Kansas City's Plan Commission has recommended approval of a second Northland Dillons grocery store, this one planned southwest of Tiffany Springs Road and North Platte Purchase Drive, alongside a convenience store and fuel pumps. The proposal now heads to the Kansas City Council for a final vote, and it lands just months after city leaders approved a similar Dillons project elsewhere in the Northland.
Plan Commission Signs Off Despite Local Pushback
According to KCTV, the commission approved the proposal to add a Dillons grocery and convenience store with fuel pumps at the site, with the project assessed on how it would affect the surrounding land rather than on how it might affect nearby competitors. That distinction mattered to at least one nearby business owner: per KCTV's account of meeting opposition, a nearby gas station owner said the new store would be devastating to his business. The city council still must weigh in before the project can move forward.
Per plans described in the same report, Dillons intends to build a grocery store, fuel pumps, a parking lot with nearly 450 parking spaces, and a dedicated grocery pickup location on the site. Customers would access the store from Platte Purchase Drive and Tiffany Springs Road. The site itself sits just north of Highway 152, directly across from the Central Bank Sporting Complex and a nearby Costco.
A Sports Complex Next Door and a Changed Master Plan
That sporting complex is no small neighbor. The 76-acre Central Bank Sporting Complex is a $36 million youth sports facility with 10 synthetic turf fields operated by Sporting KC, according to KCUR, whose first fields had been available since Labor Day, with the full facility's grand opening in April 2023, and hosts youth tournaments, according to Sporting KC. Sporting KC projected $505.5 million in sales-tax revenues from the broader Twin Creeks Village development combined with adjacent Costco over 30 years, while KCUR separately projected $194 million in local sales-tax revenue for the sporting complex.
Municipal docket records identify the proposal as Case CD-CPC-2026-00094, a request for a major amendment on roughly 14 acres, city records show. KCTV reports that original site plans for the property had called for two retail buildings, two office buildings and five restaurants before the Dillons proposal took shape. Reporting from the Kansas City Star earlier this summer put the planned store's footprint at nearly 100,000 square feet, a scale that lines up with Kroger's multi-department Marketplace store format.
Dillons' Return to a Metro It Left Nearly Two Decades Ago
This isn't Dillons' first Northland move this year. The Kansas City Council passed Ordinance 260261 in March, approving rezoning and development plans for a Dillons store and commercial retail space on 12.72 acres at North Oak Trafficway and North Shoal Creek Parkway, following the Plan Commission's earlier recommendation that same month, according to city records. KCTV notes the Plan Commission had already approved that similar Dillons project at North Oak Trafficway and Shoal Creek Parkway back in March.
The Tiffany Springs proposal also follows Kroger-owned Dillons' announcement last October of a $40 million Dillons Marketplace store at College Avenue and Sunnybrook Boulevard in Olathe, Kansas — the chain's first announced return to the metro after years away, as reported by Grocery Dive. Dillons had exited the Kansas City metro back in 2008, selling its local stores to Kansas City, Kansas-based Associated Wholesale Grocers, which then resold them to independent operators, according to Supermarket News.
A Kansas Chain Betting on Missouri Turf
Dillons traces its roots to Sterling, Kansas, where it was founded in 1890, before Cincinnati-based The Kroger Co. acquired it in 1983; former Kroger CEO David Dillon was a descendant of the grocer's founder, per Supermarket News. The chain currently operates about 60 grocery stores across 30 Kansas cities and holds the largest store count in the state, alongside Kroger sister banners Gerbes in Missouri and Baker's in Nebraska.
Still, breaking back into the Kansas City metro won't be simple. Supermarket News notes that Walmart, Price Chopper and Hy-Vee remain the dominant grocery banners across the region, even as Dillons leans on new Northland growth and high-traffic sites like the one across from the sporting complex to gain a foothold. Whether that strategy overcomes entrenched customer loyalty to those established chains, or the concerns raised by smaller operators like the gas station owner near Tiffany Springs, will likely play out as the City Council takes up the project.
