Competitors vie to design UMKC’s downtown conservatory

Five architectural and design teams are competing to win the first phase of the proposed downtown campus for the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music and Dance.

UMKC officials expect to select the winner within days.

Competing teams are:

▪ BNIM Architects with Ann Beha Architects

▪ El Dorado Inc. with Ennead

▪ Helix Architecture with HGA

▪ Hoefer Wysocki Architecture with Pfeiffer Partners

▪ International Architects Atelier with SnØhetta

The five teams have worked with UMKC conservatory, architecture, urban planning and design students to help prepare their concepts. An “urban design charette,” open to the public, was held Sunday afternoon.

UMKC’s plans call for a new conservatory facility on an 80,000-square-foot block bounded by 17th and 18th streets, Broadway and Central. The site, directly south of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, was acquired with a $6 million donation assembled through the Downtown Council and anonymous donors.

The full cost of building the downtown campus’s first phase is estimated at $96 million. UMKC expects to raise $48 million in private gifts and also use matching funds from the state of Missouri.

Planning was boosted last year by a $20 million challenge pledge from the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation, led by Julia Irene Kauffman. That grant has a three-year deadline.

This story was originally published September 15, 2014 at 3:36 PM with the headline "Competitors vie to design UMKC’s downtown conservatory."