A KCK neighborhood with history and a view: Will 8-story high-rise change all that?
For the last few weeks, Jerri Moulder has been walking around the Strawberry Hill and Russian Hill neighborhoods of Kansas City, Kansas, with a makeshift sandwich board hung over her shoulders. It says “No Highrises On Our Hills” on the front and the same thing in Spanish on the back, “No Rascacielos En Nuestras Colinas”.
“I do 10,000 steps a day,” Moulder said this week, flanked around her kitchen table by about 10 members of a new neighborhood group called ClearView Coalition. “I carry our flyers with me, and people stop and I tell them about our cause. I bet I’ve talked to 100 people so far.”
The group had gathered to prepare for a consequential vote by the commissioners of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas. Sunflower Development Group, a local firm, is looking to build an eight-story luxury apartment complex on 1.09 acres near the end of Moulder’s block, at the corner of Sixth Street and Central Avenue. Sunflower needs a rezoning of the property and an amendment to the city’s master plan. The UG commission was set to vote on the items at its Thursday night meeting.
These fights — citizens vs. corporations, homeowners vs. high-rises — are familiar in the Crossroads, midtown Kansas City, and the desirably quaint downtowns of certain Johnson County municipalities. But they’re relatively new to this slice of the metro, where the Old World population of Eastern European immigrants has in recent decades given way to Hispanic families and, lately, an artistic community priced out of other parts of town.
The developers are never too far behind. Residents of Strawberry Hill and Russian Hill, located on the periphery of downtown Kansas City, Kansas, enjoy views of the Kansas City skyline and a quick five-minute drive to the Crossroads. In this urbanizing era, the neighborhoods are simply too valuable for real estate interests to ignore.
The members of the ClearView Coalition say they harbor no illusions that their diverse, idyllic community will avoid intrusion.
“I think all of us would call ourselves urbanists,” said Karrin Huhmann, who lives nearby on Sixth Street. “We live in an urban area and agree that the city needs more density. We don’t expect super easy parking. We’re not NIMBYs. We just don’t think this project makes any sense for this neighborhood.”
‘It’s the Wild West over here’
505 Central, as Sunflower’s $41 million project is currently known, originally called for 142 market-rate apartments spread out across the top six floors. The bottom two floors would contain a parking garage for residents.
Parking in the neighborhood is already difficult, members of the ClearView Coalition noted. The streets are narrow and there are no alleys. Street spaces can be hard to come by in the evening. Sunflower had applied for a variance to provide fewer parking spaces than code requires. Concerned that this would worsen the parking difficulties, the coalition opposed the variance.
They won. As a result, Mark Moberly, director of development for Sunflower, told The Star on Tuesday that they’ve trimmed the number of apartments down to “between 130 and 135.”
“We heard the neighbors loud and clear and have reduced the size of the project,” Moberly said.
The height hasn’t changed, though, and that’s the other main issue the coalition has with 505 Central. In an area where many homes don’t exceed one story, a boxy, eight-story tower is viewed by members as excessive and out of sync with the neighborhood’s character.
It’s also out of sync with the city’s master plan, the ink of which hasn’t had much time to dry since its adoption in late 2020. That plan designates the site of the project as “urban density,” which includes single-family homes as well as churches, schools and other institutions.
In March, Sunflower sought from the UG’s planning commission an amendment to the master plan that would change the site to “high density residential,” which would allow the tower to go up.
Moberly told The Star that the building’s eight stories are somewhat deceiving, owing to the fact that the property is being built into the base of the hill.
“You have to consider the elevation change,” Moberly said. “It’s starting at the very bottom of the hill, and the hill is pretty steep. It’s not going to tower over all these single-family homes. It will actually align pretty nicely with the homes at the top of the hill.”
The planning commission, which makes recommendations to the full commission, voted in favor of the amendment.
“The UG spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, years of work, all these discussions about inclusion and diversity and the history of these neighborhoods,” Huhmann said, “and the second somebody comes in waving a bunch of money at us, they throw it out the window.”
“We don’t really have the policies in place over here like they do in Kansas City, where developers have to set aside 20% of the units for affordable housing,” said Anna Cole, another member of the group. “It’s the Wild West over here for developers, but the one safeguard we have is the master plan. Or, that’s what we thought.”
The Central Avenue Better Association, which works with neighborhood and business groups across a large portion of eastern Wyandotte County, also opposes the project. Executive Director Edgar Galicia told The Star that he’d support such a project if it were just a few blocks west, at the intersection of Seventh Street and Central Avenue — an empty site the master plan identified as ideal for a tower like this one.
“There are areas in the community that are ready to be developed into these high-rises, that could be luxury apartments, that could hold increasing density,” Galicia said. “But there are also areas that should be respected for their historic value and for the longtime residents there. The hills — Russian and Strawberry — aren’t going to be the same peaceful family communities moving forward. They will be more commercial. The amount of activity downtown Kansas City, Missouri, is generating is only going to continue to grow. It’s coming over here no matter what.”
