Union Hill Development

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: Union Hill Development

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Re: Union Hill Development

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English ivy can weaken mortar. Boston ivy attaches in a benign manner. Retention of moisture on building materials is generally not a good idea.
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Re: Union Hill Development

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chaglang
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Re: Union Hill Development

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The south and west foundation walls are poured, and the north wall was being formed today. It also looks like they're using a small vacant lot on McGee Trafficway for stockpiling topsoil.
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Re: Union Hill Development

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Took a walk around Union Hill at lunch. The foundation walls of the building on Gillham are mostlypoured, along with interior columns in the garage. They were forming the elevator shaft walls today.

Public works trucks were hauling away the large rocks that were being stored north of 30th. Not sure what that's about.

Excavation looks to be wrapping up at the lots at 30th and McGee and 30th and DeGroff.
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Re: Union Hill Development

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Zorobabel wrote:
smh wrote:KEM Studio just shared an awesome rendering of a building called 29 Gillham they've designed as what I suspect to be part of this larger development.

Medium density, 22 units, does not appear to have street level commercial, but rather ground floor residential units.

Located at the corner of 29th and Gillham, across from Greenlease.

EDIT: Also, don't know how I didn't say this, but by "share" I mean they shared it on facebook.
Image

I found this image for the apartment project at 29th and Gillham, just east of the Cadillac Lofts. It appears on the KC Lofts website. The design seems a lot better than the original design posted earlier (see above). This design is by Helix.

Image

http://www.kc-lofts.com/bldgs/29gillham.htm
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chaglang
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Re: Union Hill Development

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So far, nothing is happening on that site. When I went by this morning the site on the south side of 30th and west of Gillham had been terraced up in the back of the lot, while the front was excavated down to street level. That stretched from 30th south to the white CMU building.

Foundation work on the north side of 30th was continuing.
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Gretz
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Re: Union Hill Development

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Construction has finally started on the single family home portion of this project. All 5 multi-tenant buildings are coming along nicely with one moving along to the 2nd story already and two others have their basement garages nearly complete. Just starting foundation work on the other two on Gilham.
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Re: Union Hill Development

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Union Hill construction update: Here are some photos I took today of the various buildings being constructed in Union Hill. As you can tell, not too much has been done yet but a couple of the buildings are finally rising.

These first two are facing Gillham:
Image Image
The southern building is only foundation, and the northern building has made it one floor. I haven't seen any plans for this stretch of buildings, so very curious as to what is coming.

These four photos show what is being built between McGee and DeGoff Way:
Image Image

Image Image
It looks like this block will only be single family homes. I'm pretty underwhelmed so far, as the foundations poured are quite far from each other. If I counted correctly I think there will only be 4 homes, so it should be very suburban in nature. Disappointed...

Luckily the 2 four story apartment buildings being built on 30th are looking pretty solid:
Image Image

Image Image
The building that is already 2 stories high (the Taylor) is the one further west, and the one in which the old apartment building and house were torn down for. While I think this new building will be pretty nice and house more people, I still like the old building and house better. Wish they didn't have to go for this.

I'm curious what is in store for this part of McGee, across the street from the block with the single family homes. Nothing is being built as we speak, but they are keeping equipment on these lots for the time being and you would think they would be included in the overall plan.
Image

Lastly, here is a shot I took walking up McGee looking toward the Taylor at 30th. I think this will be a nice view once complete. :)
Image
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Re: Union Hill Development

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This is so exciting. :D
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Re: Union Hill Development

Post by flyingember »

how are people upset when they get homes that match the goals of the neighborhood?

It's zoned UR and one of the goals of that designation is
Seamless and compatible integration of redevelopment projects into the development patterns that exist or that are planned to exist within the subject area.
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Demosthenes
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Re: Union Hill Development

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Is anyone upset? Were you talking about me when I said I was disappointed in the suburban nature of the single family homes? If we are talking seamless integration, then why are the new homes less dense and more spread apart than the rest of the houses in the neighborhood? That is what I'm disappointed about. This is not seamless. Maybe on DeGoff, which was historically bigger more spread out homes. But on McGee? Historically these were narrow lots on McGee. Many houses have been torn down and replaced by about a third as many. And saying as this is one of the premier urban neighborhoods in the city, I would rather it not be undermined by out of place suburban development. The only thing that will make it work now is if the architecture is good.

As for the apartment buildings on 30th, I am very happy. Hoping they fill in the recently created vacant lots down the street with something similar.
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Re: Union Hill Development

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This all comes down to zoning, and the responsibility the City has to look at specific zoning within a neighborhood. In my view, elected city leaders don't spend enough time thinking about density and appropriate historic zoning issues within neighborhoods.

