Jesse Clyde Nichols
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Jesse Clyde Nichols (August 23, 1880 - February 16, 1950), better known as J. C. Nichols, was a prominent developer of commercial and residential real estate in Kansas City. His developments included the Country Club Plaza, the first suburban shopping center in the United States, the Country Club District, Brookside, Mission Hills, Kansas and Prairie Village, Kansas, which together form the largest contiguous master-planned community in the United States. J.C. Nichols was the first to base the rents he charged his commercial tenants on a percentage of their gross receipts, now a common expectation in leases for retail space. He is also credited with creating a restrictive covenant model which led to widespread discrimination by prohibiting the sale of homes in his neighborhoods (particularly in the Country Club District and Mission Hills) to African Americans. He was prominent in Kansas City civic life, being involved in the creation of the Liberty Memorial, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Midwest Research Institute. His philosophies about city planning greatly influenced other developers in the United States, and can be seen in such communities Washington, D.C., Beverly Hills, California, and Houston, Texas. Modern outdoor shopping centers, now common in the United States, share a common ancestor in the Country Club Plaza, which opened in Kansas City in 1922. The Urban Land Institute's J. C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development[link] is named for him.
He is mentioned briefly in Robert A. Heinlein's novel To Sail Beyond the Sunset.
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