Luxury townhomes to take place of Disney family’s old church a block from KC Streetcar

New townhomes will rise where a historic church once stood in Hanover Place.

Construction is moving ahead on the future Westminster Reserve townhomes, off Walnut Street and East 36th Street, which will add eight luxury homes on what became a vacant lot after the Westminster Congregational Church was torn down in 2021.

The Westminster Church, which was built in 1904, was on the National Historic Registry of Places, but the gothic stone building fell into disrepair over the years and was demolished after efforts to restore the structure proved too costly, and the sanctuary’s ceiling fatally collapsed. Famously, the Disney family were congregants there in the early 1900s.

But the property will no longer remain empty as developers 36W Partners remake the lot into townhomes with an architectural style meant to blend into the surrounding neighborhood, which features older historic homes, as new developments continue to spring up in the area and a soon-to-be streetcar expansion one block away. The developers also emphasize the close proximity to local businesses in the neighborhood.

“From the design standpoint, there was so much thought of trying to have this blend into Hyde Park seamlessly,” said Miles Rost, realtor with The Rost Group, which is involved with the project. “It looks like it’s always been there, even though it’s brand new.”

The Westminster Reserve townhomes will start in the $700,000 range and include three levels and a two-car garage in varying floor plans. The first phase of the project, a two-unit building, is under construction and expected to be ready in early 2025. The remaining six-unit building could be done by the end of 2025.

The old Westminster church stood for over a century and served a congregation that included Walt Disney, who liked to sit in the balcony as a child and admired how the building looked like a castle. His nephew Charles would sit in the sanctuary and gaze at the natural light streaming through the stained glass windows, which reminded him of heaven.

Toward the end, the church was owned by Sam Unruh of Unruh Furniture, which moved into the building in 2016. But fixing the church’s structural issues proved too pricey for the small business, including upwards of half a million dollars just to stabilize and waterproof the walls and roof.

A crack in the truss holding up the ceiling emerged in 2020, and the ceiling collapsed in 2021 despite Unruh’s efforts. The city determined that the collapsed building was a danger to the public, and the church was demolished in 2021.