B
y 2020, Kansas City’s downtown may more resemble a neighborhood than a business center. “I’d say it already is,” says Kansas City, Missouri, City Councilman Ed Ford, whose district once included downtown. “We have more residents and probably less jobs than we did 10 years ago. I think we’ll see that trend continuing.” Not probably. Definitely. Downtown Kansas City lost 16,000 jobs between 2001 and 2011, despite City Hall’s pouring billions of dollars into sprucing up the once-seedy core. Much of the employment loss is attributed to an aging stock of office buildings in the south loop, from which companies have fled in large numbers.
town: New construction and old-building rehab are devoted to creating new places to live. This glut of new projects, both proposed and under way, has risen from the need for living spaces in a market in which the existing apartments are virtually all leased. These projects include massive new construction, such as Cordish Co.’s 25-story luxury apartment high-rise in the heart of the Kansas City Power & Light District and the more modest 24-unit complex along Gillham Road near 37th Street. Longtime River Market developer George Birt is planning something in the middle: a $15 million, 137-apartment dwelling at Fourth Street and Wyandotte. Birt picked the spot in part due to its relative proximity to the start
Kansas City, Missouri, City Council members are stridently behind the $100 millionplus starter line as a means of catalyzing downtown development. That’s $50 million a mile, so they had better be right. The investment has been brandished as a means to lessen the future need for tax incentives on new projects. “It should,” Ford says. “We approved that new downtown hotel without tax abatements.” Ford is referring to the 10-story hotel that Tennessee’s Chartwell Hospitality plans to build at 16th Street and Baltimore. Chartwell declined what otherwise would likely have been a hefty incentive package from City Hall, prompting a seemingly incredulous
of people earning between $40,000 and $60,000, but the bulk of your workforce are those in the $20,000 to $30,000 range — teachers, bank tellers, policemen. Spending $1,100 a month in rent is pretty pricey for some people.” One Light is expected to fetch between $950 and $1,800 in rent, translating to about $1.75 a square foot. In bigger cities, high-end apartments fetch more than $2 a square foot. “I don’t think by 2020 that we become a Chicago or Minneapolis, where you can charge over $2 a square foot,” Mouton says. Still, downtown boosters hope for a more cosmopolitan south loop and Crossroads District by that time. They envision a city core populated less by men in pinstriped suits and women in pantsuits and more by city dwellers wearing Chuck Taylors and maybe students from a proposed University of Missouri–Kansas City Downtown Arts Campus.
Developers lay out their visions for the
Kansas City of tomorrow Parking shortages and outmoded building configurations have made cheaper locales, such as Overland Park’s Sprint Campus, or newly renovated buildings like Union Station preferable to stodgy skyscrapers from the 1960s, like Commerce Tower. But even Commerce Tower’s forthcoming redevelopment illustrates downtown’s changing nature, from a place where lawyers and bankers work behind oaken desks to one that lures a younger generation with after-work outlets for spending discretionary income. Last year, Kansas City Sustainable Partners, a consortium of luminaries including BNIM’s Bob Berkebile, Screenland impresario Butch Rigby and EPR Properties CEO David Brain, bought the 30-story Commerce Tower, at Ninth Street and Main, which was in foreclosure. Instead of trying to lease the increasingly empty building to office tenants, the group plans to convert vacated floors to apartments, build out retail space and renovate some of the offices. Commerce Tower’s move to residential use reflects a larger development pattern down-
by Steve vockrodt of the downtown streetcar line, which he believes will appeal to 20- and 30-somethings. “They’re going to glom on to mass transit,” Birt tells The Pitch. His thinking reflects that of other transit backers, who insist that the two miles of rail under construction will transform the look of downtown by 2020 and beyond. Sean O’Byrne, vice president of the Downtown Council of Kansas City, says the streetcar could help fill empty spaces in those old office buildings along Main Street. One example: City Center Square, at 11th Street and Main, home mostly to plaintiffs’ attorneys, investment bankers, empty floors and Jason’s Deli. “City Center Square was built severely under-parked,” O’Byrne says, referring to the two floors of underground parking serving a 30-story building. “Now you’re going to have a streetcar that goes a mile in either direction that opens up all sorts of parking options.”
story in The Kansas City Star that marveled at the prospect of taxpayer-free downtown development. Yet Chartwell’s project was followed by Cordish’s One Light high-rise, at 13th Street and Walnut, which commanded an $8 million subsidy from City Hall, coupled with a tax abatement. Ford explains Cordish’s subsidy as a means to usher in a higher tolerance for downtown rental rates, which would help bridge the gap between land and development costs and income from tenants. “Next time someone constructs something new, hopefully it can be done without a subsidy,” Ford says. Not everyone is buying that philosophy. “It’s a little tough for some people, especially when you look at the workforce,” says Donovan Mouton, once an aide to former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes who now works as a housing consultant for prospective developers. “You only have x number
Updates on the potential Downtown Arts Campus have been few and far between since Julia Irene Kauffman, daughter of the late KC business mogul Ewing Kauffman, pledged $20 million for the campus’s initial phase of construction, contingent upon UMKC raising $70 million on its own within three years. Bringing the arts campus downtown, along with its 600 students, is viewed as adding another cultural attraction to a downtown that had virtually none a decade ago. “For something like the Cordish tower, you get out and you walk and you have your choice of bars, restaurants, cultural attractions and schools,” O’Byrne says. “It’s worth it to be able to catch a movie or a play and a dinner rather than hop in your car and drive across suburbia to find those amenities that are generally downtown.”
pitch.com
continued on page 8 april 10 -16, 2014
the pitch
7