Five months after the city labeled it a nuisance and the owner moved to evict, the lights are on at 1103 Grand. Beer coolers hum. The selection of alcoholic beverages remains extensive. The counter display still includes synthetic urine kits for anyone who wants to play a drug test. Get out of the market and you won’t struggle to find a pavement contractor that sells some of the substances that these tests are designed to detect.
“We’re still seeing the same activities, we’re dealing with all the same issues,” said Jason Swords, one of the owners of The Grand, a high-rise a few doors down. “We still find bottles of alcohol all over the sidewalks every morning. There are vagrants everywhere. We still see people hiding in the alleys, urinating on the sidewalks.”
It was not for lack of effort on the part of those in authority to intervene.
In September, Public Safety Director Lace Cline sent Downtown Market a cease-and-desist letter, giving the store 10 days to correct conditions the city said allowed “relentless, open and notorious drug activity and public intoxication.” The letter cited 184 service calls over two years — 101 of them disturbances — and referenced a January 2025 shooting inside the store.
Two months later, the building’s owner took the matter to Jackson County court. The Alexander Company, which owns the 16-story commercial building where Downtown Market occupies the ground floor, has filed suit to give Downtown Market the boot. The landlord says it sent a notice of default in October, gave the tenant time to fix several violations, then terminated the lease when it concluded the problems continued. He asked a judge to take possession of the space and rent it back while the case plays out.
The city and the landlord share the same gripe: The lease called for little more than a grocery store for downtown residents and workers on the move. The ground operation mostly moves the booze and attracts loose characters that have turned the block into something akin to skid row.
Shawn Choudry, part of the management team that owns Downtown Market, has a different version of the story: This is a city problem, not a Downtown Market problem.
“Downtown Market didn’t get 184 calls for service,” Choudry told me in the fall. “This area did it. The problems come from outside our store, not from inside.”
Choudry said this week that he preferred to let his countersuit against The Alexander Company do the talking for now. That complaint, filed in January, says the market’s owners invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovating the space and that its mix of food, alcohol and tobacco was approved from the start. It claims that, contrary to the owner’s claims, alcohol accounts for less than half of sales and that much of the activity cited by the city takes place at the bus stop across the street. It accuses the landlord of using the city’s nuisance designation as leverage to push them out of a long-term lease.
Downtown Market Liquor Section at 1103 Grand Blvd.
(Dominick Williams/dowilliams@kcstar.com)
Issues beyond a tenancy dispute
This fight probably burns hotter because of where it is. The corner of 11th and Grand is a few blocks from the Power & Light District and the T-Mobile Center, adjacent to the city’s financial district and near the Ambassador Hotel. It’s a part of the center that should feel stable and safe, a stretch of street that the city will show off to visitors with the World Cup on the horizon.
Swords and his investors at The Grand have said for months that the mess around their building is bleeding into their balance sheet. They asked PIEA, the city’s Planned Industrial Expansion Authority, for additional tax breaks, arguing that the shootings, street activity and constant repairs made their $69 million investment increasingly difficult to sustain.
PIEA has not yet accepted this request; chairman Tom Porto told me this week that he expects it to come before the board later this spring. I imagine Kansas City Public Schools and other taxing jurisdictions that would forgo revenue in such a deal are unlikely to shrug quietly at the prospect of extending an additional exemption to a project that already enjoys a substantial tax break.
Swords said he has noticed a stronger police presence in recent months. He credits the officers for spending more time on the block and the city for trying to crack down on the downtown square, even if the everyday street scene still feels familiar.
On my own visits over the last few months, the store seems to be on a slightly better behavior. The supply of kratom and other “gas station drugs” has been eliminated and I don’t see any loose or airplane bottles moving over the counter.
His claims are supported by the call data, regardless. I asked KCPD for service calls to the address since the cease and desist was lifted in September. Between the end of August and mid-February, police recorded 215 calls – including the most common disturbances (69), followed by tips or non-emergency calls (56). At least 10 incidents involved weapons and more than 40 required fire or EMS response.
I asked Mayor Quinton Lucas on Wednesday what the city’s position is on the matter and got a heavy handed statement about the legal wording. The plain English version says something like: The city plans to continue to cite and press for compliance while the landlord-tenant case works its way through the courts, and has not ruled out closing the place if conditions don’t improve. He made a similar move at least once in recent years, when he shut down an illegal nightclub on Prospect Avenue after a shooting.
But it remains hard to know how much the issue involves Downtown Market customers versus people who would be on that corner regardless. Closing the downtown market could remove one piece of the puzzle. But the corner is at the intersection of much bigger problems in the city: chronic homelessness, addiction and a mismanaged KCPD budget that has begun to make sustained community policing seem like a luxury. A lock won’t solve all that.