OFFICIAL - East Village

[moderne]

Best and only thing I can say about this so far is that it is built next to the sidewalk and is about the same size and height of the 2 standing historical residential buildings in the area.  This one building looks lonely and lost in the wasteland that is east village.

[macnw]

What's the alternative at this point in time?

[kcmetro]

What's the latest news with this project?  Last time I was down there (March), they were building some 2-story apartments it looked like.  What else is planned/under construction?

[Pork Chop]

What's the latest news with this project?  Last time I was down there (March), they were building some 2-story apartments it looked like.  What else is planned/under construction?

It's a four story 50 unit apt. unit. and a garage for the FAA is being built on the other half of the block. Both will be completed by the fall.

[KC-wildcat]

East Village is so dissapointing.  sooo much surface lot.  development sooo slow.  amount of necessary development just seems completely overwhelming. 

I personally think that East Village needs a big box store like Target with good visibility from US-71 and easy access.  Maybe EV only begins to grow when people start travelling into that part of the City.  I hate surface lots.  But, I'm also a realist.  Key big box may be the answer. 

Right now, the perception is reality.  Giant shit hole concrete jungle where you get shanked by crackheads. 

[geeman68]

East Village is so dissapointing.  sooo much surface lot.  development sooo slow.  amount of necessary development just seems completely overwhelming. 

I personally think that East Village needs a big box store like Target with good visibility from US-71 and easy access.  Maybe EV only begins to grow when people start travelling into that part of the City.  I hate surface lots.  But, I'm also a realist.  Key big box may be the answer. 

Right now, the perception is reality.  Giant shit hole concrete jungle where you get shanked by crackheads. 

At the Make Grand Grand meeting, I was pushing for the concept of big box urban stores like a Target.  It obviously wouldn't be the "big" box but if one were brave enough to build a 4 story urban Store with underground parking, cafe/retail store fronts for the ground floor/outer portion with Target being the upper floors and include an adjacent park, how AWESOME would that be?!!!

[KC-wildcat]

The parcel on Grand between 11th and 10th would be perfect for an urban big box w/ subterrain garage. 

Unfortunately, a big box tenant would only want to build cheap (i.e. cheap land, big surface lot).  So, if KCMO wants big retail in CBD, we'll have to provide heavy subsidy.  in EV, on the other hand... 

Only in high dense locations would it make sense to incur additional cost for higher real estate price and garage construciton. 

[smh]

The parcel on Grand between 11th and 10th would be perfect for an urban big box w/ subterrain garage. 

Unfortunately, a big box tenant would only want to build cheap (i.e. cheap land, big surface lot).  So, if KCMO wants big retail in CBD, we'll have to provide heavy subsidy.  in EV, on the other hand... 

Only in high dense locations would it make sense to incur additional cost for higher real estate price and garage construciton. 

What about a Walmart Express or the new urban Target stores? They’re beginning to put these in without surface lots. Not sure on the subsidies, etc.

[pash]

.

[smh]

He's pointing out that they're building those where urban real-estate is expensive. It doesn't make sense to build a garage (especially underground) when you can just pave over the dirt-cheap vacant lot next door.

Ahh yes, I see that now.

[FangKC]

I saw the apartments on Holmes today, and thought they looked fine. I hope additional building on the blocks around the project will occur in the future though, or those apartments will feel really isolated and not really that desirable.

It's a shame that they aren't building a few floors of apartments on top of the parking garage on Cherry as well.

[FangKC]

I noticed today that the north part of the parcel (shown in red in photo) where the apartments are being constructed now will be a surface parking lot instead of another apartment building. I think it's totally ridiculous that they are putting surface parking on that portion of the block instead of more apartments when a parking garage is being built behind the apartments on the west side of the block. Jeez, build another level on the garage already and build more housing.

Or how about placing the parking under the apartment buildings?

Did they even excavate for that parking garage to place any parking below grade?

The planning in this city totally sucks, and having an hope for increasing density downtown or elsewhere seems like a fool-hardy endeavor.

