The Shadow
Repurposed from an underground limestone mine in 1964, Sub Tropolis is a 5,500,000-square-foot storage facility that has become a commercial business hub underneath a mountain overlooking the Missouri River.
In the underground facility in Kansas City, Missouri, 10.5 miles of paved roads lead underground past storage facilities, loading docks and commercial stores where a number of high-tech computers create what is known as “a cloud.”
Hollywood production companies have chosen to store canisters of film in the underground where the temperature remains a constant 65 F – 70 F year-round.
Classic movies such as “Gone with the Wind” are shelved in an archive there to prevent what is known as the “vinegar” effect that ruins the footage of film over long periods of time unless the film is stored in a controlled temperature setting.
The U.S. Postal Service rents space for its distribution hub where it stores and distributes hundreds of millions of stamps that are distributed nationwide from what was once the Bethany Falls Limestone Mine located on the bluffs above the Missouri River, near the midpoint between New York and California.
Limestone pillars that are 25’ square support the ceiling throughout the expansive underground facility that expands some 1,100 acres under the Earth’s surface as much as 165’ deep in certain areas.
The pillars provide six times the strength of concrete for the 16’ high grid in the 40’ wide tunnels throughout the facility that features overhead lighting in the business complex that was developed by the late Lamar Hunt’s Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc.
Hunt was the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, and he is credited with coining the name, “The Super Bowl,” and creating the American Football League.
The National Archive & Records Association rents space in the storage facility to house old tax records and federal court documents.
There are currently more than four dozen businesses and organizations renting space inside the business complex that was created by what is known in the mining industry as the room and pillar method of hard rock mining.
While there are U.S. underground facilities such as Area 51 that are secretive in terms of the size of the facility’s underground dimensions that prevent a comparison, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Region 7 Training and Logistics Center is housed in Sub Tropolis where there is also several miles of railroad track.
An estimated 6,700,000 square-foot area under the mountain remains for future development beyond Hollywood’s storage of 150,000 film reels.