They don't consider how the City loses when three lots that had three houses on them historically are combined into one large lot with just one new house.

This has ramifications to the City when a stated goal is to rebuild population and density in older neighborhoods where it's been lost.

One homeowner taking up three city lots is not going to generate all the taxes and revenue to the City that three homeowners on three lots will. We also have to consider the fact that most houses don't have as many people living in them compared to historic occupancy levels. It's not uncommon for just one or two people to be occupying the same square footage that was occupied by five or six people 50 years ago.

Five or six people in a residence end up producing more economic activity than one or two. This has implications not only for city revenues, but whether or not retail will exist in or near that neighborhood.

The neighborhood however can take steps through establishing or maintaining a historic district designation, which allow historic design guidelines to be placed on what can be built.

It's not that modern houses can't be built. It just may mean that one can't plop down a beige suburban tract house. Depending on the design guidelines, the house might be required to use similar design vernacular and materials. It might mean garage doors cannot face the street.

It might just mean that the neighborhood association might have to approve any house built. It could be a variety of designs, but the neighbors would have a say.

The neighborhood might be just fine with this house being built.

Image

Or this.

Image

But the neighborhood would not approve this type of house.

Image

Image

Image
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chaglang
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Re: Union Hill Development

Post by chaglang »

FangKC wrote:This all comes down to zoning, and the responsibility the City has to look at specific zoning within a neighborhood.
I think the city punted this responsibility when they created the provision for design overlay zones in the zoning ordinance. It's up to the neighborhoods now.
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Gretz
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Re: Union Hill Development

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There will be 13 single family homes built as part of this project. The degroff stretch will only have 2 in keeping with the salt box format seen elsewhere on that street but there will be 8 on McGee, 5 on the east side and 3 on the west where you see the building materials stored. The balance will be at 30th and grand. Not sure why they are only doing part of the basement pours now. I noticed that they haven't hauled away the excavated dirt; could be that's what is holding them up as the footprints are going to be so close together that there is no room to complete excavation until the dirt mounds are removed. I'll ask Bob next time I see him. :-)
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Re: Union Hill Development

Post by Demosthenes »

Oh, hmmm... interesting. That sounds a lot better. I wonder why they have only poured the foundation for the couple houses? Yea let us know what Bob says :)

And what is going on at 30th and Grand? The balance?

Thanks for keeping us updated Gretz! This is a very exciting project!
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Re: Union Hill Development

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There will be 3 homes built on the empty lots at 30th and Grand, 2 story Federal or Colonial or something like that as I recall. The renderings looked tasteful. The 8 on McGee were more along the lines of Victorian revival or something similar. Don't hold me to those styles as I'm clearly I'm no architect and operating purely on months old memory. The three on the west side of McGee will have attached garages with access from the alleyway and have optional wrap-around front porches. The three at 30th/grand and 5 on the east side of McGee I remember will be too closely packed to allow for drives between them in all or most cases and will have front-loading garages. There was some concern about garages and curb cuts being tacky but they claim to have some way of making the garages seamless and "invisible" when not open. All the homes are around 2000 sq ft or slightly larger and should be priced within +/- $50K of $400K depending on market and extras.
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Re: Union Hill Development

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Garage doors don't have to be horrible. There are lots of great carriage house-style garage doors that would fit into that neighborhood. It all comes down to the choice the architect makes.
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Re: Union Hill Development

Post by GRID »

Really nice to see union hill development stepping up and taking the area to the next level. So used to ultra conservative developers in kc and they seem to be a little more aggressive and generally know a bit more about "urban" infill development than most.
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Re: Union Hill Development

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I think a lot of them doing things the "right way" is driven by the fact that they are bankrolled by the Halls as silent partners and can be a little less bottom-line focused than some other developers. I'm sure you wouldn't be seeing the spec single family homes and maybe not even underground parking if it were a developer purely focused on profit. The developer describes the single family homes as a money-losing proposition being subsidized by the apartments which are more profitable.

Kind of surprising how much resistance there is in the neighborhood about the project. Several people are up in arms about added "traffic" and competition for on-street parking. There are two spots per unit in below-grade parking for the places on 30th St; not sure how much better than that you can do. Some other guy had a total meltdown when the developer and KCPL approached him about burying the utilities in the alleyway FOR FREE and will absolutely not budge, so everyone on the north side of 30th will continue to have a great view of power-lines out their back windows thanks to him. I guess you really just can't win as a developer. The NIMBYs seem to be vocal but a small minority, however, with the Neighborhood association being on board with the project and working closely with the developer.
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