Bannister Mall/Cerner

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[shinatoo]

Here's Collison's article:

Star: Cerner plans to expand Three Trails campus

[Cerner] would extend the campus north to 87th Street between I-435 and Hillcrest Road and allow the company to include a training center and clinic for its employees. ...

The planned expansion also would allow the company to reconfigure the layout of its entire development to include more landscaping. The current plan, which calls for the Cerner office buildings to be an island surrounded by surface parking for more than 13,000 cars, had been criticized by some for its design.

Sharp said preliminary plans show a more attractive design is now in the works for the Three Trails development.

“All four of us were shown a site plan that was much greener and eliminated much of the sea of asphalt in the original plan,” Sharp said. “It will be more pedestrian friendly and transit friendly.” ...

It's so obnoxious that to these people "more pedestrian friendly and transit friendly" seems to means something like "more grass and trees among the parking lots".

Two opposing, but true, points of view. They are not mutually exclusive.
1. The design we saw was very preliminary. To denounce Cerner before seeing the end design is premature.
2. Loud and constructive criticism of the preliminary design is warranted and necessary to ensure that the design incorporates modern, multi module, design.

My criticism is, if they are building that much surface parking why can't they incorporate solar panels to power the campus and cool the parking lot. How about a little more out of the box thinking for a suburban campus.

[FangKC]

What I really wish was happening is that the City and Cerner would work together to come up with a plan to also add residential housing in the project to provide housing for some of the Cerner employees, so that so much surface lot parking isn't needed, and so that fewer employees would need to commute there.

One of the greenest things Cerner could do is to eliminate the need for all their employees to drive to work.

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[earthling]

sigh

[chaglang]

The caption "surrounded by parking lots" should not be in past tense.

Someone misunderstood the negative reaction to the original plan. People weren't reacting to the buildings being close together. They were reacting to them being surrounded by an ocean of parking. If they had just heavily concentrated the parking in garages and left the buildings close together, the reception would have been more positive. By adding 50 acres and dispersing the buildings, they made the problem worse. Note also the use of 8-10 new roads gives the appearance of less parking.

As it is now, the new plan has an FAR of .35. That's completely ridiculous. KCMO should have FAR minimums attached to the awarding of tax breaks.

Here's a photo of the model that Cerner posted on Twitter. If anything, it makes the project look worse.

[longviewmo]

KC Star maps are generally terrible. The new one removes the 435 exit at 87th, adds an at grade crossing straight from 435, and remembers that 93rd Street already goes through to the east, among other things. If that map is accurate, they did pick up that crappy hotel at 87th, the place that'd previously announced expansion plans at the old Wards building (http://www.powerapt.com/), and the assorted pad sites along Bannister.

[Eon Blue]

sigh

Pretty much.

As it is now, the new plan has an FAR of .35. That's completely ridiculous. KCMO should have FAR minimums attached to the awarding of tax breaks.

There's your council run platform!

[im2kull]

I seriously thought that post was a joke...

What is it with this town and surface lots? I mean a $4 billion dollar development can't spend $10 million on a couple parking garages? Not to mention the whole spread them out in 10 buildings thing, why not just make a tower here (Much like how burbs elsewhere have iconic towers of their own) or scrap the project and make a tower downtown?

[flyingember]

What is it with this town and surface lots? I mean a $4 billion dollar development can't spend $10 million on a couple parking garages? Not to mention the whole spread them out in 10 buildings thing, why not just make a tower here (Much like how burbs elsewhere have iconic towers of their own) or scrap the project and make a tower downtown?

Oh, that would be nice downtown, but your scope is way off.

they want to put 15K people minimum in the development
it's 4.1 million square feet
One KC place is 866K square feet.
So they would be building 4.7 towers of that scale

costs are about $25K per space in a garage
to cover everyone with a garage space would be over $375 million.
that would be like adding 8 garages the size of the one at 13th and Grand (8 stories, 3/4 of a block). they could double that and only take of four entire blocks but these garages would be among the tallest structures in the city.
granted, they could build underground but then the cost would skyrocket.

I completely get why they just want to put surface lots and build as short as possible

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[pstokely]

I seriously thought that post was a joke...

