Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Discuss items in the urban core outside of Downtown as described above. Everything in the core including the east side (18th & Vine area), Northeast, Plaza, Westport, Brookside, Valentine, Waldo, 39th street, & the entire midtown area.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by DaveKCMO »

went to the open house last night. they only had the middle school building open for tours. nice event, with an intro by berkebile and then a tour of the 4th floor and girls gym. a bit concerned that they want to build MORE parking -- one of the partners referred to it as "suburban style" whilst touting the transit access and other sustainable features.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by atticus23 »

That seems oxymoronic...
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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mykn

Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by mykn »

Against expanding parking here
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by brewcrew1000 »

As a resident Midtowner I'm getting really sick of the parking complaint issues. Why can't we make it harder for people to park and build around the people instead of building around cars? Maybe this will encourage some to just ditch there car and take mass transit. This city doesn't have parking issues but people think we do, if we made it hard to park, maybe we could actually enforce overnight parking rules and require residents to buy parking stickers or something. The parking thing really irks me and really think it holds us back from being a vibrant city.

When it comes to planning or developement, does KCMO have the same rules as a suburban area in the north as it does as something in Midtown? Maybe thats the problem, we need 2 different sets of planning/development policies.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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brewcrew1000 wrote:As a resident Midtowner I'm getting really sick of the parking complaint issues. Why can't we make it harder for people to park and build around the people instead of building around cars? Maybe this will encourage some to just ditch there car and take mass transit. This city doesn't have parking issues but people think we do, if we made it hard to park, maybe we could actually enforce overnight parking rules and require residents to buy parking stickers or something. The parking thing really irks me and really think it holds us back from being a vibrant city.

When it comes to planning or developement, does KCMO have the same rules as a suburban area in the north as it does as something in Midtown? Maybe thats the problem, we need 2 different sets of planning/development policies.
in this case, it's the private sector (lenders) requiring the parking. a city parking minimum applies here, but they could apply for a variance. presumably they could also find a different lender.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by FangKC »

Keep in mind that the banks are the ones requiring the parking. In this case, it has nothing to do with planning rules in urban neighborhoods, or suburban ones. This is often true when banks finance renovation of older downtown buildings, or the construction of new ones. It's often a requirement to get the loan. So as cities redevelop, it's important that banks also change their policies about financing projects, and drop some of the parking mandates. I don't think all banks require this, and I don't think it applies in every city, because certainly buildings get financed in New York City without such mandates for parking spots.

Of course if the developers were paying for the school redevelopment with their own cash, it wouldn't be a problem per se. They could go with their original plan as long as the City signed off on it. But for most projects, the banks make this condition.

When it comes to development anywhere, banks have a lot of power to decide where development happens, and how. It certainly affects neighborhoods east of Troost, and bank policy makes it very difficult to rebuild and repopulate neighborhoods because of many of these long-standing policies.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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^TY, I didn't realize banks had this much power and say when it comes to development.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by loftguy »

brewcrew1000 wrote:^TY, I didn't realize banks had this much power and say when it comes to development.
It can not be overstated how much banks/lenders/underwriters/appraisers control the nature and location of real estate development.

Dreaded words.....'I really not comfortable with this part of your proposal...'.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by chingon »

I'm a fringe mid-towner, who is already kind of "meh" on the project. I'm usually pretty much a bird-in-the-hand guy when it comes to development versus continued or prolonged vacancy though, and I'm sorry, urban zealots, I don' think losing ONLY A PORTION of a little-used high school flat track mere blocks from a beautiful city park is any great loss. Certainly not as great as another 10 years of vacancy at the Westport High site, which I believe is the realistic alternative.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

brewcrew1000 wrote:^TY, I didn't realize banks had this much power and say when it comes to development.
When it is the bank's money on the line what would you expect. The people are begging for the bank's money, not the other way around.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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brewcrew1000 wrote:^TY, I didn't realize banks had this much power and say when it comes to development.
Keep in mind that banks contributed to the decline of the entire east side of KCMO through past redlining policies.
It refers to the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate the area where banks would not invest; later the term was applied to discrimination against a particular group of people (usually by race or sex) irrespective of geography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

The racist practices of banks devalued whole parts of the City. When people can't get loans to buy property, the only way to purchase is with cash. When properties can only be purchased with cash, it reduces the pool of buyers significantly. People who are selling houses then have to reduced the price of their homes dramatically to be able to sell. When this happens over and over, entire neighborhoods are devalued. When houses stopped being sold for their true value, people stopped updating them, or doing proper maintenance on them. Often when a house goes up for sale, you have to replace the roof, and make major repairs before someone will buy it. If the homeowner doesn't have the cash to do this, and might not be able to get a home-equity loan to do it, they have to further reduce the price to sell it. Often the only buyers were speculators who bought up cheap houses to rent out. Landlords are less inclined to keep up the appearance of a house than a homeowner. There are neighborhoods east of Troost where 50 percent of the houses are rental properties.

