KCRag Forum

http://cityscenekc.com/developer-consid ... r-station/

KC Commercial Realty Group, which opened the 56-unit, five-story Centropolis project last year, has acquired property at 110 E. Third St. now occupied by Paw Paws.

So nice to have Collison breaking some stories for us again.

This would be a huge improvement for that sorry spot...unfortunately it is the same people who did Centropolis. Hopefully their second go round is a little more pedestrian friendly and attractive at street level, but you couldn't get much worse than what is already there.

Centropolis isn't my style, but it gets an A for effort. There is certainly room for improvement. I would say it's better than most of the other recently completed residential developments in the RM. The garage entrance is criminal, as is the mess outside the front door, making it completely inaccessible.

That spot on 3rd between the asian market and the parking garage is a dead space that sucks the live out of a potentially vibrant block. A multi-level, multi-use development would be killer.

They already received vacation of a small alley space to enable this project. Pretty sure it's going to proceed.

So nice to see this crappy lot finally with a plan. River Market appears to have a plan for every remaining large lot along streetcar line except for the one W of Minsky's (or does it?).

The Centropolis project was fine except at streetlevel. Let's hope they get the message for this one.

Retail on first floor is what I heard would happen.

taxi wrote:Centropolis isn't my style, but it gets an A for effort. There is certainly room for improvement. I would say it's better than most of the other recently completed residential developments in the RM. The garage entrance is criminal, as is the mess outside the front door, making it completely inaccessible.

I'm glad it is there and not an empty gravel lot, but I still give them a C, C+ for effort. They intentionally forewent retail on the ground level because "it would compete with City Market", which of course they manage. That was a good decision for them, but a bad decision for Kansas City. They made zero attempt at any transparency at ground level. Delightful place for a mugging. Also the aforementioned shitshow outside the front door.

All downtown developers should put a holding place for retail at ground level even if not initially used for retail. It could be temporarily used for exercise room, party/pool table room or even storage until good timing to use as retail or restaurant space. I'd go as far to say that this should be a requirement for buildings facing most core downtown streets. Developers typically don't think of 50+ year impact of their designs, city planners need to be allowed to enforce long term impact.

All armchair developers should go get a very large loan and then pay the interest on it while they try to find a viable retail tenant, which is a thriving segment of the commercial rental marketplace. While they are at it, get another loan to install a kitchen and then find a restaurateur who will not go out of business.

taxi wrote:While they are at it, get another loan to install a kitchen and then find a restaurateur who will not go out of business.

McDonalds?

Something like 60% of restaurants die within 3 years. So it's a coin toss on if a developer can find one that won't

taxi wrote:All armchair developers should go get a very large loan and then pay the interest on it while they try to find a viable retail tenant, which is a thriving segment of the commercial rental marketplace. While they are at it, get another loan to install a kitchen and then find a restaurateur who will not go out of business.

While I take your point and completely acknowledge KC's difficulty in this area historically, it will always be the case that not doing street level retail is cheaper than doing it. In which case we would end up with no street level retail.

If you don't push or incentivize it'll never happen.

Retail doesn't have to mean a restaurant - how about a dog groomer, nail salon, dry cleaner, laundromat, alterations, clothing store, etc.? Not everything is going to make it, but if you have a good product and fill a void in the market, you're already ahead of the game.

Fortunately, in at least some instances, parking garage space can be repurposed as retail.

taxi wrote:All armchair developers should go get a very large loan and then pay the interest on it while they try to find a viable retail tenant, which is a thriving segment of the commercial rental marketplace. While they are at it, get another loan to install a kitchen and then find a restaurateur who will not go out of business.

What's the alternative? Blank walls across the entire city? If we can't put retail, or at least ground floor transparency at corners along our most visible transit route then where can we ever hope to have them?

Found a new rendering...

This is for an 87-unit apartment building directly north of the River Market North streetcar stop. The development is called 'Ashland's' and it was designed by NPSJ.

Based on the rendering it looks like it is mostly a 6-story building, but 7 on the far east side. I see 2 spaces for street-level commercial/retail along 3rd although one or both could just be entrances.

Looks like it has some above-ground structured parking hidden on the back side of the building.

Here is the link.

KCDowntown

I like it.

Yeah that would work.

I approve

chrizow wrote:Looks good - is that project actually happening or just a preliminary rendering

GIS Plot has the same name as this project

Talk about all white people in renderings, this one takes the cake!