Is Kansas City’s ‘Katz on Main’ project ever going to be finished? Some good and bad news
Five years have passed since Lux Living of St. Louis laid out a plan to take the facade of Kansas City’s historic Katz Drug Store — built in 1934 at Main Street and Westport Road to be the largest drug store in the world — and turn it into the entrance of a modern, $37.6 million luxury apartment complex.
The good news, says an attorney for the company, is that the six-story complex, with its 192 units, has begun to lease apartments. And Lux — embroiled in controversy after three of its top executives were in September indicted on fraud charges related to a St. Louis project — is back to paying its contractors after being hit with multiple court actions.
“That’s moving along. Phase 1 is done and we’re starting to rent,” Ira Berkowitz who represents Lux’s contractor, Big Sur Construction and related business, Shasta III, LLC.
He did not say when the apartments might begin being occupied.
The bad news: The planned 20,000-square foot entrance to the project, from the old Katz Drug store, remains a hollow shell, open to the air, and with no roof.
‘A lot of money’
Structural steel continues to lie stacked on Westport Road at the construction site. That is because Lux has yet to pay $395,000 on about $1 million of steel it ordered to be fabricated from Raytown-based Contract Services Corporation of America.
“I’m just very stressed and psychologically tired from them,” Rae Ann DeVargas, the steel company’s co-owner, said Thursday. Multiple tons of steel that the company fabricated to create the Katz roof and the decking designed to support the roof and proposed swimming pool remains on Contract Service’s corporate property.
“It’s still back here,” said DeVargas, who filed a mechanic’s lien again the project in October.
The latest trouble for Lux arrived this month, when the Kansas City Brick Company, 2001 S. 45th St., sued Lux’s contractor in Jackson County Circuit Court for breach of contract. The suit claimed that the builder owed Kansas City Brick $74,496.65 in materials on the Katz project. Kansas City Brick filed its mechanics lien in November.
Lux Living and Big Sur are also the companies building a second apartment project, Wonderland Apartments, a 215-unit complex still under construction at 1923 Broadway Blvd.
Kansas City Brick in a suit said it is owed $8,200 on the project.
The company has yet to be paid, but Berkowitz on Thursday said, “We have settled with KC Brick. We have the paperwork signed.”
Kurt Brack of Brown & Reprecht, who represents Kansas City Brick, said “There has been a written settlement agreement exchanged. We’re waiting on payment,” he said. “Fingers crossed. We think we’re going to get paid, but that’s where it’s at.”
Katz on Main originally was supposed to be completed in 2024.
“KC Bricks is a small family-owned company,” Brack said. “That’s a lot of money to them. . . .We’d like to sell them more brick, but we’d like to get paid for what we’ve already provided.”
Liens filed
At least two other companies, in Jackson County Court records, still claim they are owed money.
In September, All American Cleaning Co. and All American Construction Contractor, 5612 N. Amoret Ave., filed initial paperwork claiming they are owed approximately $92,000 for work done on Wonderland.
In December, Select Powder Coating, 55 Mel Goers Drive, Union, Missouri, filed a mechanic’s lien saying it continues to be owed $58,000 on Katz on Main.
Over the last year, both Katz and Wonderland projects have been the subject of multiple liens from multiple companies. Most liens have subsequently been settled.
Among the cases:
▪ In July, The Milford Supply Co. a plumbing business in Clayton, Missouri, filed a lien saying it was owed $165,000 in supplies for the Wonderland project. Jackson County Court records show that amount was paid in October.
▪ In August, Blue Chip Roofing & Waterproofing of Grandview claimed it was owed an overdue amount of $253,000 on $432,000 worth of work it had done on Wonderland. The lien was settled a month later.
▪ In October, Epic Concrete Construction, 12600 E. 99th St., filed a lien for work on Katz for just short of $648,000. It released the lien by the end of the month.
Federal charges
On Sept. 20, Lux Living’s money issues were overshadowed by a larger legal issue when, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri charged the company’s two principals, Sidarth “Sid” Chakraverty and Victor Alsont, along with accountant Shijing “Poppy” Ca, with one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 11 counts of wire fraud.
The charges center on two other luxury apartment complex projects in St. Louis, one known as the Chelsea Project and, the other, the SoHo Project.
The U.S. Attorney for Eastern District of Missouri holds that Chakraverty, Alston and Cao conspired to defraud the the City of St. Louis’s minority-owned business enterprise (MBE) program and its women-owned business enterprise (WBE) program to gain millions of dollars worth of city sales tax and property tax incentives.
Formerly owned by the Redeemer Fellowship church, the old Katz Drug Store site was put under contract for development by Lux Living in 2020.
In 2021, the Kansas City City Council approved a tax incentive package for the project, abating 75% of its property tax bill for 10 years and then 37.5% for 15 more.
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 1:04 PM.
