On-going downtown development projects

Issues concerning Downtown as described by the Downtown Council. River to 31st Street, I-35 to Bruce R. Watkins.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

Post by normalthings »

With KC set to approach/hit the longtime goal of 40,000 downtown, what’s next?

50,000 new office jobs was mentioned by downtown council.

I think a residential density of 15-20k sq/mile is a good goal albeit Very long term .
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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Sounds like a good goal to me. Getting the residential population to 50 and then 60k sounds like logical next steps as well.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

Post by TheUrbanRoo »

Goal should be to finally get a Target downtown. It's been awhile since we've heard about it and I think we need to press for it again with Target. I think getting one would get other scared retailers or stores to follow their lead downtown.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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UMKC Roo wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 6:07 am Goal should be to finally get a Target downtown. It's been awhile since we've heard about it and I think we need to press for it again with Target. I think getting one would get other scared retailers or stores to follow their lead downtown.
Sounds a bit like a novel, arbitrary goal but I think I might agree with this one. Targets usually signify a valuable market to other retailers and should make it far easier to attract new amenities that the core need.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

Post by Chris Stritzel »

Target is actively looking at downtown. I heard about one potential location they’ve been supposedly looking at and a previously looked at location. I imagine they’ll be down there within the next few years.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

Post by TheUrbanRoo »

^What locations? I heard about the P&L spot before
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

Post by Chris Stritzel »

UMKC Roo wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 4:16 pm ^What locations? I heard about the P&L spot before
I’m not able to reveal at this time out of respect for my source.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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normalthings wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:07 am With KC set to approach/hit the longtime goal of 40,000 downtown, what’s next?

50,000 new office jobs was mentioned by downtown council.

I think a residential density of 15-20k sq/mile is a good goal albeit Very long term .
This comment inspired me to do a little digging in the census tract level data. The downtown loop is divided fairly neatly into four tracts with the farthest west one, west of Broadway, at 9.4k/sq mi. Broadway to Main is 10.8k. Main to Oak is 17k and is the densest downtown tract. East of Oak is 8.2k.

The tract including the Crossroads and East Crossroads suffers from the inclusion of Union Station and some land dedicated to rails as well as parts of largely institutional Hospital Hill. Still the tract stands at only 2.4k.

The tract including River Market also includes the West Bottoms as well as quite a bit of rail and river front so comes in at a measly 2k. Obviously these tracts are not a fine grained enough level of analysis to get a great idea on a neighborhood level always.

Other DT tracts... Tract roughly similar to Paseo West plus the blocks to Woodland is 4.2k. Columbus Park; overcoming a lot of attached industrial, rail, and underdeveloped riverfront land, clocks in at 3.6k. The whole of PVP gets included with Crown Center and parts of Union Hill. So that tract only registers 2.2k. Other parts of Union Hill along with Longfellow at 5.9k. Beacon Hill + Mount Hope and more is 4k. Westside including Westside South; suffering from rail, highway, industrial and terrain nonetheless only at 2.8k.

Certainly a long term project getting towards that goal but would be interested in actually how long it would take at the current rate we are adding units assuming like 1.6-1.9 ppl per unit. Measuring on google maps, I excluded anything east of 71 or I70 and generously interpreted the exclusion of some inactive industrial use on the west side. My more minimal interpretation of DT boundaries was 5.65 sq miles. We would need 85k residents in that area to meet a density of 15k.

Other notably dense areas are some tracts in Old Northeast around 7-9k. A geographically compact tract including some of Plaza and some of South Plaza at a whopping 19k. A tract that is part of West Plaza around 10k two other West Plaza tract 7k and 7.5k. Main to Troost and 31st to 36th is 8k. A ract representing part of Southmoreland at 9.6k and one representing part of South Hyde Park at 8.7k. A tract that is part of South Volker at 7.2k.

