The Country Club Plaza is in pain. Some wounds are fresh, others older: Two shootings in two weeks: A 14-year-old was struck by a bullet a week ago Saturday at 47th and Wyandotte streets. And on the same block a week earlier, a store employee trying to stop a theft was shot in the arm. At least a dozen empty storefronts in the wake of COVID-19. The shopping district’s entire western edge is marred by what Kansas City’s mayor calls “a pit,” a 3-acre lot left vacant after Nordstrom canceled its plan to build a department store there. The latest injury to make headlines is financial. As U.S. Security and Exchange Commission filings show, the Plaza’s co-owners, Taubman Centers Inc. and the Macerich Co., defaulted in May on a loan payment to their lender, Chicago-based Nuveen, whom they owe $295.2 million. Defaulting on a loan is tantamount to not paying one’s mortgage. “I think you would have to be blind to think that the Plaza is thriving,” said Tony Shapiro, 53, a nearly lifelong ...