OFFICIAL - Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Issues concerning Downtown as described by the Downtown Council. River to 31st Street, I-35 to Bruce R. Watkins.
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KCPowercat
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by KCPowercat »

Honestly I don't care if it is a money maker. The city is investing in these garages they should be open to the public. When they aren't we end up building more garages and continue to hear "there is no parking downtown" even when there is 10x more than we need. Like I said, don't want share? Cool, privately fund the garage

As for alternatives to this design? Wrap the garage in active uses like p&l apartments did. We are building the next generation of our downtown, let's not wonk it up like we did last time and just accept whatever because it lands jobs. We have to start demanding better.

Not to mention the designs being asked for are what are already in the GDAP approved master plan that SHOULD be driving design.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by smh »

DColeKC wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 10:35 am I understand the concern with friendly pedestrian access and ground floor retail, publicly available space etc. I would love to see a very cool building but at the end of the day, if they build a square cube that's boring AF, I'm ok with it and the incentives. 1000 jobs at 150k/year is far more important than a marvel of a building. I also understand needing to provide pubic parking access when public money is involved and a surface parking lot is going away, however this has proven to be hard to execute. Very limited daily public parking exists in the Two Light garage and it's a cluster. It's also not a revenue driver, so it's not like the city could recoup it's investment.

What's the alternative parking solution to a building like this if you don't make it the first several floors? More ugly standalone parking garages? More surface parking? I think I'll take the lower floors being a parking garage, clad in a nice finish.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't think expecting that the building include transparency at a minimum, but ideally retail, is not asking for a marvel. It is asking for the bare minimum to keep this city building and walkable, pleasant downtown to live, work, and visit. Blanks walls won't get us there and they squander our public investment and the private investments that have happened in the surrounding area.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by DColeKC »

KCPowercat wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 10:45 am Honestly I don't care if it is a money maker. The city is investing in these garages they should be open to the public. When they aren't we end up building more garages and continue to hear "there is no parking downtown" even when there is 10x more than we need. Like I said, don't want share? Cool, privately fund the garage

As for alternatives to this design? Wrap the garage in active uses like p&l apartments did. We are building the next generation of our downtown, let's not wonk it up like we did last time and just accept whatever because it lands jobs. We have to start demanding better.

Not to mention the designs being asked for are what are already in the GDAP approved master plan that SHOULD be driving design.
You have to have the space and lot size to pull off a garage like P&L apartments. The W&R site doesn't appear to have the size for the parking capacity they need to build it in a similar fashion as p&l.

What percentage of a garage do you demand is open to the public? For example, Two light is 7 floors with the top 4 being nested residential parking only. Floors 2,3 is a mixed of public and reserved parking. Maybe 30 public parking spots total. Often times, people pull in to park only to realize it's full. At that point, they have to turn around, often causing traffic jams for residents.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by horizons82 »

Having a ground floor that’s active for the majority of it is not that hard on this site. Sure, the lack of retail benefits Cordish’s ability to lease their stuff, but it’s a detriment to everybody else. Even ground floor office space would be better than what’s proposed. You can still do a podium garage even with a pedestrian friendly ground floor. They’re not incompatible here. Cordish themselves have already proved this podium garage concept with two light, which is working with a tighter depth and flatter plane than what’s present here.

The public is paying for somewhere in the ballpark of 70% of the project’s cost, they should and can expect more than what we’re getting here.

This is not that hard or unreasonable. I’m not sure why people are willfully or ignorantly assuming it is.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by DColeKC »

To clarify, I'm saying I agree that ground floor retail or publicly available space along with great pedestrian access is nonnegotiable. I'm more referring to the parking garage situation and that I don't agree the building needs to be an architectural diamond. I'll take good, not great if it comes to that. I hope we are all pleasantly surprised. I'm guessing most of these early drawings are simply to get the ball rolling, permits flowing etc.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by smh »

DColeKC wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 11:04 am To clarify, I'm saying I agree that ground floor retail or publicly available space along with great pedestrian access is nonnegotiable. I'm more referring to the parking garage situation and that I don't agree the building needs to be an architectural diamond. I'll take good, not great if it comes to that. I hope we are all pleasantly surprised. I'm guessing most of these early drawings are simply to get the ball rolling, permits flowing etc.
We're on the same page. The inclusion of public parking seems, as you said, more trouble than its worth.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by kcjak »

The city is thinking about spending $21 million on a garage at 12th/Broadway - why not spend the money on an expanded garage at the Waddell site, maybe separate entrance/exit for public?
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by bchociej »

The biggest sin here, IMO, is absolutely nothing interesting on the ground floor. We don't need to sterilize this block for pedestrians and passersby.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by flyingember »

kcjak wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 11:44 am The city is thinking about spending $21 million on a garage at 12th/Broadway - why not spend the money on an expanded garage at the Waddell site, maybe separate entrance/exit for public?
Think about the goals of a 12th and Broadway garage on that location.


It's easily accessible . From I-35 to the south it's a straight shot north on a five lane road so convention traffic won't block all traffic. The same from the north.
There's also the alternative of taking the 12th St exit and 12th is four lanes west of Broadway

It's also reasonably accessible from the east, there's a direct exit from 670 to Broadway or via 13th or 11th.

One end is almost directly across the street from the main Bartle Hall entrance


Compare that to 14th.
It's not that far off but every street around is two lanes. So it will create dramatically more traffic and will have availability impacts with the offices sharing space. it's further from almost every entry except the Ballroom.