Very interesting stuff you can look at by googling census tract level data. You can identify which tracts are poised to add a lot of density by 2030. Anyone have access to a more granular source on density than this?
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

Post by smh »

FlippantCitizen wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:51 pm
normalthings wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:07 am With KC set to approach/hit the longtime goal of 40,000 downtown, what’s next?

50,000 new office jobs was mentioned by downtown council.

I think a residential density of 15-20k sq/mile is a good goal albeit Very long term .
This comment inspired me to do a little digging in the census tract level data. The downtown loop is divided fairly neatly into four tracts with the farthest west one, west of Broadway, at 9.4k/sq mi. Broadway to Main is 10.8k. Main to Oak is 17k and is the densest downtown tract. East of Oak is 8.2k.

The tract including the Crossroads and East Crossroads suffers from the inclusion of Union Station and some land dedicated to rails as well as parts of largely institutional Hospital Hill. Still the tract stands at only 2.4k.

The tract including River Market also includes the West Bottoms as well as quite a bit of rail and river front so comes in at a measly 2k. Obviously these tracts are not a fine grained enough level of analysis to get a great idea on a neighborhood level always.

Other DT tracts... Tract roughly similar to Paseo West plus the blocks to Woodland is 4.2k. Columbus Park; overcoming a lot of attached industrial, rail, and underdeveloped riverfront land, clocks in at 3.6k. The whole of PVP gets included with Crown Center and parts of Union Hill. So that tract only registers 2.2k. Other parts of Union Hill along with Longfellow at 5.9k. Beacon Hill + Mount Hope and more is 4k. Westside including Westside South; suffering from rail, highway, industrial and terrain nonetheless only at 2.8k.

Certainly a long term project getting towards that goal but would be interested in actually how long it would take at the current rate we are adding units assuming like 1.6-1.9 ppl per unit. Measuring on google maps, I excluded anything east of 71 or I70 and generously interpreted the exclusion of some inactive industrial use on the west side. My more minimal interpretation of DT boundaries was 5.65 sq miles. We would need 85k residents in that area to meet a density of 15k.

Other notably dense areas are some tracts in Old Northeast around 7-9k. A geographically compact tract including some of Plaza and some of South Plaza at a whopping 19k. A tract that is part of West Plaza around 10k two other West Plaza tract 7k and 7.5k. Main to Troost and 31st to 36th is 8k. A ract representing part of Southmoreland at 9.6k and one representing part of South Hyde Park at 8.7k. A tract that is part of South Volker at 7.2k.

Very interesting stuff you can look at by googling census tract level data. You can identify which tracts are poised to add a lot of density by 2030. Anyone have access to a more granular source on density than this?
Not sure if you were looking directly at the Census or something else, but you can use this viewer to check out a few additional demographic related pieces of info.

https://www.census.gov/library/visualiz ... iewer.html

I have been wondering something similar as of late about whether a certain density ought to be a goal for the urban core of KC, and/or the whole city. A density of 15-20k seems reasonably achievable if we allow additional units within residential areas and support larger projects along commercial streets--basically what we're seeing in Midtown. I haven't thought really what the "cons" would be to this goal.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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smh wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 2:13 pm
I have been wondering something similar as of late about whether a certain density ought to be a goal for the urban core of KC, and/or the whole city. A density of 15-20k seems reasonably achievable if we allow additional units within residential areas and support larger projects along commercial streets--basically what we're seeing in Midtown. I haven't thought really what the "cons" would be to this goal.
Yeah that's the data I was looking at. My point is some of these tracts shoehorn in active rail yards, extensive industrial areas, undeveloped riverfront, large amounts of land dedicated to highways with residential neighborhoods. That fact is illustrative of how much bad land use we would have to overcome/change to achieve high levels of overall density across a large area. Simply we have a lot of bad land use and underutilization in the boundaries of what is considered downtown KC. I mean consider that the current density of the tract containing the Crossroads is only 2.4k/square mile. The boundaries of the tract are not a perfect representation of the Crossroads, you can look at what exactly boundaries are in that link. But to get into the density of about 18k/sq mile you need to add something like 15,000 population to that census tract alone. Then account for the competition for new urban residents and development dollars with River Market, EV and all the new Royals stuff over there, West Bottoms Redevelopment, units on Main Street corridor through Midtown, other projects inside the DT loop like 3L. So saying that 15k or 18k should be the goal across all of DT much broader parts of the urban core might be a big uphill climb.

