Crown Center

Hallmark Cards founder Joyce Clyde “J.C.” Hall conceived Crown Center as “a city within a city,” an urban revitalization project surrounding Hallmark’s Kansas City headquarters; groundbreaking took place September 16, 1968, with the first phase, five interconnected 7-story office buildings, an underground garage and a public square, completed in 1971. The Crown Center Shops, Ice Terrace and the first of two hotels followed in 1973.

A 279,000 sqft office tower designed by Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners was completed in 1991 at 2600 Grand. The complex has continued to add attractions over the decades, including the Hallmark Visitors Center, Kaleidoscope (a free creative-arts experience for children), The Coterie family theater, Musical Theater Heritage, LEGOLAND Discovery Center and a Sea Life Aquarium.

The Crown Center Ice Terrace, one of Kansas City’s few public outdoor ice rinks, operates seasonally from November through February, and the property’s public courtyards carry multiple art installations, including a six-legged steel sculpture called Shiva and a puzzle-piece-themed piece titled Bringing the Pieces Together. Hallmark Cards continues to own and operate the complex directly.

That “city within a city” concept, an urban revitalization project built by a greeting-card company around its own corporate headquarters rather than a conventional retail developer, distinguishes Crown Center from virtually every other property in this project’s catalog, reflecting a genuinely unusual mixed-use origin story that has sustained more than five decades of continuous reinvestment rather than the anchor-tenant churn common to conventional shopping malls.