5th & Main Southern Corners

[normalthings]

The municipal art commission regulates occupiable bridges?! My goodness.

I am 99.9% sure that is what was said

[Rabble]

Stop thinking of urban living as fit people who always want to walk outside. Climate controlled paths provide a lot of value in creating an accessible city as one piece of the puzzle.

Twenty some years ago Minneapolis was serious about removing their 10 miles of skywalks to help the street level businesses. Not only did it not happen but the city now has plans for several additions. I've never been to Minneapolis, does anyone know if there is much street activity, or does everyone remain upstairs in the controlled climate?

[DaveKCMO]

This article confirms the amount of public parking: https://www.flatlandkc.org/news-issues/ ... ty-market/

A 372-stall garage also is planned, but 85 of those spaces would be replacement public parking.

[Chris Stritzel]

This article confirms the amount of public parking: https://www.flatlandkc.org/news-issues/ ... ty-market/

A 372-stall garage also is planned, but 85 of those spaces would be replacement public parking.

Based on this, then I'd say reduce parking to 280 spaces. 189 dedicated to apartments and the other 91 dedicated to public parking. I'd be in favor or reducing parking for the apartments to less than a 1:1 parking ratio since this is on the Streetcar line. Less public parking than what's on site now would work as-is.

The garage entrances on Main should be slashed to a maximum of 2 instead of 5. Personally, I don't think they'll even need those other three entrances/exits if they design it right. And if having the entrances on Main is a problem, move them to the alley or Missouri Avenue.

The tunnel, while I think it looks nice in rendering form, should just go. As I said in an earlier post, the loss of 10 apartments and 20 parking spaces as well as some amenities is not bad. Amenities can be fitted into the two separate buildings. If they insist on having those 10 additional apartments, add a floor to the smaller building.

This all seems common sense, at least to me.

[WoodDraw]

I think we need to be careful to pick hills we want to die on here.

If they can fix the parking, I’m fine with this. I’m not involved, but I don’t like the outreach of the downtown parties so far. Back to the drawing board didn’t seem very constructive to me. But they could know things I don’t.

It’s okay to state all of your complaints, but parking here is the hill.

[flyingember]

I think we need to be careful to pick hills we want to die on here.

If they can fix the parking, I’m fine with this. I’m not involved, but I don’t like the outreach of the downtown parties so far. Back to the drawing board didn’t seem very constructive to me. But they could know things I don’t.

It’s okay to state all of your complaints, but parking here is the hill.

Yep. The real issue is road movements. Some have rightfully mentioned how more cars slow down the streetcar.

turn the river market loop into a right turn only zone. So if you're driving WB you can't turn across the streecar tracks on 5th.

Ban NB traffic on Walnut south of Indep Ave, basically extrend the market street closure and put someone on traffic control at the Walnut/5th intersection. Enable the businesses along Walnut to use the NB lane as sales space.

have a higher non-resident parking fee on the weekend to discourage everyone from trying to find parking at these close lots. Induce demand to find cheaper parking further out

turn Main south of 5th into a two way street to enable access to this parking not off 5th

the idea is everyone enters the market loop at controlled points and limit the number of conflict points in the transit system.

[CrossroadsUrbanApts]

If the city is going to give away land - something I don't necessarily object to - shouldn't it be for something more valuable than parking which may or may not be needed (now or in the future)? If the city doesn't have the funds to directly subsidize affordable housing, trading public land for affordable housing set aside in the context of a mixed-income development seems the next best approach.

[ToDactivist]

Stop thinking of urban living as fit people who always want to walk outside. Climate controlled paths provide a lot of value in creating an accessible city as one piece of the puzzle.

Twenty some years ago Minneapolis was serious about removing their 10 miles of skywalks to help the street level businesses. Not only did it not happen but the city now has plans for several additions. I've never been to Minneapolis, does anyone know if there is much street activity, or does everyone remain upstairs in the controlled climate?

Same with Houston, albeit underground. And while very active in the hamster tunnels there, there is zippo for street level retail as if nuked. Oddly google maps points to the street merchant even when underground. confusing for a visitor. Am sure MNPLS is same as you cant reach a critical mass of walk by if splitting up the merchants. KC in the middle has the climate of both at certain times but begs it remains open and accessible.

[flyingember]

Stop thinking of urban living as fit people who always want to walk outside. Climate controlled paths provide a lot of value in creating an accessible city as one piece of the puzzle.

Twenty some years ago Minneapolis was serious about removing their 10 miles of skywalks to help the street level businesses. Not only did it not happen but the city now has plans for several additions. I've never been to Minneapolis, does anyone know if there is much street activity, or does everyone remain upstairs in the controlled climate?

