Grand Opera House, 710 and 711 Main to be razed.

[chrizow]

Someone needs to modify this abortion. And a garden gnome is not enough.

i just took a huge dump on it.

[LenexatoKCMO]

Countdown till some bum tries to burn it down?

[ComandanteCero]

This could be an awesome opportunity for guerilla artists to decorate it.  honestly, i don't mean wreck it, but improve it.  I appreciate the owner didn't have to do anything, they could have just left it a grassy expanse (or a surface lot), but it is laughable.  They should invite folks to come and do something creative and interesting.  Make it a temporary sculpture park, with raingardens... and gnomes.

[taxi]

If I was in high school, I'd teepee it. And maybe farm it, too. It would be a great place to hang an effigy of some deserving mo'fo', especially during Halloween. But you didn't hear it from me. Then again, could be a great location for a riverboat casino. Wampum Opera House and Casino.

[rxlexi]

  wow, that is just...insulting.  Who comes up with these awful, awful urban design ideas?  Just leave the fucking open grassy lot and call it a day...or get some utility out of that bitch and pave it and park some cars on it

[im2kull]

AND HERE IT IS, THE PERGOLA TO BEAT ALL PERGOLA'S THAT REPLACE HISTORIC BUILDINGS:

Call me what you want, but I'd much rather have an old abandoned Opera house than...this????

Let me guess, another Squitero design 

[Highlander]

AND HERE IT IS, THE PERGOLA TO BEAT ALL PERGOLA'S THAT REPLACE HISTORIC BUILDINGS:

Wow, I thought there was absolutely nothing worse than a downtown surface parking lot but now I am not so sure.  At least a surface lot would have some human activity, this "park" is never going host anything but insects.  The Pergola looks absolutely ridiculous too, the whole thing just looks a bit forlorn for the center of a city of 2 million. 

[bones.25]

Of course a development is the best scenario however if it comes down to either a surface lot or a green space I would go with the green space every time.  I'm sure somebody had good intentions with the pergola but it does look a bit out of place, its pretty obvious they were on a strict budget.  It's too bad they couldn't restore the opera house that would have been the best of all.  This part of downtown has a lot of potential but currently needs some serious help!

[staubio]

That site would be a really nice overlook of the new downtown ballpark.

Oh, wait, nevermind.

[bbqboy]

All I can think of is the Stonehenge scene from Spinal Tap.

[Highlander]

That site would be a really nice overlook of the new downtown ballpark.

Oh, wait, nevermind.

Overlook?  Just make it the downtown ballpark site.  The KC Royals would have the leading home run hitters in the majors every year. 

[KCMax]

I like it. It is our version of the Gateway Arch. Your move St. Louis.

[AJoD]

All I can think of is the Stonehenge scene from Spinal Tap.

I was just about to YouTube that clip.  Hilarious.

[FangKC]

I found these images on the Web from Icon Architecture's Web site.  It appears to be a plan to have turned the Grand Opera House into condos, and build an adjacent condo building across the street to the north on Walnut and E. 7th Street. The project was called Opera House Condominiums.

Too bad it didn't happen.

http://www.icon-architecture.com/res15.html






This view below appears to be looking south at the second building from Sixth Street.



This image appears to be looking east at the second building from Sixth and Main.






This image appears to be of the second building looking southwest from 6th and Walnut.

[FangKC]

I found a architectural treatment done by the Kansas City Design Center by students for the NW parcel at 7th and Walnut across from (west of) the former Western Union Building.

http://studio.kcdesigncenter.org/spring ... interface/

[FangKC]

i'm not engineer, but here's how they stabilized the facade on that Chicago project:

before stabilizing:


in the process of setting up external supports:




while doing this, since they were only saving the facades, they began wrecking the back half of the buildings.  Haven't seen any other progress pictures that show the whole process, but eventually they ended up with:


so they shored all of the facades, and at some point demolished what was left of the interior of the building, I'm guessing doing so more carefully as they got closer to the facade.

From what i hear, concrete being one hell of a hard /heavy material, it can be expensive cutting and removing it (although with the right incentives it can obviously be done, the people who developed the Cold Storage Lofts had to cut through thick concrete floors to create the naturally lit central atrium they have now).

We had this discussion about adaptive reuse of historic facades awhile back, where the old building interior is demolished but the facade preserved and reused.

I found this example done by SWD Architects (Stark Wilson Duncan Architects Inc ), a local company on the Plaza, that was done with some old buildings and a historic facade, in downtown St. Joseph, Missouri. The project is called The Fourth Street Lofts. SWD does historic restoration and adaptive reuse projects, and is the oldest architeture firm in Kansas City.

http://www.swdarchitects.com/pdfs/fourthstreet.pdf

[chaglang]

Interesting. They don't leave the steel on the front, do they? There is a building on Beale in Memphis where they left the steel on. It looks like hell.

[Eon Blue]

Wow, my view would be a hell of a lot better if not for the Kempers and their parking fetish.

[Demosthenes]

Wow, my view would be a hell of a lot better if not for the Kempers and their parking fetish.

Hey every great city has tons of parking lots. Right? Why don't we just tear every building down that's downtown and turn it into the world's largest parking lot! People will come from all over the globe just park in it. It will become a pilgrimage for those attending the church of the american dream. Woohoo!