[kboish]

I just noticed that the other day as well. The east village is off to a great start. After the end of developing one block we have 1/4 of the block with low rise residential and 3/4 of the block with new parking...wow, what a joke.

And no, I don't believe they excavated at all on that parking garage.

[FangKC]

Yeah, it's frustrating to say the least.

When you have adjacent unbuilt parcels--especially those on small parcels that won't have parking, you need to build the largest garage possible to serve future, new buildings across the street, etc. For example, the parcels on the NW corner of 9th and Cherry (west of Blackstone Hotel, south of the church) and the ones on the north side of 10th between Locust and Cherry (where the gas station is) are small parcels and there won't be a lot of room for many parking spaces.




And please take advantage of underground levels while the parcel is cleared. Parking garages with no retail or residential built with them are block killers, so when you build them they must be large enough to serve other adjacent buildings that do create density.

With the East Village, you basically have a clean slate. When you want density in a modern city, you have to maximize parking opportunities. In the denser parts of downtown, one of the problems for reusing older buildings is creating enough parking. When the Power and Light District was built, one of the reasons some perfectly good older buildings were torn down was to be able to excavate the entire block for underground parking to serve new adjacent buildings.

In a downtown area, parking garages are infastructure, and you have to treat them just as you would streets, sidewalks, street lamps, etc. This lack of foresight with the parking garage on Cherry is like building a freeway with only one lane.

Back to an earlier gripe, the future will prove that it was a huge mistake to construct Ilus Davis Park and not put a couple of levels of underground parking under the park between Oak, Locust, 9th and 10th to serve the US Courthouse. That would have freed up that parking lot between McGee, Oak, 8th and 9th that courthouse employees and visitors use now.

The Ilus Park garage could have also served those buildings on the west side of Oak between 9th and 10th, and created an opportunity to place in infill building on that existing parking lot there.

[aknowledgeableperson]

In a generic sense, going underground just adds to the cost of building a parking building. And not knowing what was underground (dirt or solid rock) it might have been very costly to go downwards if rock.

[FangKC]

And it's also expensive in the longer run to dedicate 75 percent of a block to parking, which doesn't produce a lot of property tax, income, and sales taxes for the city to pay for infastructure and services.

I doubt there is rock under that parcel that is close to the surface. When they excavated for P&L underground parking, they went down a couple of stories and it was dirt.

A lot of the East Village area is already infill of a former hollow. In fact, that area used to be called Happy Hollow.

Photo of Happy Hollow at 9th and Holmes.

http://kchistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.p ... OX=1&REC=1

[aknowledgeableperson]

When I talk about expense I am talking about the money one might have, here and now, in order to build a project. Yes, I know about future costs and revenues but if one only has a fixed amount of money to do something then decisions have to be made about what to do and what one cannot do.

[Highlander]

When I talk about expense I am talking about the money one might have, here and now, in order to build a project. Yes, I know about future costs and revenues but if one only has a fixed amount of money to do something then decisions have to be made about what to do and what one cannot do.

In many, if not most, cities, the cost of land downtown would make a surface lot prohibitively expensive. Sadly, that is probably not the case in eastern DT KC.

[KC-wildcat]

In many, if not most, cities, the cost of land downtown would make a surface lot prohibitively expensive. Sadly, that is probably not the case in eastern DT KC.

Agreed. I don't know why people are surprised or even upset with surface lots in EVillage. Unless this City ever decides to attract some real commercial activity over there, that land will continue to languish as cheap, easily maintained, asphalt slabs. It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Land is cheap. No demand. Why invest in expensive infrastructure without any real commercial draw???

[kboish]

I am disappointed b/c swope developers billed this as a dense mixed use project heavy on housing. There original proposals had apartments on this entire block w/ a small pocket park...instead they have a massive parking garage and tiny surface lot. I'm not naive to think that developers don't oversell, but geez.

What are they waiting on to start building some significant portions of the planned 1000-1200 units? Some kind of public finance? From what I remember it seemed like they had everything pretty much lined up? im sure i am wrong about that though.