This KC-area senior village plans big redevelopment with many new homes, towers
John Knox Village has announced plans for a $220 million redevelopment of its senior living campus in Lee’s Summit, to include a swath of new residences and a pair of towers projected to be among the tallest structures in town.
Three new housing developments the village is working toward would be built on its 200-acre campus near the Highway 50-Chipman Road interchange. The community has about 1,200 residents and a range of living spaces, including freestanding homes and apartments. The village also has assisted living and skilled nursing spaces.
Two recent expansions at the campus have been “incredibly successful,” and the village sees a growing demand both locally and nationally for more senior housing, said Anthony Columbatto, president and CEO of John Knox Village. The village said the number of households in its primary market area that it sees as potential future residents more than doubled between 2014 and 2022.
“We need to make sure that we’re here to meet that growing demand,” Columbatto said.
The redevelopment will include an expansion of the community’s existing Meadows apartment complex with a new wing that will have 47 residences. Construction is expected to begin this summer and wrap up in fall 2027.
The village has also proposed plans for what it’s calling the Country Club Estates, six new, three-story, “hybrid home”-style buildings with 15 residences per building. Construction on the first of those buildings is also expected to begin this summer.
“It’s congregate housing, but on a much smaller scale,” Columbatto said. “You will have more of a true neighborhood feel. We have hallways in our congregate housing that are 50 to 100 feet long, this is really more of a 20-foot hallway, only five units per floor. It’s going to be a much more intimate setting, with larger units than what we have really anywhere else on campus right now.”
Plans are still being finalized for the village’s large Country Club Towers project, but currently, village leadership is planning for them to rise eight stories and have more than 100 total living units. The towers would be linked by a large common area and have a lakefront boardwalk, new dining space and fitness and wellness areas.
Columbatto said the village hopes to start construction on the towers at the end of 2027, and begin to welcome residents there at the end of 2029 and in early 2030.
Maria Timberlake, the village’s vice president of senior living, said the village knows from focus groups and feedback from clients that residents are looking for features like bigger living spaces, bigger kitchens and bigger closets, even as they downsize.
“The redevelopment’s important to meet the needs of the market,” she said. “Today’s 70- and 80-year-olds are not what they were 40, 50 years ago. They want and need different things, and they have the ability to pay for that.”
The village is demolishing homes to make way for the redevelopment and will relocate residents elsewhere on campus, Timberlake said.
“Our intention is to take really good care of those folks,” she said.
The village also recently opened a new recreation center and has plans for a new grand entrance off Pryor Road, as well as a redevelopment of a facility that houses its emergency medical services program.
The remodeled EMS facility will have three ambulance bays and training facilities and sleeping quarters for staff to support what village leadership believes to be the only on-site ambulance service for a senior living community in the country.
