KCRag Forum

Progress on the new retail building on the NW corner of 5th and Charlotte.

Progress on the new apartment building looking SW from 3rd and Charlotte.

Progress on the new apartment building looking directly south from 3rd Street near Charlotte.

They remind me of the senior apartments around 30th in NKC only less dense

I hope they put in some great street/land scaping.

Its so far from the street. I can barely see it.

kboish wrote:Its so far from the street. I can barely see it.

I'm pretty sure they're going to put in a second row...but don't quote me.

chrizow wrote:

smh wrote: I'm pretty sure they're going to put in a second row...but don't quote me.

I see what you did there.

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Holy shit, when was all that parking added? I missed that drawing somehow.

The developer brags about surface parking for all residents on Facebook....it doesn't sound like they are too concerned with density or urbanity.

And nearly all the neighbors are terrified about what they are convinced will be parking problems.

taxi wrote:And nearly all the neighbors are terrified about what they are convinced will be parking problems.

Heard the same from new residents in your hood.

Parking problems are good problems to have and Columbus Park is many years from having a parking problem.

The story I heard is that Columbus Park neighbors decided that the scale of this development project should conform to the existing height and density of Columbus Park, and communicated that to the LCRA and to the developer.

The story I heard is that Columbus Park neighbors decided that the scale of this development project should conform to the existing height and density of Columbus Park, and communicated that to the LCRA and to the developer.

This development is a strange response to that request. A few buildings surrounded by huge parking lots doesn't feel anything like old Columbus Park.

Wasn't one of KC's emeritus architects involved with this project?

It's Kite Singleton's baby, but I don't think he's involved much any longer. Kirk Gastinger has assumed his role, but I think even much of that has been passed off. Clockwork is involved and a handful of criminals.

Like Fang pointed out in another thread referencing East Village development, this whole project is flawed by design. Give 20 acres to one developer, who drags their feet for more than 10 years. I don't see why you wouldn't break that up into 4 or 5 developments and if someone fails, the others could step in to pick up the slack.

We should have learned something regarding public housing over the past 50 years (especially on a location like this one, which was plagued for years by problems with old Guinotte Manor) and one thing is to not concentrate it into dense areas, but spread it out, which would have been easy in this development area, given the size. Instead, they are putting all of the 20% low income housing approved for the 20 acre development into these buildings, under the guise they will be leased to poor artists. They even labeled one of the parking lots (you can see it in one of the photos, above) as a "Sculpture Garden", which was utter BS and simply another carrot to dangle in front of the neighbors in an effort to get support. When I asked them about it – is there a curator? An endowment? How will that work? The answer was a well thought out, "We just thought people couple put their sculptures there." These are people without one creative bone in their body.

I've used the example before, but if you want to see what it should have been just drive to around 29th and Swift In NKC

Dense apartments close to the street, relatively dense senior apartments and a neighborhood denser than most of what's going into urban KC today

We have a couple of good examples of what should have been done just a couple of blocks to the west of Columbus Park, and on the west side of the Downtown Loop. Market Station, and Second and Delaware, in the River Market, are better executions of similar sites. They were able to create a lot of units and hide the parking. Summit, and Apex, on Quality Hill also are creating fairly-dense housing on their sites,and will minimize the parking.

I don't know why Columbus Park is so sacrosanct to more dense development. The 51 Main apartments are 5-6 stories, and adjacent to Brookside.

The worries about parking by Columbus Park residents are largely exaggerated. This is a mostly residential development plan, and it would be very easy to provide parking to new residents. We have a situation here were you have entire blocks of land that are cleared. It's not a situation where the developer had to try and fit parking into one parcel on an intact block. One could excavate and place some parking underground. One could also build a structured parking garage in the center of a block and wrap apartments around it.

Both 3rd and 5th streets are capable of handing the additional traffic the new housing would bring into the neighborhood. Most of the traffic would simply be new residents entering the neighborhood and then parking their cars. I doubt many of these new residents would clog the surrounding side streets.

Something like this would be an example of what should have gone on any one of the blocks.



Personally, if I lived in Columbus Park, I would be glad to see those industrial sites gone. Columbus Park should be a more urban neighborhood. What is being built there now is something you would find along an artery street in Olathe.