I mean the number of people/units you would have to add would just be immense and you will have a bunch of neighborhoods within DT and near downtown competing to absorb the demand. Some back of the napkin math adding up all the DT census tracts, which pretty well line up with a maximal definition of what constitutes DT KC shows that the DT population was not quite 30k as recorded by the 2020 census. Lets set aside the possibility of an under count due to pandemic factors eg people fled their small apartments for other options though only temporarily and were counted somewhere else but soon returned that would indeed be a generous and plausible story but the data isn't there to support it. So using that tract level data and my napkin math the DT population Density is only somewhere in the 4k/sq mile range. Old Northeast and Midtown are actually more dense. Getting downtown to a density of 18k/square mile would mean having a downtown population well over 100,000.

That is a lofty goal which I would love to see a happen. What I am interested in is how long would that take realistically. How many units are currently being added a year downtown If we very generously assumed 2 people per unit, how long at the current rate would it take to add 40k units? That would be the minimum number needed to get into those high densities.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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I think when we are thinking of sq mi density in census tracts it is slightly different. But I may be wrong in my thinking about it, feel free to correct me.

Census tracts are designed to have about 4,000 people in each. The geographic size of the tract is larger or smaller as needed to reach this goal. So I think it is really more a question of how these people are living. For example, my census tract (not in KC) is about 1/10th of a sq mile, with about 4,400 people and a density of 75k people/sq mi.

I guess what I'm saying is that density is slightly divorced from actual population, I think. Meaning you could achieve higher densities (and therefore reach your density goals) in KC with more moderate, but directed, population growth.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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smh wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:07 pm I think when we are thinking of sq mi density in census tracts it is slightly different. But I may be wrong in my thinking about it, feel free to correct me.

Census tracts are designed to have about 4,000 people in each. The geographic size of the tract is larger or smaller as needed to reach this goal. So I think it is really more a question of how these people are living. For example, my census tract (not in KC) is about 1/10th of a sq mile, with about 4,400 people and a density of 75k people/sq mi.

I guess what I'm saying is that density is slightly divorced from actual population, I think. Meaning you could achieve higher densities (and therefore reach your density goals) in KC with more moderate, but directed, population growth.
The Kansas City tracts I'm looking at vary between as little as 1800 total population and over 5000 population. I don't know what you mean by density being divorced from population. Density is just population divided by area. We could exclude some areas that are dedicated to uses other than residential and focus on localized nodes of density which these census tracts are not always granular enough to capture. We could have some nice areas of urban form and urban living without high density broadly spread through the urban core. But when it comes to city finances and services we all desire like better transit we need higher densities over larger areas. Fundamentally when we talk about downtown density the only fair way to look at it is the total population of downtown divided by the total land area of downtown.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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FlippantCitizen wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:17 pm
smh wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:07 pm I think when we are thinking of sq mi density in census tracts it is slightly different. But I may be wrong in my thinking about it, feel free to correct me.

Census tracts are designed to have about 4,000 people in each. The geographic size of the tract is larger or smaller as needed to reach this goal. So I think it is really more a question of how these people are living. For example, my census tract (not in KC) is about 1/10th of a sq mile, with about 4,400 people and a density of 75k people/sq mi.

