Why the big dirt piles on Ward Parkway? A $7M mansion is coming to storied KC lot
For a self-described “shy, private person,” Anthony Drake almost couldn’t have picked a more conspicuous spot to build a $7 million modern Kansas City mansion.
His address to be: 6315 Ward Parkway, arguably one the city’s wealthiest single boulevards, and where, over the last three months, tens of thousands of passing motorists have been seeing towering piles of dirt rise on the 1.5-acre plot of land one block north of Meyer’s Circle.
Even the parcel — having sat vacant for the last 16 years — has a storied pedigree, having once been the locale of a 1926 English Georgian mansion that, for 50 of its final years, belonged to Annette and Richard Bloch, the “R” with brother Henry of H & R Block.
After Richard Bloch died in 2004, Annette Bloch sold the mansion in 2007. They had moved into the house in 1957. In 2006, the home with its 16 rooms and swimming pool, had been featured as the KC Symphony’s Designer Showhouse.
The new owners were a partnership then headed by neighbors Michael J. and Sonya Tutera. (In a completely unrelated tragedy, Michael Tutera, 47, would be murdered in 2010 inside his own Plaza-area home during a burglary.)
Contemplating building anew, the new owners of the Bloch house gutted its interior. But the partnership eventually failed to pay a bank note. The home fell into such neglect and desrepair that in 2009, it went into foreclosure. It was bought for $1.15 million by SolutionsBank that deemed that the property was worth more without the house than with it.
Infuriated historic preservationists sought to save the home and to get it listed on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places. But before that could happen, it was razed to the ground.
“I’m outraged, outraged, outraged,” Lucinda Rice-Petrie, the past president of the Historic Kansas City Foundation said at the time.
Since then, the parcel has remained an empty green expanse. Annette Bloch died in 2021.
Pool, elevator, $7.1 million
Drake, a software developer, bought the property in 2022. City records show that construction is estimated to cost $7,139,000. Designed by sixtwentyone architects of Kansas City, it will be modern and unlike any of its neighbors.
One rendering, posted on the firm’s Instagram page, says of the home, “A bold cantilever gestures to passers by, while a considered, curved stone wall provides privacy to the home’s occupants.”
The home, which Drake in a brief interview said should be finished in about two years, will be 9,720 square feet, have three stories, five bedrooms, a partially unfinished basement, an attached garage, with a wall surrounding the property for privacy. City documents also list an elevator. Drawings show a built-in pool and pool house.
“I bought it around Thanksgiving three years ago. It’s taken that long to get things moving,” Drake said this week of the property. He spoke standing outside his current home, also modern, north of Loose Park.
“Kind of always wanted to build a place,” he said, “but everything around here, obviously, there’s no lots. I kind of liked the area. And I didn’t want to buy something and tear it down.”
He called his decision, “kind of random.” He had thought about expanding his current home, but then he saw the empty land on Ward Parkway.
The front door and driveway, he said, will not be on Ward Parkway, but will instead face 63rd Street.
“I didn’t really want to get on and off of Ward Parkway. I kind of wanted privacy, too,” he said.
Drake’s current home sits near the the bottom of a hillside where the homes above him have a view down into his yard and into his pool.
“I kind of wanted privacy all around,” he said of the new home, “so a lot of the design really got into figuring out how to make that lot — at least when you view the house — as private as possible for me inside.”
The home’s most unique feature, he said, will be the cantilivered story jutting out over the privacy wall facing Ward Parkway.
Nothing will rise quickly.
“I mean it will be two to two and a half years,” he said of construction.
A man wanting privacy
Drake chose to be reticent about himself. He shared that he was raised in Wyandotte County, attended high school at Sumner Academy of Arts and Sciences and graduated in 1994. He attended Johnson County Community College and then attended and graduated Kansas State University in 2000 with a degree in computer science, the school confirmed.
Drake declined to talk about his current work, only to say that he was previously in software engineering and formerly owned an internet-based company.
“I’m a shy, private person,” he said. “I try to keep a low-profile.”
Which may be hard to do given the prominence of his future home.
What neighbors say
Neighbors have been watching.
“The lot’s been empty for quite a while, so it’s nice to see something happen,” said Randy Bredar, a neighbor west along 63rd Street who has lived in his home for 32 years. He recalled being inside the former Bloch mansion.
“It was in pretty bad shape in the last few year before they tore it down. It had seen better days,” Bredar said. He’d also seen rendering of the new home now under construction.
“It’s nice to see something going on over there. I’m anxious to see what’s built,” he said.
Neighbor Spencer Brown, directly north across 63rd Street, hadn’t seen any renderings. He’s lived in the neighborhood since 1983.
“I’ve have been led to believe that it’s kind of a more modern fashion than the houses around it,” he said. “I don’t know who owns it. All that I know is that they’re making a big hole. There’s been a lot of dirt piled up and hauled out.
“I hope it’s nice. It doesn’t bother me if it’s modern architecture in the neighborhood. Maybe that’s good. It’s better than having a vacant lot, I guess. It was vacant for a long, long time.
“I guess I’m glad somebody’s building something. I assume, whatever it is, it’s going to be expensive. I hope it’s in good taste.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 5:40 AM.
