KCRag Forum

im2kull wrote: ↑Sat Aug 04, 2018 2:56 pm This is literally right next door to the Sprint Center.You must be confusing locations. Any small development, especially at the expense of a tower tear down in that area of DT is unacceptable.

I'm aware of the location. Most of the surrounding buildings are not 10 stories.
To reiterate, I don't agree with the proposal and the city needs to push back hard.
I think a 7-8 floor building would be fine as long as it interacts better with the street than the BoE building (which is dismal), uses concrete and has a classic design to match the civic district.

Here is the only description of the project that I have seen. I've tried searching the net for a more detailed description but could not find anything. It's a big project for being so under-the-radar. No mention in the Star and nothing in the business journal as far as I can tell (nothing turns up using their search engine).

The TIF Commission received an application from Drury Southwest, Inc. (“Drury”) for a
proposed West Government District TIF Plan, which shall provide for abating and
demolishing the existing Kansas City Public Library Board of Education Building and
constructing in its place a Drury Plaza Hotel, which shall consist of approximately 242 hotel
rooms and 5,000 square feet of meeting room space, along with the construction of an
approximately 176 square foot garage.

No mention that this project will take the entire block. No mention that it will not either, it simply says replace the existing building with the hotel and a 176 sq ft (surely a typo) garage. Very vague and unheralded for such a large project. It seems that if they were planning to use the entire block, they would most likely opt for surface parking rather than a garage though.

The Parking Garage thing seems like a gimmick to get more subsidies but other than that, I hope it is designed well. I will wait to see the renderings of it. Hopefully it has some height like the one in Nashville or the recently announced Hyatt House on Broadway.

Looks like a 10-story project. If they smartened up the exterior a bit from this rendering (a little more modern and urban please) I don't hate it. Is the parking garage under the building or adjacent? Hard to tell. For that prime lot, a 2-story parking garage is on par with as bad as a 4 story hotel.

https://cityscenekc.com/drury-wants-to- ... ith-hotel/

alejandro46 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 7:39 am Looks like a 10-story project. If they smartened up the exterior a bit from this rendering (a little more modern and urban please) I don't hate it. Is the parking garage under the building or adjacent? Hard to tell. For that prime lot, a 2-story parking garage is on par with as bad as a 4 story hotel.

https://cityscenekc.com/drury-wants-to- ... ith-hotel/

If you zoom in you can see the parking lot is behind the hotel. Also, if you zoom in you can see the street interface is horrible on the sides. I'm not getting the point of them keeping the old garage and building a new one. Also, I see no reason why they couldn't bundle this with more rooms or residential or even some office to better the numbers and reduce the need for TIF

normalthings wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 7:46 am

alejandro46 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 7:39 am Looks like a 10-story project. If they smartened up the exterior a bit from this rendering (a little more modern and urban please) I don't hate it. Is the parking garage under the building or adjacent? Hard to tell. For that prime lot, a 2-story parking garage is on par with as bad as a 4 story hotel.

https://cityscenekc.com/drury-wants-to- ... ith-hotel/

If you zoom in you can see the parking lot is behind the hotel. Also, if you zoom in you can see the street interface is horrible on the sides. I'm not getting the point of them keeping the old garage and building a new one. Also, I see no reason why they couldn't bundle this with more rooms or residential or even some office to better the numbers and reduce the need for TIF

Yea that's terrible. Seriously, throw a bunch of restaurants and bars in front of rear parking garage, they would be prime spots for events at the sprint center and a "safe" place for out of towners staying at the hotel to hang out at. Put some apartments on top of those, activate that street.

This site had been included in copakens most recent rendering right? I'd rather see it turned into something like Copaken had been presenting

This would be the closest hotel to the Sprint Center (with maybe exception of new Holiday Inn Express) - it's a shame they couldn't build the hotel portion over the public single-story garage, which is only a short half-block away. We go to Zoo Bar often before event at Sprint Center and that area is completely devoid of life.

It's a literal design reuse that was originally created for a suburban spot right next to the freeway in Minneapolis.
It's why it's so bad.

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/01/dr ... oomington/


https://www.google.com/maps/place/3901+ ... ,+MN+55435

Hard pass.

Looks like every other Drury built in the last ten years. Specifically the one next to the mall in Chesterfield Mo. The street-level environment around that one is pure depressing shit. The only design element considered was "How can we make ourselves look good to advertise to people on the highway?"

There's no way Planning buys off on all of those blank walls, especially with a TIF and being caddy-corner from City Hall (although they got the shaft from the Dunn building).

Yeah, this is bad. It's nice we're at a place where we can turn up our noses to a 10-story hotel east of Grand downtown, but at minimum, this should receive zero incentives. It's right next to Sprint Center! A 2-story parking garage with no retail wrap! A Chesterfield Mall generic design!

Hoping this will either be heavily re-designed or not incentivized, in which case they can throw up whatever schlock they so choose, I suppose.

If this were a surface lot, perhaps further east, I would feel very differently. But man that's a nice site, with a fairly solid existing building in place.

“We feel an upscale-type product would resonate well.”

“We try to fit with the local architecture,” Wedemeier said. “I feel strongly the end result will be something Kansas City will be proud of.”

Lies. It's all lies.

Planning just needs to give a straight, “No!” to this plan. I find that often they try to give reasons to not approve and in the negotiation we end up with something worse. Just say no. No reason to give a reason. It’s so far from what the city needs, it’s not even worth a negotiation.

I would maybe be persuaded to accept this general design if it was maybe 4 times as tall and came with no garage.

Business Journal story:

https://tinyurl.com/ycb4kkjl

I don't know why Drury doesn't just build on the southern third of the block, on the 1200 Oak garage footprint, and then just sell the BOE building to someone who would redevelop the tower portion to apartments, and the base for office. The base floors are set up nicely to handle an engineering or architectural firm.

flyingember wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 8:43 am It's a literal design reuse that was originally created for a suburban spot right next to the freeway in Minneapolis.
It's why it's so bad.

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/01/dr ... oomington/


https://www.google.com/maps/place/3901+ ... ,+MN+55435

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:40 am

“We feel an upscale-type product would resonate well.”

“We try to fit with the local architecture,” Wedemeier said. “I feel strongly the end result will be something Kansas City will be proud of.”

Lies. It's all lies.

Yes, they appear to have really made an effort to fit with local architecture by reusing a building design pitched in city after city.

It could be worse. Look at this horror show.

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.5894915 ... 312!8i6656

Why did they build such a big garage, and place the tower on top of it, when the hotel's location is suburban and there is so much land around it?

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.5913144 ... a=!3m1!1e3

beautyfromashes wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:47 am Just say no. No reason to give a reason.

It's not that hard to come up with a reason, like it will destroy walkability in the government district. It gives the city the ammunition is needs to respond to developers and their lawyers.

And I could give two shits about "local architecture" what does that even mean here? Everything is derivative, hardly anything is unique. Art Deco? Started somewhere else first. Neo-classical? Same. Glass curtain wall? Debatable. Not everything should look like the Block Building or Kauffman Center, which might be unique but is that really local?

The conversation with this project should be about form and ground-level interaction. I could care less what the upper floors look like because the only time you'll focus on that is when you're looking at a rendering.