KCRag Forum

earthling wrote:Yeah, too early as design is not finalized.

I do find it curious that many seem to think a convention hotel will be a major catalyst for downtown like increasing downtown population is. There is no guarantee this will bring more conventions - Denver/Indy initially got a boost from their convention hotels but convention biz is down for them as is nationwide. While I'm for more hotel rooms because DTKC is below normal for rooms in the Loop, this project is not necessarily as good investment for DTKC as boosting DT population. Increasing population is far more important and effective and once it hits critical mass, everything else is more likely to follow (with fewer incentives).

We know that there is demand for DT residential living with consistent occupancy over 97% that would likely maintain high occupancy even if adding 10K more units. DT also hit a major milestone of a waiting list for $2+/sqft luxury hirise living, which is a big deal. The more hotel rooms you have downtown, the harder it is to keep them filled (certainly won't be over 80% daily), especially with decreasing convention industry.

The pro development side of me is for this project but the pragmatic side would rather see KCMO pursue even more residential hirises than a convention class hotel. For now anyway, maybe when there are signs of convention industry returning.

pash wrote:

DaveKCMO wrote:honestly, do these things ever meet or exceed initial expectations? i'm going to bet money on no more than 25 stories.

I'm usually pretty skeptical, but the more I look at this thing, the more I doubt that they're going to be able to cram the advertised 800 rooms into only 22–25 floors.

For comparison, the Sheraton at Crown Center is 45 floors and it has 730 rooms. Could you reconfigure its floor area and room count into the configuration of the new convention hotel? Let's try:

• Lop the (formerly) rotating restaurant off the Sheraton and it's down to about 42–44 floors.
• Now chop the hotel in half at its horizontal midsection, leaving two 21- or 22-story pieces.
• Notice that each piece has pretty much exactly the footprint of the short side (north side) of the L-shaped footprint of the new convention hotel—the long side of the footprint of both the Sheraton and of the new hotel's northern tower spans the short side of a standard city block, and the width of each allows for a row of rooms on either side of a central corridor.
• So put one of the pieces of our chopped-up Sheraton down along the south side of Truman between Wyandotte and Balitimore, and set the other piece down next to it, fronting Wyandotte.
• Voilà!—we have something with almost exactly the footprint of the convention hotel.

But there's a problem. The two pieces of our chopped-up Sheraton are each 20-some floors, but one of the two legs of the new hotel is supposed to be more than twice as tall as the other. Move enough floors from the lower leg to the higher leg to get the proportions close to the rendering and the higher section of the new hotel would end up at 30 floors or more, before you stick a big architectural feature on the roof.

And then there are an extra 70 more rooms you need to add somewhere—and the way I chopped up the Sheraton and plopped down the pieces means that one of the pieces would have rooms from the ground level up, while the renderings show both legs of the new hotel tower sitting on a multi-story base of parking and meeting space. ...

Anyway, that's my long-winded way of saying that after I looked at the renderings again, it became really hard to see how they could possibly cram 800 rooms into the design they showed us. So either we're going to get a 20-some-story hotel with a markedly different design (if both legs of the tower were the same height, it could work), we're going to get substantially fewer rooms (which seems unlikely, given the basic purpose of the project), or we're going to get a hotel that's more like 30 stories tall.

Actually there's one more way I could imagine making it work without a hugely different design—extend the taller tower section to be the length of the whole block between Truman Road and 16th Street. But that would make for a very long corridor that would probably require another bank of elevators, etc.

JBmidtown wrote:y'all are some Debbie Downers.

DaveKCMO wrote:honestly, do these things ever meet or exceed initial expectations? i'm going to bet money on no more than 25 stories.

bhedges1987 wrote:

DaveKCMO wrote:honestly, do these things ever meet or exceed initial expectations? i'm going to bet money on no more than 25 stories.

Well their saying 30-35 could possibly go up to 40... That's better than them saying it could drop to 25-20 . I'll keep my hopes up that in 3 years we will have a huge hotel with 3 brand new apartments added to down town. Tons of cranes. I just got back from SF and it seems they have cranes on every block with tons of buildings going up

ldai_phs wrote:

bhedges1987 wrote:

DaveKCMO wrote:honestly, do these things ever meet or exceed initial expectations? i'm going to bet money on no more than 25 stories.

Well their saying 30-35 could possibly go up to 40... That's better than them saying it could drop to 25-20 . I'll keep my hopes up that in 3 years we will have a huge hotel with 3 brand new apartments added to down town. Tons of cranes. I just got back from SF and it seems they have cranes on every block with tons of buildings going up

Cities like San Fransisco and Miami have a lot of foreign investment driving most of the new construction. Many Wealthy Persons from Asian and the Middle East put their money in U.S. Real estate. This foreign investment is something Kansas City Lacks. We should eventually market Kansas City to Foreign Investors.

earthling wrote:I'd like to see City press for a residential component to this hotel as well and build a new tallest in KC. Residents can use the hotel/concierge services so when hotel is not busy, they get income from residents. Should reduce risk of City investment as well. It would require a larger parking garage (and probably needs city help for garage) but may be worth it.

ldai_phs wrote:We could push the fact that less goes a lot farther here. Why buy 1 home in LA when you can buy 2-4 in Kansas City. Setting up the city website with multiple languages is a start, but I believe we may need a separate website for this. What appeals to us( Americans) in a website may not appeal to them.

ldai_phs wrote:If they can get more outside investment, they would probably build to 1,000 rooms before building a residential component.

flyingember wrote:

ldai_phs wrote:If they can get more outside investment, they would probably build to 1,000 rooms before building a residential component.

A new high floor room at $200 per night is way more lucrative than an apartment at $2000 per month.

since $200 * just used 20 days per month = $4000.

shinatoo wrote:

flyingember wrote:

ldai_phs wrote:If they can get more outside investment, they would probably build to 1,000 rooms before building a residential component.

A new high floor room at $200 per night is way more lucrative than an apartment at $2000 per month.

since $200 * just used 20 days per month = $4000.

Lot more daily expense involved in a hotel room than there is in an apartment.