When you hear residents complain when the City isn't able to fund neighborhoods, remind them that the banks contributed to the problem when a majority of the City's land area south of the river was written off by banks--thus eventually making the tax assessments half of what they should be in many areas. That had huge ramifications for City revenues. It wasn't just white flight alone. There were middle-class minority families who couldn't get loans to buy in those neighborhoods before they went so far downhill.

Troost was the red line. Why do you think houses in the neighborhoods west of Troost are in much better shape, and sell for more? You don't have to walk more than a block or two on each side of Troost to see a vast difference in the condition of the housing stock, and the resale value.

East of Troost, we need a program similar to this one in Detroit.
Banks will now be able to lend qualified homebuyers the full amount needed to purchase a renovated home, or to buy and rehabilitate homes anywhere in the city of Detroit, added Duggan.

Previously, federal lending guidelines did not clearly allow banks to loan borrowers enough money to cover necessary repairs because the loan amount was limited to the low, appraised value of a house.

Many potential homebuyers have good credit scores and stable incomes, but could not get a large enough mortgage because the appraiser could not find a similar home nearby with a comparable sales price.
Houses across Detroit remain inexpensive to purchase relative to homes outside the city limits, but the lack of financing forced many families either to pay cash or to rent. Renovations can take years because of lack of funding or using credit cards to pay for them.
http://detroit.curbed.com/2016/2/18/110 ... tle-easier

http://detroithomemortgage.org/
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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Historic Westport High School slated for transformation by Plexpod developers
When developers set out to build Plexpod, a coworking space in the old Westport Middle School, their vision always included the nearby high school and a mixed-use transformation for Midtown.

Now, more than a year and a half after Plexpod’s opening, the firms are back for a mixed-use project they hope will revitalize Westport High School, add residential and commercial space to the area and attract the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s proposed conservatory campus
...
Next, they plan to add a new apartment building with up to 220 units and a parking garage between McGee and Locust streets. After that, a one-story commercial building and garage is planned for 39th and Warwick Boulevard. On the south end of the property, they’ve proposed an open space and a fourth building that could serve UMKC or add more residential space.
...
https://www.kansascity.com/news/busine ... FJ0kl16okE
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by KCtoBrooklyn »

Here are the full plans:

https://compasskc.kcmo.org/EnerGov_Prod ... 8203fc23e8

There is going to be a meeting with the Southmoreland Neighborhood Association this coming Monday.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by earthling »

Plexpod did a great job with the middle school conversion and addon building. The school lockers are still there, the auditorium is amazing for a middle school.
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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Work May Begin Late Summer on $50 Million Westport High School Apartments

https://www.flatlandkc.org/news-issues/ ... partments/
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

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Westport High School Apartment Redevelopment Underway

Work has begun on the $52.2 million renovation of the historic Westport High School building into a 138-unit residential project called The Apartments at Westport Commons.
...
...Phase II is the high school renovation and a future phase calls for new construction at the site.
...
The redevelopment plan also calls for renovating a 20,000 square-foot annex built for the high school in 1992 to be used as commercial space. The developers say they’d like to locate an early childhood development, and food and beverage operators there.

The former auditorium of the high school will be renovated into smaller gathering spaces for residents.
...
According to PIEA documents, monthly rent for an average 461 square-foot studio was anticipated to be $922; smaller one-bedroom units averaging 626 square-feet would go for $1,127, larger one-bedrooms averaging 801 square feet, $1,442, and the average 1,406 two-bedroom, $1,968.

Walsh said the building is expected to be ready for occupancy by late summer 2023.
...
https://cityscenekc.com/westport-high-s ... -underway/
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Re: Westport High School re-use - market rate housing proposed

Post by bspecht »

Project is wrapping up, looks good. https://www.instagram.com/p/C2gC3h4shLn ... h5b3Qxeg==
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