KCRag Forum

^Come on now, this is prison campus shit. KC can be so content with the sub-par. The downtown moment is good enough to start raising the bar.

You could boost downtown significantly with 10 of these too but that doesn't mean we should be content with whatever is proposed...

So the marketing thrust materials from Port KC - is the vision to have uniform building styles and height like in the video or just a placeholder showing where residential is supposed to go?

^Would hope just a placeholder but why pitch something looking so mundane if not intended. The riverfront needs to be a destination, especially given streetcar will likely go by.

Who wants to visit this...


vs something similar this (Toronto project) with maybe more green space...

.

earthling wrote:

Mundane row of cookie cutter meh. Yes it's great to get more residential but it's time to push developers to raise the bar KC. They just need to mix things up.

http://cityscenekc.com/port-kc-kicks-of ... iverfront/

looks like a prison complex

WoodDraw wrote: looks like a prison complex

best exaggeration over aesthetics yet

Do the buildings form letters that spell something. Hard to tell.

flyingember wrote:

WoodDraw wrote: looks like a prison complex

best exaggeration over aesthetics yet

To be fair, it does in this rendering. We know that the final project is not going to be all white monotone buildings. The color and glass in the finished product will go a long way.

mister816 wrote:

flyingember wrote:

WoodDraw wrote: looks like a prison complex

best exaggeration over aesthetics yet

To be fair, it does in this rendering. We know that the final project is not going to be all white monotone buildings. The color and glass in the finished product will go a long way.

ah yes, but will it be the right glass?

WoodDraw wrote: looks like a prison complex

Bingo, or a military base. Hopefully just a placeholder and things will be significantly mixed up and leans more pedestrian scale urbanized. Something near the lines of the Toronto project above would be great for riverfront but utilize the green space and cater more to cyclists too. There are better ways to do this.

Otherwise may as well bring in Mike Brady to compete...




"Hmmm... We should do all of these along the river don't you think Carol?"

"Ahhh..."

flyingember wrote:

WoodDraw wrote: looks like a prison complex

best exaggeration over aesthetics yet

You can't tell me that if you photoshopped a little barbed wire there, you wouldn't happily call it a nice suburban prison.

It looks like the Pentagon had a litter.

that's the glass everybody wants to live behind guys.

I hope there's a good mix of green, blue, and black glass. That way we can study which is the best for new buildings...

Reminds me of the Sprint campus. "We'll surround it in renderings with green stuff.* Nope, still looks like a prison

WoodDraw wrote:Reminds me of the Sprint campus. "We'll surround it in renderings with green stuff.* Nope, still looks like a prison

Sprint does not have a cool old railroad train in the backyard.

Would love to see something like a pedestrian only alley or street down there lined with bars and restaurants. Something unique to KC that we don't really have.

I think you guys are being too hard on this. That is just a rendering and the rendering which shows no detail and it's an aerial which gives you little feel for how it would be a street level. I really think at street level, this would turn out pretty nice. It will be a quiet, residential neighborhood with a few cafes etc. It's just a bunch of apartments, low rise apartments, so even fully built out, there won't be enough people living down there to support a bunch of retail or anything. You want all those people riding the streetcar into the river market and supporting businesses there. This whole development is based on being near the riverfront park. That park will be full of people all the time once this starts to build out. Driving down front street and having a mile or two of 5 story apartments is fine for that area. There is only so much you can do with new low rise construction. It is what it is. Hide the parking, make them interact with the riverfront park etc and those areas still have a lot of dead zones that need more intense mixed use development than the river market needs. KCMO has tons of areas like crossroads and downtown and plaza that have more diverse building stock etc. The riverfront will have a "sterile" feel to it compared to other parts of the city. But that doesn't mean it still can't be a vibrant, busy neighborhood with 1000's of people living there. It reminds me of the St Paul Riverfront.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/St+Pa ... 93.0899578

It's an opportunity to make the riverfront a long term destination as well as another downtown thing to do on streetcar. A quiet suburban leaning development would be another sad lost opportunity. Raise the bar instead of settling with just OK. But not a tourist trap either, the Toronto project above is a good balance.

I guess I'm being more realistic. KC is not Toronto and I don't see something like that ever happening on the riverfront. A development of that size would take away a lot of potential development in other parts of the city that have more ability to create critical mass. If KC had a developer that could pull something like that off and the demand to fill something like that, the entire east side of downtown would not still be parking lots. Toronto is building 1000's of apartments in dozens of skyscrapers. It's a totally different animal. I would hate to see the riverfront continue to sit nearly unused while KC waits for something more grand to happen. But there is nothing wrong with making sure you get the best you can out what can possibly be built there.