Main Street apartment building will be unlike any other in Kansas City

A concrete frame is curing at 3435 Main St., ready to accept delivery next month of about 100 modules that will become Kansas City’s first factory-built apartment building.

When stacked to a five-story height, the building will comprise 80 apartments ready to accept tenants in February 2017.

The structure — a type not yet seen in Midtown or anywhere else in Kansas City for that matter — is a project of MAC Properties, a development company far better known for rehabbing old buildings.

“A construction worker may never have to enter an apartment,” said Peter Cassel, a principal with Chicago-based MAC. “All of the (utility) connections happen on the outside, in the envelope of the building.”

MAC has been renovating old midtown properties on the Armour Boulevard corridor for about a decade. The new structure, going up on a former surface parking lot next door to a Burger King, is MAC’s first Kansas City offering of factory-built apartments.

The modules, with exterior panels made of an aluminum composite, currently are under construction in a Champion Home Builders factory in Nebraska. When delivered, they will be stacked atop the concrete pad that now separates the first and second floors.

“We’ve seen these apartments work successfully in Brooklyn and in Denver,” Cassel said, “We’re looking forward to introducing them in Kansas City.”

The building’s sleek gray-and-white exterior will look substantially different from historic structures in the neighborhood on floors two through five. The first floor, though, will have brick masonry walls and a glass storefront.

The building is being outfitted with the infrastructure to allow for a restaurant facing Main Street. The back part of the ground floor will be for resident parking.

The project will have a mix of studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments. Cassel said the units’ square footage generally will be larger than apartments found in rehabbed midtown buildings. Average apartment sizes in the area are 465 square feet for studios, 672 square feet for one bedrooms, and 917 square feet for two bedrooms.

Cassel said the company wasn’t ready to quote rental rates for the 3435 Main units, but that information will be posted on MAC’s Kansas City website when available.

This story was originally published November 23, 2016 at 11:31 AM with the headline "Main Street apartment building will be unlike any other in Kansas City."