Premier Investments Makes Armourdale Strong

Anyone who has driven on 7th Street in the Armourdale area in the last few months has seen a huge building under construction just to the east of Shawnee Park.

That 170,000 square foot building is located between Shawnee and Osage Avenues (south of Kansas Avenue) and is the latest project of Premier Investments, LLC, a development company that is located in Armourdale and has been doing amazing things to build and strengthen that area of the city for close to 40 years.

Here's a view of the new 170,000 sq. ft. building under construction
(photo taken from the corner of 5th and Osage).

A parent company, Prime Investments, was created by Bill Willhite, Sr. in the mid-1970's. He built or acquired and then leased a couple of buildings himself in the early 1970's and then created the company in the late 1970's.

Since its inception, Prime / Premier has either renovated or built from scratch close to 2 million square feet of industrial space in the Armourdale area. With additional buildings and space in Fairfax and in the river front area of Kansas City, Missouri, the company has created close to 3 million square feet of industrial space.

The new building is represented by the red rectangle.
This map not only shows where the building is located,
but gives you a sense of what a tremendous addition
it is to the Armourdale area.

Bill Willhite, Jr. currently serves as president of Prime / Premier while his sister Kathi Butler serves as vice president. They have both made it clear to me that they value the Armourdale community and are glad that they can contribute to the vitality of the community through their company and their buildings.

Here's another photo of the new building
from the corner of Packard & Osage

This artist's rendering shows how the building
will look when it is completed.

As you see in the drawing above, the buildings that Prime / Premier builds and develops are visually distinctive. They all feature a white exterior above a horizontal blue stripe. Look for that blue stripe the next time you drive through eastern Armourdale.

You can learn more about this new building and about the history of the company through a couple of articles that were published in the Kansas City Business Journal. One article is new (from the March 20, 2014 issue) and the other is a little older (from the June 26, 2005 issue).

Thanks to Bill and Kathi for (literally) building up our community through their work!!


~ Brian

bmckiernan@wycokck.org
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