![Take A Look At This Scary Abandoned Kansas City Warehouse [Pic]](http://townsquare.media/site/466/files/2023/05/attachment-WBottomWarehouse.jpg?w=980&q=75)
Take A Look At This Scary Abandoned Kansas City Warehouse [Pic]
WARNING: Under no circumstances should you enter this property. By doing so you risk bodily harm and/or prosecution for trespassing on private property.
One of Kansas City's biggest eyesores may soon have a date with the wrecking ball. I'm talking about the Weld Wheel Building, also known as the Ridenour-Baker Grocery Company Building.
According to Wikipedia, the Building in the West Bottoms area of Kansas City has been abandoned since Weld Wheels left it in 2003. Weld Wheel, a company specializing in wheels for race cars, was located there in 1978 after it was the Kansas City Terminal Warehouse.
Before that, Ridenour-Baker Grocery Company had been located on the land since 1878, when they built their first building there. It was the first wholesale commercial grocery building West of the Mississippi to be placed near the railroad, an innovation that would soon be copied by four of their Kansas City competitors.
The first building for the bakery was damaged when flood waters submerged most of the West Bottoms. In 1910, they built their second building on the site, which was rebuilt in 1914 using fireproof reinforced concrete instead of brick, after part of the complex suffered a fire.
Not only was the warehouse a storage facility for the company, but it also manufactured its own brand of coffee, spices, peanuts, and other goods at the warehouse.
While the rail line outside the Weld Wheel Building today is plenty busy, at least according to the YouTube videos I saw, Kansas City's railroads shifted their focus away from the West Bottoms after Kansas City's Union Station was built in a more central part of the city.
Additionally, after World War 1 other cities rose as manufacturing centers and eroded Kansas City's dominance in warehouse storage and wholesale markets. The Ridenour-Baker Grocery Company would go out of business in the 1930s, and the building served other clients as the Kansas City Terminal Warehouse before Weld Wheel moved there in 1978.
The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014, and the plan was to redevelop the old warehouse into lofts. As of now, New York-based developer SomeraRoad wants to build a new five-story apartment building on the site as part of redevelopment plans for 20 acres in the area. Keep reading to see how the building currently looks.