Bank-robber-turned-millionaire brings visitors to dying town

HARRISONVILLE, Mo. -- Everyone else at the table eats; Del Dunmire spits out stories.

The bank robber-turned-millionaire bounces from his Air Force days to jack rabbits to campaign contributions to paintball to Iraq and finally to the giant Santa Claus he later would bring to Harrisonville.

When others at the corner table in the Pearl Street Grill in Harrisonville finish their breakfast, Dunmire's waffle remains untouched, a grid of small pools of melted butter.

Debbie, his wife, lights a cigarette.

Brian Bardo, a Dunmire executive, looks at business papers.

Harrisonville Mayor Kevin Wood looks at his watch.

They know this big spender with the booming voice and a red Rolls-Royce, the guy who entertained thousands of Kansas Citians at his lavish wedding reception in 1986. They know how easily he strays off point.

Dunmire conducts business the same way he tells stories, often embarking on a new project before he's finished the last.

But they don't question his vision. If Dunmire thinks he can spend millions to turn the Harrisonville square into a hot spot like the Westport entertainment district in Kansas City, they believe him.

'Proof of life'

The Pearl Street Grill, on the square's northeast corner, is Dunmire's pride. Remodeled to century-old charm, the brick building is the flagship of his grand plan, an example of things to come and a "proof of life" to skeptics who say Dunmire has more money than brains.

Across the way, on the square's south side sits Younger's, a three-story bar that, by no accident, looks like Blayney's in the basement and Buzzard Beach on the roof -- both in Westport.

Those are only two of the more than 20 buildings than Dunmire owns on the Harrisonville square. He's determined to rebuild the Cass County town to its Civil War-era charm to attract some of the winers, diners and shoppers who now fill Westport and Kansas City's Country Club Plaza.

Spent millions

He estimates he's already spent "tens of millions" to buy and renovate the properties for use as restaurants, bars, offices, boutiques and antique shops.

"I don't like to think about it because then I have to economically justify it and right now I can't do that," said Dunmire, 67.

Bardo, Dunmire's point man in the redevelopment, negotiated purchases on most of the buildings before leaving in 1992 to start his own company. Dunmire brought him back two years ago when the redevelopment project in the town of 9,000 started to bog down.

Bardo said the plan looks better through a long lens.

"We know we are five years ahead of the population," he said.

And this pledge comes from the boss: "I'm here, and as long as I've got the money, we're not going to stop."

Credit the man: Dunmire, for all his loud talk about big bucks and big deals, speaks just as loud about his mistakes.

"I made every mistake a bank robber could possibly make," he said almost boastfully.

He was arrested 22 minutes after a 1958 heist in Abilene, Kan. He'd made a wrong turn during his getaway and got lost. When he found the road, a state trooper shot out the left-front tire of his rented Chevy.

That lack of planning put Dunmire in prison.

Harrisonville can't be a mistake. Too much money, too much time, too much talk.

Controlling the board

Dunmire made his fortune with Growth Industries, the aviation component company he owns in Grandview. In 1987, he started buying property around the Harrisonville square. Two or three buildings wouldn't cut it. As in a Monopoly game, he needed to control the board. That was the only way to win.

"What did we pay for those buildings, Brian?" Dunmire asked Bardo during the recent breakfast.

"Whatever they asked," Bardo answered without looking up from his papers.

Dunmire smiled. Then he explained why his dream will work.

"We're 30 minutes from College Boulevard and Metcalf," he said. "We're 30 minutes from Lee's Summit. Those people go to Westport and the Plaza because there is nowhere else to go. I'm going to give them another choice."

At first, some in Harrisonville resented Dunmire as an outsider who swaggered into town and proceeded to turn it into a personal playground. For years, they saw little progress.

Mayor Wood believes much of that worry passed when the Pearl Street Grill and Younger's opened. He said most folks in Harrisonville now appreciate what Dunmire is trying to do.

"I'm not sure anyone else would have the time and money other than Del to come into this town and do what's doing," Wood said. "Yes, it's a big change, but I think most people realize that big change was necessary to save the square."

As in many county seats across the country, Harrisonville's downtown was devastated by the square killer -- a Wal-Mart store at the edge of town.

Much of the retail business left. Shoppers disappeared. Buildings stood empty.

Cass County Presiding Commissioner Gary Mallory said that if people are still frustrated by Dunmire's pace, it's because they don't see the work he's doing to make the old buildings structurally sound.

"He's spending a lot of money to make sure those buildings last longer than any of us," Mallory said.

"And people need to remember that what they had before was a square with a bunch of boarded-up buildings."

Del Dunmire doesn't enter rooms quietly.

Cities either. In the mid-1980s, he crashed Kansas City's philanthropy scene with all the subtlety of Evel Knievel's motorcycle.

Knievel, in fact, entertained at Dunmire's million-dollar wedding reception that thousands attended. Fabian sang, and the groom gave his bride a full-sized merry-go-round.

He later gave $150,000 to Kansas City's Vietnam Memorial, and $15,000 to help the Shriners buy a plane. He bought assault rifles for the Missouri Highway Patrol.

Dunmire carried fat campaign checks to Washington. He visited the White House by invitation, flew candidates in his plane and posed for pictures with senators and congressmen.

He was known to hand $100 bills to workers as he walked through his manufacturing plant. He bankrolled a cruise for his entire high school graduating class.

Then he seemed to disappear. Dunmire moved from Overland Park, Kan., leaving Kansas Citians to wonder what happened to a favorite eccentric.

Well, Harrisonville folks know the answer. He's their eccentric millionaire now.

In 1991, Del bought his wife an old house in Harrisonville, and they began fixing it up.

At the recent breakfast at the Pearl Street Grill, Dunmire was holding court. Nearly everyone who passed his table greeted him by name.

"Hey! How ya doin'?" he boomed back.

Then he told about his Bizarre Bazaar, an former Wal-Mart building in the north part of town that he's filled with antiques, old cars, memorabilia, a vintage Texas fire truck and a glass display case crammed with things such as astronaut razors.

"This is what they took into space -- not these exact ones but ones just like these," he would say on a tour.

Plans call for the building to be a flea market, antique gallery, Mexican restaurant and, in his words, a "museum to the life of Del Dunmire."

It holds the couple's his-and-hers Porsches, and photos of Dunmire with politicians.

Debbie Dunmire calls the giant building "Del's personal toy box."

Dunmire then got philosophical. Life's winner, he said, isn't who has the most when they die.

"It's who's got the biggest toy box," he smiled.

In Harrisonville, there's no doubt. Del Dunmire's is the size of a Wal-Mart.

Now, if he can just turn the town square into a playground.