I guess what I'm saying is that density is slightly divorced from actual population, I think. Meaning you could achieve higher densities (and therefore reach your density goals) in KC with more moderate, but directed, population growth.
Fundamentally when we talk about downtown density the only fair way to look at it is the total population of downtown divided by the total land area of downtown.
Good point assuming similar infrastructure throughout, etc.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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An evergreen question for Downtown Kansas City will remain: whatever the population of residents and/or workers there rises to, where will the retail that so many would like to see eventually take root there again go if there was sufficient willingness to invest in retail there? What existing properties would be able to accommodate retail uses beyond the P&L District after decades of demolishing the core of retail structures that once preponderated and replacing much of it with garage parking, office uses, etc.? It would seem to me that if retail were to become a priority there would have to be a plan in place with a concerted effort by public and private partners (that is, planners/designers/property owners) to focus retail redevelopment and reinvestment into a core area. Capitalizing off of the P&L district and the streetcar, perhaps that means Main Street and reestablishing Petticoat Lane as a retail core. But I just don't see how that happens without major alterations to existing buildings and a complete rethinking of some sites underdeveloped (the 1034 Main garage/10th Main transit site for example) to reorient those places to ground level retail whatever the above-ground uses are.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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I think retail is a surprisingly vital element for consistent pedestrian activity. The Plaza is still the busiest I’ve ever seen anywhere in KC on random, non-event days. Downtown has added lots of residents and restaurants and such, but it seems like KC pedestrians only really come out when there’s shopping or a big event. I’ve never seen anywhere downtown naturally as busy as the Plaza is, and I think the lack of shopping has to do with that. Even in old photos, shopping streets like Petticoat Lane were by far the most active streets.

It’s not just KC, it seems like the most regularly “bustling” areas of major US cities are shopping districts.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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TheLastGentleman wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:34 am I think retail is a surprisingly vital element for consistent pedestrian activity. The Plaza is still the busiest I’ve ever seen anywhere in KC on random, non-event days. Downtown has added lots of residents and restaurants and such, but it seems like KC pedestrians only really come out when there’s shopping or a big event. I’ve never seen anywhere downtown naturally as busy as the Plaza is, and I think the lack of shopping has to do with that. Even in old photos, shopping streets like Petticoat Lane were by far the most active streets.

It’s not just KC, it seems like the most regularly “bustling” areas of major US cities are shopping districts.
iirc, the Plaza has more very dense census tracts than downtown. Not many people live in the Crossroads
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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normalthings wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:48 amiirc, the Plaza has more very dense census tracts than downtown. Not many people live in the Crossroads
Implication being?
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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TheLastGentleman wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:34 am I think retail is a surprisingly vital element for consistent pedestrian activity. The Plaza is still the busiest I’ve ever seen anywhere in KC on random, non-event days. Downtown has added lots of residents and restaurants and such, but it seems like KC pedestrians only really come out when there’s shopping or a big event. I’ve never seen anywhere downtown naturally as busy as the Plaza is, and I think the lack of shopping has to do with that. Even in old photos, shopping streets like Petticoat Lane were by far the most active streets.

It’s not just KC, it seems like the most regularly “bustling” areas of major US cities are shopping districts.
This was the case even in the early 80s when one could actually still find some bustle downtown on some blocks of some streets despite many retail vacancies and increasingly lower-end retail that filled the other spaces: the area around 11th and Main/Walnut, and Main from 10th and 12th was busiest though increasingly during morning rush hour and lunch hours. And this was very much centered around the still massive "Macy's on Main" which had more departments and services than any of the branch locations, and of course the locus of most of the banking and other services that were still there back then.

Just for fun, take a look at this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j5pp1yduHA on YouTube and go to timestamp 20:00 and view through 23:15, where many of the color images some of us may have seen of Petticoat Lane in the "old days" come to life in film. The first few seconds at that point show 11th looking toward Main from Baltimore, and then a few glimpses of Baltimore Avenue, but most of it is Petticoat Lane. Just surreal to see downtown like that back then, in color.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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I've said this before, so again, the best places for retail to return are older buildings. It's cheaper to rent in an existing, older building than to build new structures. Yet, we see the impulse to continue to tear down what is left.

