Mid-Central Exchange

The Mid-Central Exchange is a 40,449-square-foot, 1913 warehouse at 1656 Washington Street on the seam of the Crossroads, Film Row and the Westside. For roughly sixty years it was a cold storage plant — for most of that time the home of Mid-Central Fish Co., a wholesale seafood house that moved South African rock lobster tails and canned Alaskan salmon through Kansas City. It later held a sandwich company, then the original Screenland Crossroads cinema, and since a pandemic-era purchase and renovation it has been redeveloped under the Mid-Central Exchange name as a multi-tenant building. Its industrial past is not only documented but physically present: refrigeration coils from the fish company were cut up and reused as the legs of a bar top in one of its current tenants.¹²

The building

The structure dates to 1913 and runs to 40,449 square feet, with 95 parking spaces across two gated lots and front and back patios in its current configuration.¹ It sits at 1656 Washington Street, an address that different sources place in different neighborhoods: the businesses inside it describe themselves as being in the Crossroads Arts District, the reporting on its 2026 redevelopment places it “just inside Westside,” and the cinema that occupied it in the 2000s was described as being on the edge of the Crossroads and Film Row.²¹³ All three are defensible for this block; the building is on a seam.

No architect, architectural style, or original owner has been sourced for it. ****

Cold storage and Mid-Central Fish Co. (1913 – early 1980s)

The building’s original use was cold storage, and it kept that use for decades.³² From the early 1920s to the early 1980s it housed Mid-Central Fish Co., a regional wholesale seafood distributor and processor. Its trade was long-haul: South African rock lobster tails and canned Alaskan salmon, shipped into and back out of Kansas City.¹ That roughly sixty-year tenancy is the longest documented occupancy in the building’s history and is the source of the name the redevelopment now carries.

A later occupant, Honeybake Farm Sandwich, is recorded without dates.¹

Screenland Crossroads (2004 – 2013)

In 2004 a 150-seat independent cinema, Screenland Theatre at the Crossroads, opened in the renovated cold-storage building with a 26-foot screen — part of the locally owned Screenland chain whose other house, Screenland Armour, operates in North Kansas City.³ Its marquee was not original to it: it had been rescued from the historic Isis Theatre at 31st and Troost, the Kansas City house that closed in 1970, and which had a documented Walt Disney connection.³⁴ Correction, same session: Cinema Treasures dates the Isis’s demolition to 1977; that figure is wrong and is corrected on Cinema Treasures’ own comment thread. The Wirthman Building, of which the theater was a component, was razed in June 1997 — the theater stood vacant from 1970 while other tenants remained. See isis-theater for the full sourcing.⁴

The theater’s end at 1656 Washington was a rent dispute, and an unusually legible one. The Pitch reported on 18 April 2013 that Screenland Crossroads would close on 17 May 2013 after lease negotiations failed. The landlord was a mortgage-backed security firm based in New York seeking office tenants at $18 a square foot. Owner Jason Chafee: “They’re looking for office tenants looking to pay $18 a square foot, and they weren’t interested in hearing any of our counteroffers” — and at that rate, he said, “none of the owners would make any money – or else we’d have to increase ticket prices.” Butch Rigby, who owns the Screenland brand, said the theater would return “like any James Bond movie.”⁵

It did. Screenland relocated to 1701 McGee Street with 95 seats; Cinema Treasures dates that move to early 2015, which leaves a gap of roughly eighteen months against the May 2013 closing. Both dates are recorded; neither is reconciled here.³⁵

The Mid-Central Exchange (2020s –)

The building was bought and renovated during the pandemic by Ken Wolf, a Colorado resident, and redeveloped under the name The Mid-Central Exchange.¹²

Its tenancy since:

Triune — casual fine dining by Steven Blakley, opened mid-2024.¹
Office tenants on the upper floors.¹
Crossroads Golf KC — a five-bay Trackman indoor golf lounge and bar in Suite 100, opened 24 July 2026, occupying 4,000 square feet. Its buildout is where the building’s own history became furniture: the Mid-Central Fish Co. refrigeration coils were repurposed as the legs of the bar top.¹²
Announced but not confirmed open at the time of that coverage: Havana Cafe and Lounge (Suite 140, with Blakley listed as registered agent), Vessel Wellness (Suite 300), Shik Salon (Suite 305), and Obsidian Athletic Club (Suite 310).¹

