Kansas City DT Housing, still increasing

[ShowMeKC]

Kansas City has managed 8,000 units since 2000 of all three classes, planned, built and under construction.

A "recent" proposal by George Birt has 1,200 units, both apartments & condos to be added to the East River Market by 2010. Which would increase Kansas City's total DT units to 9,340 units of the three status'. Another small loft project, "W Lofts" calls for 17 more residential units. Not a small change but still pushing the total slightly to 9,357.

Besides over 9,000 new lofts, the proposal by the IRS to renovate the Post office Building and create 2 (or 3?) 3 floor office annexes nearby, plus a 400 space garage nearby will bring 6,000 new jobs downtown.

I have recently found a website for a local architecture firm that has many different projects, such as the Penn Valley Park master plan, which will result in a couple newer lakes/ponds near Crown Center (near liberty memorial) and a large fountain south of Liberty Memorial on Liberty Memorial Drive.

Plans are also being though up and the city is slowly advancing on redeveloping a part of the riverfront which has recently been cleaned up and is ready for development.

These don't add much to the units or housing, but they will add to the activity downtown.

I have been researching about St. Louis (so I know more about it, and don't critisize/insult it) and found out that only 9,000 people live in their downtown. In Kansas City, that number is of course, higher. But both our cities have equal amount of employees working in our downtown, Although Kansas City may have slightly a little more (both near/over 100,000 employees)

St. Louis has 1,731 businesses employing 97,000 people

Kansas City has about 3,000 businesses also with about 97,000 people employed(when including current proposals)

I figured something must be holding Kansas City back from having a fully active downtown, and I realized it's because no one goes there. However, that is going to change real soon. With Cordish & H&R Block's Kansas City Live proposal alot of retail and jobs will be brought downtown. The city is also working with H&R Block to replace Kemper with an arena downtown. Another expansion to Bartle Hall is already underway, the proposal for a new ballroom which will also span across the highway has been approved and is waiting demolition/construction. After the ballroom is completed, Kansas City Live will already be underway and I expect the Performing Arts Center, which will be placed south of Bartle Hall will start construction.

Finally, downtown Kansas City is reviving and will soon be just as active as the other major cities in the Midwest.

Downtown Kansas City has managed nearly 10,000 new units in 4 years, with almost (or over) 10,000 new jobs in 2 years and no end is in sight.

[M. Brown]

Do you think all of those units will be occupied?

[Allan]

I bet they will be. There seems to be a huge demand for housing downtown. Every time I turn around I hear of yet another proposal to bring housing to downtown. I just don't see the demand going away anytime soon, especially seeing as how even more jobs are coming to downtown than condo units.

[ShowMeKC]

alot of the units (built/under construction that is) are already bought.

the Western Auto Building lofts sold out in less than a week, and they decided to use other buildings also.

[Allan]

My guess would be that the developers sell a certain percentage of units in the building before construction can begin. That way if there's not enough interest, they can scale back the plans or just not build the building so that they don't have an empty building sitting downtown.