The two-story corner building on the SW corner of 12th and McGee with likely be next because developers don't have any vision of how to build around such structures. They will tear it down so they can build underground parking underneath its' tiny footprint. Yet this building has 7 retail spaces for small businesses. No one on the City Council will question this move either. The wisdom of repeatedly removing older retail spaces from downtown. Then they won't be able to explain why retail is so bad downtown.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0998059 ... 384!8i8192

We have had people on this forum advocate tearing down even more older buildings that already have retail in them. The buildings that come to mind are on Walnut south of Truman Road and on Grand south of Truman. They do this even though we have plenty of evidence that it's a mistake. Developers will remove existing businesses paying taxes to recreate new space that will provide no tax revenue or retail activity for perhaps a decade.

Please see this link.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.097236 ... 384!8i8192

Sure you can recreate retail spaces in new buildings on those sites, but it will be much more expensive to rent, and like many spaces in the Power & Light District, will sit empty for exceedingly long timeframes.

Another dumb mistake.

See this link.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0986504 ... 384!8i8192

There used to be three businesses in these retail spaces in the Midland Building. If I recall one was a hair salon, and one was a florist. I can't remember the other. These tenants were booted out over 15 years ago (2006 I believe). The spaces have been empty since and as we know, work is just now starting on renovating the building. These spaces could be been rented to the tenants at least for 13 more years. Instead, active retail businesses were taken out and dead space created.

The plan now is to make these spaces an amenity playhouse lobby for future residential tenants. This is supposed to be an affordable income residential building. Do you really need to provide amenity space and a big lobby to tenants who just want a cheap apartment? See below:

viewtopic.php?p=604206#p604206

In my estimation, it would have always been better to return these spaces to affordable rent retail space. Wouldn't downtown residents benefit more from retail in that space than a big lobby that will likely not get used that much? It would be great fun to put a live public camera in that space so we could see how often it was being used.

But you have a lot of stupidity being exercised all over the place, and this is why downtown doesn't retain retail, or lure retail back downtown.

And likely will see even more retail spaces in older buildings removed.

Who wants to take a bet this building is next?

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0942374 ... 384!8i8192
Last edited by FangKC on Fri Dec 23, 2022 12:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: On-going downtown development projects

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Philacav wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 3:21 pm
TheLastGentleman wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:34 am I think retail is a surprisingly vital element for consistent pedestrian activity. The Plaza is still the busiest I’ve ever seen anywhere in KC on random, non-event days. Downtown has added lots of residents and restaurants and such, but it seems like KC pedestrians only really come out when there’s shopping or a big event. I’ve never seen anywhere downtown naturally as busy as the Plaza is, and I think the lack of shopping has to do with that. Even in old photos, shopping streets like Petticoat Lane were by far the most active streets.

It’s not just KC, it seems like the most regularly “bustling” areas of major US cities are shopping districts.
This was the case even in the early 80s when one could actually still find some bustle downtown on some blocks of some streets despite many retail vacancies and increasingly lower-end retail that filled the other spaces: the area around 11th and Main/Walnut, and Main from 10th and 12th was busiest though increasingly during morning rush hour and lunch hours. And this was very much centered around the still massive "Macy's on Main" which had more departments and services than any of the branch locations, and of course the locus of most of the banking and other services that were still there back then.

Just for fun, take a look at this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j5pp1yduHA on YouTube and go to timestamp 20:00 and view through 23:15, where many of the color images some of us may have seen of Petticoat Lane in the "old days" come to life in film. The first few seconds at that point show 11th looking toward Main from Baltimore, and then a few glimpses of Baltimore Avenue, but most of it is Petticoat Lane. Just surreal to see downtown like that back then, in color.
I honestly can't think of DT KC ever looking like this. So amazing to see such activity and so many amazing grand old stores. That clip was really cool to see. Growing up, my parents always took us to the Blue Ridge Mall as we lived in Eastern Jackson. The only time we ever saw or glimpsed DT was when we'd go to my grandparents' house in the KS suburbs or on field trips; I can remember seeing One KC Place, Town Pavilion, and 1201 Walnut all being built as a kid. I would love to see this kind of activity return to the core, but sprawl has plagued this city for so long.
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