Same with Houston, albeit underground. And while very active in the hamster tunnels there, there is zippo for street level retail as if nuked. Oddly google maps points to the street merchant even when underground. confusing for a visitor. Am sure MNPLS is same as you cant reach a critical mass of walk by if splitting up the merchants. KC in the middle has the climate of both at certain times but begs it remains open and accessible.

It's been 5+ years since I was in either city.

In Minneapolis we stayed at a downtown hotel. The skywalks near where we were at were closed on the weekend, couldn't use them at all. The reason I recall they were closed is the office buildings they connected through were closed. People were out at the touristy spots. Like the falls park was super busy. Lots of foot traffic on the transit only street where the downtown Target is. Lots of people out taking the train to the baseball game.

Houston I knew the tunnels were there and never made it into them. Tons of ground level foot traffic. I never needed to get into them.

From what I understand, use is very weather dependent as has been alluded to. Was in Minneapolis in June and Houston in October. Maybe in summer/winter they get more use.

What I would guess is a bridge/tunnel works well if it's just one way to reach the same destination and not the only way.
Like the Commerce Arcade has a street entrance and connects to the bridges between buildings.


It's like streetfront retail. you have to understand the value the bridge brings before adding one.

The first floor of a building can have no public connection to a building above and to enter the upper floors you have to cross from a central security area in another building. The Merchandise Mart in Atlanta is like this. You check in at one spot and there's more than a dozen bridges between multiple buildings.

Just like we don't need retail in every building (we would have too much if every block had just one retail bay) we don't want bridges everywhere.

[earthling]

Skywalks used by public and bridge between residential building are two completely different things. Public skywalks suck because they keep people off the street. A bridge between 2 residential buildings not open to public does not impact street life.

[flyingember]

Skywalks used by public and bridge between residential building are two completely different things. Public skywalks suck because they keep people off the street. A bridge between 2 residential buildings not open to public does not impact street life.

Public skywalks encourage people to go multiple places. And there's always cases where they make sense

Like around Christmas it's impossible to find parking at both Union Station and Crown Center without spending 30 minutes walking to the current garage, driving in annoyingly long lines and finding parking on the third level down or 4th level up in the stupid CC garage design and then walking.

versus a 5 minute walk where there's *nothing* in between the two locations. The sky bridge is also a shortcut which goes by shops and the indoor green space in the hotel. Washington Square Park has a water problem on it's west end due to bad drainage so the sidewalk is frequently flooded when snow is melting, it's not a particularly nice walk.

The sky bridge doesn't discourage walking at street level, if discourages driving between the two locations

[kboish]

This project was before the council last week.

The Developer noted that they made design adjustments to appease the neighborhood. These included: removal of skywalk, adding of live/work units on ground floor west side along main, ability to add active space on east side and second floor parking garage if future parking demand allows, lowering of parking ratio to 1:1 for residents, increasing number of public spaces and allowing for some resident parking spaces for public use during day time areas.

Council was not receptive to this project. Suggested they get "new" letters from downtown neighborhood group demonstrating they like the project. Also suggested they would not support incentives for the project in addition to the free transfer of the property to the developer. Held for 3 weeks.

[smh]

This project was before the council last week.

The Developer noted that they made design adjustments to appease the neighborhood. These included: removal of skywalk, adding of live/work units on ground floor west side along main, ability to add active space on east side and second floor parking garage if future parking demand allows, lowering of parking ratio to 1:1 for residents, increasing number of public spaces and allowing for some resident parking spaces for public use during day time areas.

Council was not receptive to this project. Suggested they get "new" letters from downtown neighborhood group demonstrating they like the project. Also suggested they would not support incentives for the project in addition to the free transfer of the property to the developer. Held for 3 weeks.

Thanks for the update, I didn't realize there was any movement on this project. Pleased to hear it received the reception deserved.

[KCPowercat]

Yeah I like the changes

[smh]

Yeah I like the changes

Have you seen drawings/plans by chance? Or just based on the summary above?

[KCPowercat]

Just the summary

[normalthings]

Drawings are on the City Ordinance website.

250 units (up from 190)
319 spaces (down from 370)

http://cityclerk.kcmo.org/LiveWeb/Docum ... YBhBngcve5

[normalthings]

Drawings are on the City Ordinance website

http://cityclerk.kcmo.org/LiveWeb/Docum ... YBhBngcve5

Also add that this project is more than half a decade away from completion.

[DaveKCMO]

Seems like they listened. Good changes all around. Bummer about the timeline.

[smh]

I appreciate the developer making changes to the project. It has definitely improved, and it sounds like people are happy with this after the updates.

This project is still significantly overparked. But I think that blame may lie with City Market and City staff rather than the developer.

Also, given NSPJ's involvement I'd really like to see updated exteriors before we all cheer a job well done.