Brookside to celebrate East 63rd Street development with new luxury residences

People will gather at 63rd and Holmes streets Friday to celebrate 63Brookside, the first new apartments built in Kansas City’s Brookside area in at least 40 years.

In January, homeowners may begin moving into something even more unusual — luxury townhomes just east of 63rd and Oak streets.

Developers John Hoffman and Lance Carlton, with UC-B Properties, are leading the residential part of a 63rd Street renaissance that aims to stretch the cachet of the Brookside neighborhood east toward Troost Avenue.

On the commercial side, developer Butch Rigby, his partners and other investors have bought up faded or vacant commercial properties to bring new retail and office life to the corridor.

The slow but steady conversions, in full bloom for just a little more than a year, are meeting a longtime goal of Kansas City planners — to smudge the longtime “haves” and “have nots” economic dividing line at Troost.

Block by block, the transition is under way. And a crucial element adds rooftops so that after all the rehabbing is done, 63rd Street is more than a busy traffic artery.

Hoffman is putting his money, literally and figuratively, on five upscale townhomes, one of which he intends to occupy with his wife come next year.

The project, dubbed 63Oak, seeks upscale buyers. The four townhomes on the market will carry price tags of about $500,000. Each of the speculatively built townhomes will have about 1,950 square feet, three bedrooms, three and a half baths and two-car garages.

“I’m already getting interest,” Hoffman said about the townhomes. “There really isn’t anything like them until you get to Kirkwood Circle (just south of the Country Club Plaza).”

He’s confident in the market. The apartments, a $3.5 million project, accepted their first tenants in August and are 40 percent occupied as of this week. Rents range from $1,100 to $1,600 a month for the one- and two-bedroom units.

The 63Brookside apartment project will be honored Friday by the Southtown Council at a lunch at Brookside Gardens, one of the 63rd Street commercial buildings that Rigby has renovated as a special events space.

In return, UC-B Properties will present a philanthropic check to DeLaSalle Education Center, at 3737 Troost, to help with its career training programs.

This story was originally published October 19, 2016 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Brookside to celebrate East 63rd Street development with new luxury residences."