It's not a great place for a garage, but 12th and Broadway is better place for convention parking than about anywhere else
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by KCPowercat »

DColeKC wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 10:54 am
KCPowercat wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 10:45 am Honestly I don't care if it is a money maker. The city is investing in these garages they should be open to the public. When they aren't we end up building more garages and continue to hear "there is no parking downtown" even when there is 10x more than we need. Like I said, don't want share? Cool, privately fund the garage

As for alternatives to this design? Wrap the garage in active uses like p&l apartments did. We are building the next generation of our downtown, let's not wonk it up like we did last time and just accept whatever because it lands jobs. We have to start demanding better.

Not to mention the designs being asked for are what are already in the GDAP approved master plan that SHOULD be driving design.
You have to have the space and lot size to pull off a garage like P&L apartments. The W&R site doesn't appear to have the size for the parking capacity they need to build it in a similar fashion as p&l.

What percentage of a garage do you demand is open to the public? For example, Two light is 7 floors with the top 4 being nested residential parking only. Floors 2,3 is a mixed of public and reserved parking. Maybe 30 public parking spots total. Often times, people pull in to park only to realize it's full. At that point, they have to turn around, often causing traffic jams for residents.

Understood. It was just an example of an alternative.

I've not fleshed out my idea to quote you what percentage I'm demanding to be open to the public. I'm talking as city policy we are spending a LOT of money on car storage and yet still have real or perceptions of no parking downtown. Real issues due to the parking we do invest in being one use only and hence not available and perception because our public parking isn't well managed. Either way it pushes demands for even more parking to be built. It's not sustainable. There has to be a happy medium to allow for shared parking in a situation like we are talking with w&r.

What you are describing at 2 light seems like bad design and bad signage.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by beautyfromashes »

Just having parking garages open on the weekend says DT is closed the rest of the time. Garages should be for everyday activity, not just the weekend jaunt from the suburbs.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by DColeKC »

Two Light is just an issue because it sits on a fairly tight plot. There’s just enough land to get your inbound and outbound lane to spiral upwards. Signage is fine and when there’s an event downtown, they staff it so people can’t pull in when full. It’s more of an issue on weekdays, especially when yoga customers are coming in to park while residents are getting home from work.

I certainly don’t want to see any stand alone parking garages built at all! I agree with the ignorance of many residents who think there’s no parking. Perhaps the answer is the city funding a ad campaign all about how easy downtown and the ample parking available. I mean compared to many other cities, catching a game
Or concert downtown is a breeze.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by GRID »

W&R should open the garage to the public (only because of the incentives), but I doubt it's needed unless there is a "large" event at bartle or sprint. There is plenty of parking in downtown KC even for those events, but if you wanted to have more parking it might work.

I'm not so sure W&R would go for it though easily though. This will be a single tenant, high end building and they will want to keep it secure and not have to staff it all the time with security, parking staff etc.

From my experience using garages in DC that would be similar to this for events at Capital One arena, office buildings don't like to open their parking garages for events, even if they make money. But some do and they seem to contract out the parking to somebody else. They also keep the building locked down so people parking in the garage have no way to enter the building. Some residential buildings do have access to a lobby that is staffed. The main difference is that all garages in DC are underground, so it's harder to keep them independent of their associated building, making people use hard to find doors at street level to access the garages because the lobby is closed and locked. Also because they are staffed and not easy to access, many close at midnight which can leave you stranded if you stay out too late. (Yeah, that just happened to me a couple weeks ago lol).
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by flyingember »

GRID wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 1:24 pm W&R should open the garage to the public (only because of the incentives)
This should be part of city code. If you get incentives for your property (the building or land) your parking becomes open to the public.

Sure, some places would build more parking but it would basically codify that the taxpayer should get some benefit from a project if a company needs the city to not get as many new taxes which would benefit taxpayers
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by kcmiz »

A 10 floor parking garage is insanity.

If you're going to build that much parking, at least bury half of it. Then a person only has to circle around at most 5 floors, which is still crazy but better than 10 floors.

Could you imagine if you had circle up and down 10 levels of parking every day (or multiple times per day!)? Most people wouldn't do it. I'll go out on a limb here that P6 to P10 will largely sit empty.

I think it's fine if the city/state want to incentivize private companies to build downtown. But don't use that money to build unnecessarily large parking garages that will sit unused.

And an entry on three sides?? No, there should only be one, two max.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by DaveKCMO »

CM Bunch said today that most of the council is insistent on subsidized garages being open to the public, as it should be.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by KCPowercat »

Yes!
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by FangKC »

Parking garages subsidized by the City must be open to public parking -- at least during off-times--if developers want to continue getting subsidies for parking. There is a vocal anti-subsidy crowd in this City. Their complaints are magnified when developers get public incentives, and the public doesn't get anything in return.

The W&R garage is especially valuable, since it sits close to several public venues: the Folly, Music Hall, Midland, Copaken Stage, the convention center, Sprint Center, and PAC. Valuable especially at times when several of these venues have events at the same time. The W&R site isn't as obvious as the 12th and Broadway site, but it does sit very close to interstate entrances/exits. Knowledgeable drivers would travel in/out of downtown quickly from this garage without adding to traffic congestion.

If the City would promise to not close Wyandotte, that seems like the obvious place for the garage entrance/exit. The entrance could be on the second floor, and that would allow street-level spaces.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by beautyfromashes »

These garages should be open all the time, not just during the weekend. We need people making daily trips to shop, workout, get groceries, eat, fix a phone, etc, not just a weekend entertainment district.
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Re: Waddell & Reed - 14th & Baltimore

Post by moderne »

I imagine most W&R employees reside in JOCO and would rather stay there. It appears management must be promising easy free parking for every employee. Even better than now since it will be covered. These parking podiums may be the onerous price to be paid to get suburban employers to move downtown. At least until the metro has some transit system that could get suburban dwellers DT.
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