Timeline

Year	Event
1913	Building constructed; 40,449 sq ft. Original use cold storage.¹³
early 1920s	Mid-Central Fish Co. takes occupancy.¹
early 1980s	Mid-Central Fish Co. departs after roughly six decades.¹
(undated)	Honeybake Farm Sandwich occupies the building.¹
2004	Screenland Theatre at the Crossroads opens, 150 seats, in the renovated cold-storage space; marquee salvaged from the Isis Theatre.³
18 Apr 2013	The Pitch reports the theater will close after a failed lease negotiation with a New York mortgage-backed-security landlord seeking $18/sq ft.⁵
17 May 2013	Screenland Crossroads closes at 1656 Washington.⁵
early 2015	Screenland reopens at 1701 McGee Street with 95 seats (date per Cinema Treasures; see the gap noted above).³
pandemic era	Ken Wolf buys and renovates the building; it is redeveloped as The Mid-Central Exchange.¹
mid-2024	Triune opens.¹
Jan 2026	Buildout begins for the indoor golf tenant.¹
24 Jul 2026	Crossroads Golf KC opens in Suite 100, with the fish company’s refrigeration coils reused as bar-top legs.¹²

Significance

The Mid-Central Exchange is a compact case of how Kansas City’s near-downtown industrial fabric has been used and reused. One building carries a sixty-year cold-storage trade, a neighborhood cinema whose marquee came from a demolished Walt Disney venue, a 2013 displacement by a securitised out-of-state landlord chasing office rents — a specific and documented instance of a pressure that reshaped the Crossroads generally — and a 2020s multi-tenant adaptive reuse that has kept the name of the fish house that made the building matter.

It also sits at the junction of three neighborhood identities — Crossroads, Film Row, Westside — which makes it a useful anchor for the boundary question those three districts pose.

Sources

Joyce Smith, “Crossroads Golf adds ‘craft-forward’ dining, drinks to neighborhood indoor golf,” Startland News, 24 July 2026 — asserts: the building at 1656 Washington is 40,449 sq ft and dates to 1913; Mid-Central Fish Co. occupied it from the early 1920s to the early 1980s as a regional wholesale seafood distributor and processor shipping South African rock lobster tails and canned Alaskan salmon; its refrigeration coils were repurposed as bar-top legs; Honeybake Farm Sandwich and Screenland as later tenants; Ken Wolf, a Colorado resident and the father of Crossroads Golf partner Sam Wolf, purchased and renovated the building during the pandemic; current tenants Triune (Steven Blakley, opened mid-2024) and office tenants; announced tenants Havana Cafe and Lounge (Suite 140), Vessel Wellness (Suite 300), Shik Salon (Suite 305), Obsidian Athletic Club (Suite 310); 95 parking spaces in two gated lots plus front and back patios; Crossroads Golf occupying 4,000 sq ft of Suite 100, buildout begun January 2026, opened 24 July 2026, described as “just inside Westside.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸
Crossroads Golf KC — “About,” accessed 2026-09-08 — asserts: the venue is “located in the Crossroads Arts District” in a historic building “once home to a 20th-century cold storage warehouse and more recently Screenland Crossroads movie theater,” now “reimagined as The Mid-Central Exchange Building.” First-party source for the current building name. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
“Screenland Theatre at the Crossroads,” Cinema Treasures theater record 10062, accessed 2026-09-08 — asserts: the original location was 1656 Washington Street, on the edge of the Crossroads and Film Row districts; the 150-seat Screenland opened there in 2004 in a renovated 1913 cold storage facility with a 26-foot screen; the marquee was “rescued from the historic Isis Theatre (closed 1970/demolished 1977)” where Walt Disney showed some of his earliest locally made cartoons; and that “in early-2015 the Screenland Theatre at the Crossroads relocated to nearby McGee Street,” to 1701 McGee Street with 95 seats. A user-contributed cinema database; used for the theater’s own particulars and corroborated on the 1913 cold-storage point by ¹. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
See isis-theater for the Isis Theatre’s full sourcing, including the Kansas City Landmarks Commission record and the correction trail on the 1977-vs-1997 demolition date. The 1977 figure appears only on Cinema Treasures’ Screenland Crossroads page and is corrected in that page’s own comment thread (user claydoh77, 15 January 2005) to “demolished in June 1997”; five sources including the Landmarks Commission catalog give 1997. URL ↩ ↩²
David Hudnall, “Screenland Crossroads to close in May; will reopen somewhere else downtown, probably,” The Pitch, 18 April 2013 — asserts: Screenland Crossroads at 1656 Washington would close 17 May 2013; lease negotiations failed with a landlord described as a mortgage-backed security firm based in New York seeking office tenants at $18 per square foot and rejecting counteroffers; owner Jason Chafee quoted on both points; Butch Rigby, owner of the Screenland brand, indicating a return “like any James Bond movie” with no venue then confirmed. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