Dive Brief:

• A $27,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of whoever carried out bizarre acts of vandalism and theft at a controversial construction site outside Kansas City that led to $100,000 worth of property damage, according to a news release from the Johnson County, Kansas, Sheriff's Department.
• In April, two signs were stolen and five dead raccoons were placed on the construction trailer steps at the jobsite for Riverside, Missouri-based NorthPoint Development's expansion of Logistics Park Kansas City. Then on May 9, three electronic sign boards, four security cameras and the solar panels that power them were riddled with gunfire at the site.
• "The construction site is close enough to residences that we were concerned that bullets missing their intended construction targets could end up in adjacent backyards and harm our neighbors," Patrick Robinson, NorthPoint's vice president of development, told the Shawnee Mission Post newspaper. "Participating in the reward is the right thing to do."

Dive Insight:

NorthPoint has proposed adding nearly 10 million square feet of new warehouses to Logistics Park Kansas City, a major shipping and rail hub in the area, according to the Mission Post. NorthPoint has said the current project will bring thousands of jobs to the area.

Warehouses and distribution centers have been one of the few sectors of construction that saw an increase of investment and new projects kicking off during the COVID-19 pandemic.

NorthPoint won rezoning approval in April, according to the newspaper, but the project has run into opposition from neighbors, who have claimed increased traffic and noise will have an undesirable impact on the rural nature of the area. They've also accused NorthPoint and Edgerton, Kansas, officials of not being transparent about the zoning process.

A commenter on the Johnson County Sheriff's Facebook page, where the press release about the crime was distributed, wrote, "Why are the families living right in the areas by these incidents not being warned? Nothing worse than finding out from Facebook that your family might be in danger of 'stray bullets' especially when this exact project that seems to be getting targeted is literally in our front yard!"

Robinson told the Mission Post the firm is trying to prevent any further attacks. 

"Given that this is the second incident, we are concerned with the escalation of property damage and want to apprehend the responsible individuals before it escalates further,” he said. 

This article was updated to clarify the companies that are working on the project.