But, Galicia said, “That doesn’t mean we have to allow developers to come in and destroy the fabric of the area — to take away homeowners’ views and create all this unnecessary traffic and parking issues. We made the master plan for a reason. People agreed on it. And now our government is not even willing to follow it after they spent all this time and money creating it. If we let this project change the rules, who else gets to change the rules?”
‘Huge demand’
Unified Government staff tends to hold a less sacred view of the master plan.
“It’s not the specific site we identified in the master plan, but it’s a block away from one (at Seventh and Central), and it certainly will be a ‘catalytic development’ in the corridor,” planning director Gunnar Hand said, borrowing a phrase from the master plan. “The process is designed to consider all projects moving forward.”
Katherine Carttar, the UG’s economic development director, said her office supports Sunflower’s proposal and isn’t troubled by the deviation from the master plan. She said she’d like to see high-rises go up at 505 Central as well as at the Seventh and Central site.
“We are in huge need of additional housing,” Carttar said. “There’s a lot of pressure around downtown for additional housing — particularly market-rate, but really the whole spectrum. There is huge demand to live in or near the downtown area right now.”
She cited the recently opened Boulevard Lofts, a mixed-income housing development at Eighth Street and Washington Boulevard. “They had to stop the waiting list because there were over 100 people on it,” Carttar said. “People want to live in these more walkable areas with more amenities. And if you can find a house in Strawberry Hill, great, but most of those homes sell before they even officially go on the market. We need more than that.”
Would Carttar support 505 Central if it was scaled down to just four stories, as the ClearView Coalition has proposed?
“I would say the UG is interested in having a wide spectrum of quality residential for our residents,” she said.
For Moberly with Sunflower, that one’s an easy nope.
“It wouldn’t work financially,” he said. “Density is what’s required to spread the fixed cost over a number of units. When you get down to 100 units on this, it’s no longer a financially viable project.”
Moberly also confirmed that, if approved, 505 Central would seek economic incentives to defray the costs of the parking garage. But, he said, Sunflower will not be asking for a 100% tax abatement, meaning “the property will produce a level of taxes substantially more than it does today, even under the incentives we’re looking for.” He added that the firm will contribute “no less than $250,000” for upgrades in the area in the form of traffic lights, pedestrian improvements, bike access and the like. “We’re committed to help pay for improvements to that intersection,” Moberly said.
Commissioner Brian McKiernan, in whose district the project site sits, did not respond to a request for comment. The ClearView Coalition said they’ve had trouble getting commissioners to hear their concerns.
“It feels like we’re hitting a brick wall,” said Rachel McMeachin, who lives in and teaches aerial arts in the onion-domed former church from which Russian Hill gets its name. “We keep hearing that the developers have been taking meetings with commissioners. Meanwhile, I’m overextending myself trying to have a conversation with them, making calls and sending email after email. At a certain point it’s like, how am I supposed to get an actual response from my commissioner?”
The group also feels slighted by various procedural issues. When the planning commission recommended the rezoning and master plan amendment, the ClearView Coalition organized a protest petition, which would have raised the threshold for the project’s approval from a simple majority on the commission to a supermajority. Moulton said they gathered the necessary signatures and turned the petition in with time to spare. But the petition was ultimately not certified, Hand confirmed, because certain names didn’t exactly match the names on the deeds of the homes.
Galicia said Sunflower has been less than forthright along the way.
“One of the partners on this project emailed me, saying he had bought the property and that he’d heard I do work in the community and he’s willing to help and volunteer and partner in whatever way he can,” Galicia said. “I said, perfect. We have these events, these programs, all these activities. I never got a response, no volunteers, no conversation, and no mention of this project until they, by requirement, had to notify us of their proposal.”
Moberly denied that, noting that he’d met with the Strawberry Hill Neighborhood Association three times already and as of Tuesday was still working with that group on a commitment letter. “We have sat down with anyone and everyone that wants to meet with us,” Moberly said.
He added that the project has the support of several local businesses, including the neighborhood bar Chicago’s, which is across the street from the proposed site, and Slap’s BBQ, which is a block west. Both expressed support in a recent planning meeting.
“They’ve been hoping for something like this to come along for decades,” Moberly said. “This will increase their customer base. We’ve heard from many homeowners too. We would not have undertaken this if we didn’t think there was huge demand for it in this area.”
Not all the businesses on Central Avenue support it, though. “I wouldn’t want to cover up the sight line,” Jorge Ramos of Ramos Upholstery told The Star, “and our business is pretty booked up as it is.”
However the vote goes on Thursday — and Hand emphasized that many of the project’s details have yet to be finalized, even if the rezoning and master plan amendment are approved — the fight has brought Moulder and her neighbors closer together.
“That’s the one good thing that’s come of all this, getting to know each other so much better,” Moulder said, passing out Boulevard Pale Ales to the group on Monday night. “We’ve put our heart and soul into this. We’ve built something here with this group.”
Behind her, through a large kitchen window, the lights of the Kansas City skyline burned bright. The view was clear. For now.
This story was originally published April 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
