Upscale apartment conversion proposed for midtown Kansas City
A plan to put penthouse apartments atop the MGE office building at 3420 Broadway speaks to the luxury label that real estate investor Joseph R. Kashani intends for a midtown residential project.
The California-based Kashani is backing plans to convert the seven-story office building, once occupied by Panhandle Eastern, to 101 apartment units, including eight two-story penthouses, starting in January. The MGE lease ends later this year.
“They will be nice quality, upscale units,” said Dennis Bradley, principal at B&A Architecture in Kansas City, which is designing the project.
Bradley said it will cost an estimated $14 million to $16 million to convert the building to residential use and to complete a tandem part of the project’s first phase, a two-story commercial building to be built next door on Broadway.
The new 16,000-square-foot structure is intended for offices, a restaurant and a coffee shop “with a sidewalk-cafe environment,” Bradley said.
According to the B&A Architecture plan, the project eventually calls for construction of a second phase, a pair of four- or five-story apartment buildings behind the MGE building on what now is a large parking lot. That phase, requiring the shutdown of a one-block stretch of Washington Street, would include a clubhouse, swimming pool and 54 units in each building.
A third phase of the development would construct 20 town homes facing Pennsylvania Avenue, just west of the new apartment buildings, according to the plan.
There’s no timeline yet for the second and third phases, Bradley said. But if the entire vision is realized over the next three or four years, the development could add about 500 residents to the block.
The Kansas City Council this week approved an amendment to the existing Westport Planning Area Plan to add the 3.5-acre block. The change makes the property eligible for mixed-use redevelopment and allows the developer to pursue property tax abatement through the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority.
According to the phase-one proposal, the 99,300-square-foot MGE building will be adapted to house about 12 apartment units per floor. The new rooftop construction is to include patio and garden space in addition to the penthouse units.
The building’s exterior facade is to be modified somewhat to include recessed balconies for the apartments, Bradley said.
This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Upscale apartment conversion proposed for midtown Kansas City."