If you count the thunderstorms, floods and heat domes that hit Kansas City, there’s not much solace from volatile weather here. That’s why an intricate web of limestone caves carved in the bluffs throughout the metro have become an intrinsic part of the economic landscape.
The caves offer a safe haven for hundreds of commercial interests looking to protect their assets from disastrous weather.
An example of such a space is the vast and tenanted cave in western Independence, dubbed “The Caves,” which houses Verizon’s “extreme network” equipment used for disaster situations. Most recently, it was deployed to help victims of Hurricane Helene in Florida near Tampa.
The cave space, at 100,000 square feet, is about the size of a Target store and houses what’s needed for Verizon to get one of its Emergency Operation Centers operating in a hard-hit locale. Often, cell phone traffic spikes in these places, causing outages, and fiber connections are down.
Putting costly and sensitive disaster-response equipment, like drones and satellite-based mobile units, in a stormproof cave sustains peace of mind for Tony LaRose, Verizon’s network operations manager, who oversees the Independence fleet.
It’s certainly not safe above ground. LaRose witnessed that firsthand back in 2011 when an EF5 tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, and the surrounding area, killing 158 people and destroying thousands of buildings.
Verizon’s disaster-relief equipment was in a parking lot in the KC area on high ground, and LaRose realized that “if a tornado comes through there, not only can I not support others … I can’t support anything.
“So I went to my director and I said, ‘I want to put those assets in a cave,’” LaRose says. “And he laughed at me.”
The metro area’s limestone caves aren’t a joke, though, as management soon found out.
Verizon is housed in a five million-square-foot cave facility that the company refers to as The Space Center. The company shares this space in the limestone fortress known as The Caves with about 50 other entities, including institutions such as the Social Security Administration and National Parks Service, which require secure spaces for documentation and whatever else they need to keep away from property-damaging disasters.
Mining the limestone from the area’s bluffs was a huge business as Kansas City grew. The rock was used to build the metro’s roads, commercial buildings and houses. A majority of Kansas City’s notable churches and historic homes of the early 20th century are built from this limestone.
After decades of wholesale rock excavation, the former mines had become massive caves. Today, they’re run by landlords who specialize in leasing the hollowed-out spaces as commercial space for companies’ assets and operations. The most well-known of these facilities is SubTropolis, close to Worlds of Fun, both of which were originally developed by Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt. SubTropolis was a former 55 million-square-foot limestone mine. Today, real estate firm Hunt Midwest operates SubTropolis, and organizations including the United States Postal Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and many others lease space there to house their documents in the caves which have naturally cool, protective temperatures between 65 and 72 degrees.
Back in Independence at The Caves where Verizon is, the controlled temperature is a little lower, closer to 50 degrees. It can be jarring to enter them when the outdoor thermometer is pushing triple digits.
That, and the lower natural humidity, suits LaRose well, though. His equipment’s software needs constant updating, and there won’t be any danger of overheating when batteries are constantly charging for backup generators and backups for those generators.
“I want to be ready,” LaRose says. “I want to be the first one to get a unit rolling someplace to help our customers.”
