OFFICIAL - Boulevard Lofts (8th & Washington)

[DaveKCMO]

Cool affordable housing project in downtown KCK.

https://www.wycokck.org/News-and-Events ... Lofts.aspx

[taxi]

Affordable? Obviously. Lofts? Nope. Cool? I would beg to differ. If the CP Lofts project is any indication of how this project will go (Prairie Fire did that one, too), they won't be "lofts", they will be poorly built and poorly executed apartments and poorly managed.

The developers sold that concept to Columbus Park by calling them "artists lofts" – specifically for artists. Because, of course, everyone loves the artists. Everything about that was BS – from the design (nothing about them made them appealing to artists); the "sculpture garden" that was the highest level of BS and was never funded or created but was actually just a placeholder on the bogus plans (not official plans) for what will soon be a parking lot; and the so-called marketing to artists, which was limited to signage with names of artists like Dylan and Pollock on them and BS phrases on their website like "creative spirit". They even claimed they were going to decorate the walls with art by artists from the neighborhood and put out a Facebook "call for artists". Do you think that happened? To their credit, they did hire an artist to do a mural on an unpainted brick wall.

They will be affordable. These guys are milking the system to get the tax credits and they do not give a fuck about the community. Fuck is used here for emphasis. They claim shit like "agricultural neighborhood" because, like artists, who doesn't love a community garden? Hopefully, the KCK govt. will do a better job at holding them to task than the CP neighborhood and LCRA did.

I would not hire Prairie Fire to weed my garden.

[taxi]

Perhaps I was being too harsh and pessimistic. I hope it works out well, this area certainly needs it.

[DaveKCMO]

https://www.kcur.org/post/residents-kan ... e-30-years

The $11 million project from the Prairie Fire Development Group and Community Housing of Wyandotte County will bring about 50 units, ranging in price from $500 a month to $1,100 a month, to Washington Boulevard near the 7th Street Trafficway.

Boulevard Lofts is being financed with affordable housing tax credits from the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation and a grant from the Board of Public Utilities. Eighty percent of the units will be income-restricted, while the remaining 20 percent will be market rate.

In a statement, CHWC Executive Director Brennan Crawford said they hope to turn the development into a community asset, by integrating agriculture and facilitating gardening and food production. The apartment community will have vegetable and flower gardens and beehives, which the developers said they hope will serve the broader neighborhood.

Construction is set to begin next week. Hrabe said he hopes to open pre-leasing next May and open late summer 2020.