What is it with this town and surface lots? I mean a $4 billion dollar development can't spend $10 million on a couple parking garages? Not to mention the whole spread them out in 10 buildings thing, why not just make a tower here (Much like how burbs elsewhere have iconic towers of their own) or scrap the project and make a tower downtown?

plenty of cheap land for surface lots here

[aknowledgeableperson]

Yep. Cheaper to spread out than to go up.

[Highlander]

Yep. Cheaper to spread out than to go up.

Not really. The cost of surface parking is enormous and pretty horrific at the same time. It's just that it's an enormous cost collectively rather than to the individual interest that is making the investment - so the myopic short term gain solution is selected almost every time (devoid of any incentive to act in the interest of the common good). It's the American Way.

[flyingember]

Yep. Cheaper to spread out than to go up.

Not really. The cost of surface parking is enormous and pretty horrific at the same time. It's just that it's an enormous cost collectively rather than to the individual interest that is making the investment - so the myopic short term gain solution is selected almost every time (devoid of any incentive to act in the interest of the common good). It's the American Way.

they're publicly traded. short term profits matter more.

[im2kull]

What is it with this town and surface lots? I mean a $4 billion dollar development can't spend $10 million on a couple parking garages? Not to mention the whole spread them out in 10 buildings thing, why not just make a tower here (Much like how burbs elsewhere have iconic towers of their own) or scrap the project and make a tower downtown?

Oh, that would be nice downtown, but your scope is way off.

they want to put 15K people minimum in the development
it's 4.1 million square feet
One KC place is 866K square feet.
So they would be building 4.7 towers of that scale

costs are about $25K per space in a garage
to cover everyone with a garage space would be over $375 million.
that would be like adding 8 garages the size of the one at 13th and Grand (8 stories, 3/4 of a block). they could double that and only take of four entire blocks but these garages would be among the tallest structures in the city.
granted, they could build underground but then the cost would skyrocket.

I completely get why they just want to put surface lots and build as short as possible

Oh trust me, I get the scale..that was my whole point! Imagine the impact on DT. They're already planning on it being a $4B+ development. I'd be hard pressed to believe that the costs would exceed that if they were to build a landmark tower or two (And their end of the other infrastructure) downtown. Somebody should petition Neil on this.

[flyingember]

That does lead the question of what's the height premium equation in terms of usable space lost per floor added? 5%? 10%? 20%?

If it's 20% those five buildings becomes six, and the cost would jump a ton.

This would be a good topic for an event like City Camp, to bring in an experienced tower architect.

each lower floor plate has a greater percentage taken up by the basics:
You need more and larger conduit for utilities (less so these days with fiber, granted, compared to running thick copper bundles for thousands of desks)
you need more elevators to hold more people.
Larger pipes for water/sewage. Wouldn't want one floor backing up because floors above are dumping into a pipe without enough capacity.
more emergency stairwell space
etc

Imagine you run a small 4" pipe per floor. that's 50 square inches per floor.
A 30 story tower would have 30 square feet of space taken up just by sewage pipes by the time you hit floor 1. Not really, but you can see how the numbers can get large very quickly when you add up all the items in a utility chase.

does KC have floor step-back rules like NYC? That could have a difference too.

[aknowledgeableperson]

I'd be hard pressed to believe that the costs would exceed that if they were to build a landmark tower or two (And their end of the other infrastructure) downtown.

I would imagine the difference in land costs for a project of this scope downtown would far exceed what the land cost at Bannister.

[warwickland]

Collison updated his article:



The pond really brings the plan together.

what a trainwreck. don't office parks in johnson county at least have parking garages for projects of that scope? land prices i guess are lower in missouri in that area. an absolutely outrageous site layout, even by suburban standards. you would think that it being in KCMO would help guide the design a little bit, but i think that it would have been better in an Overland Park or a Chesterfield for that matter. KCMO doesn't seem to give a flying fuck what gets built the majority of the time.


http://www.nextstl.com

this is a newer development in Creve Coeur, still pretty 1990s, but most new development around here (around my office) has parking garages, at the least. another thought: how is the bannister metro center and bus routing going to be incorporated into this site layout? lets hope there are sidewalks. this entire site layout seems brazenly negligent of how (sub)urban design is trending, and outrageously inconsiderate of the environment (built and natural).