Meet SubTropolis

Kansas City is famous for many things: the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs, delicious barbecue, Russell Stover chocolates, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, among other distinctions. But the city also boasts another lesser-known title: home to the world’s largest underground business district, SubTropolis.

Located 8 miles northeast of Kansas City’s downtown, SubTropolis is nestled 150 feet below ground in a former Bethany Falls limestone mine. The 55-million-square-foot mine produced the limestone used in building much of Kansas City. When mining was complete, a vast space with a network of 25-foot square pillars remained. 

Enter Lamar Hunt, the legendary founder of the Kansas City Chiefs who is credited with naming the Super Bowl. The Chiefs’ early success made Hunt eager to invest further in Kansas City and, with his background in geology, Hunt soon connected with Underground Storage Inc., which had started to transform former limestone mine space into business facilities for companies like Ford, Russell Stover, and Pillsbury in the 1960s.

SubTropolis’s climate-controlled atmosphere is a selling point for many tenants. (Photo courtesy of Hunt Midwest.)

Fast-forward to today, SubTropolis, owned by Hunt Midwest, currently operates in 8 million square feet with more than 6 million square feet available for expansion. It holds a roster of 60 tenants and 3,000 employees. Tenants include the National Archives, the U.S. Postal Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, automotive companies, data and cloud storage providers, and Universal Vaults and Underground Vaults and Storage, Inc., which houses film and television archives. 

70 degrees and overcast 

The nature of the location and its stable climate make SubTropolis an ideal place for many companies to operate and grow. 

Tenants like the National Archives, which require steady temperature and humidity levels to preserve sensitive documents or materials, find the underground facility particularly advantageous. 

The consistent conditions also result in less energy usage. “Tenants don’t have to keep it cold in the summer or warm in the winter,” says Justin White, assistant vice president of operations for Hunt Midwest. 

Management perspective

Property managers in subterranean developments share many of the same concerns as a manager on the ground level, but there are some key differences.

One difference is the underground building codes, which are much different than above-ground codes. Another is the layout of the facility. To illustrate the operational layout of SubTropolis, Bell describes it as a “skyscraper on its side.” “We have a central command center where we can monitor everything, just like in a skyscraper, but laid out horizontally,” says Bell. This layout also makes it much easier for some maintenance tasks, such as air filter changes. “A filter change sounds simple, but filters on a surface building are typically 40-plus feet in the air on the roof. In SubTropolis, it’s a lot easier because they’re at your back door,” says Bell.

SubTropolis is located northeast of downtown Kansas City.

The horizontal layout also makes it much easier for tenants to expand or move, and SubTropolis has nearly 6 million square feet of unused space to grow into. 

SubTropolis is the focus of one of the panels at IREM’s upcoming PropertyCon at the Sheraton Boston Hotel in Boston, April 23-24, 2025. Whether the property you manage is above ground, or 150 feet below the surface like SubTropolis, this session will give you valuable insights on how property managers can effectively use their reputation, resources, and relationships to adapt to any challenge.

An expanded version of this article will appear in the May/June 2025 issue of JPM.