Crews begin to tear down UMKC’s troubled student housing — 12 years after it opened
Work crews are taking the first steps to tear down the shuttered Oak Place Apartments at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, a 12-year-old building riddled with leaky pipes, sagging floors and mold.
The university determined in February that the student residence at 5050 Oak St. was beyond repair. On Monday crews began preparing the site for demolition. The southbound lane of Oak Street between Volker Boulevard and 51st Street will be blocked off on Wednesday and remain closed through Aug. 14. Traffic will detour to Brookside Boulevard.
Crews will use a demolition claw to take down the building in about three weeks. They’ll start with the building’s north wing. The south wing is scheduled for mid-July. The parking garage will stay, “but will likely remain closed and be screened with landscaping on its north and south sides,” university officials said in a release Tuesday. “Trees in place along Oak Street and the Trolley Track Trail will be preserved.”
University officials said the demolition will be done by the fall semester.
Oak Place was built in 2008 by a private developer through a public-private partnership with the university. In 2012, UMKC paid $40.8 million for the building, which included one, two- and four-bedroom apartments. Then in 2018, the university shut down the apartments after a series of student complaints of major leaks from pipes, sagging floors and mold problems.
That March, University of Missouri curators filed a lawsuit against Gould Evans Associates, JE Dunn Construction and other companies, claiming they were “reckless” in the way they designed and constructed the building.
The university has reached a settlement with insurance carriers, but other litigation is continuing. Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. will manage the demolition.
