Kansas City Council’s rare vote on fate of historic mansion causes joy and shock
The Kansas City City Council on Thursday took the nearly unprecedented move of going against the wishes of a home’s owners and placing their 110-year-old mansion on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places.
The 9-3 vote effectively saves what is known as the George B. Richards mansion from demolition for at least three years. Before this vote, only two properties in Kansas City had ever been placed on the city’s historic register without the owner’s permission: Union Station in 1986 and the 31st and Main streets historic district in 2022. Neither were residential properties.
Because the owner’s filed a petition against the designation, the measure required a three-quarter supermajority of nine votes to pass, and did so in the face of Mayor Quinton Lucas and two council members, Ryana Parks-Shaw and Melissa Robinson, voting no. Councilwoman Andrea Bough was not present.
“We’re very excited that we were successful in a very close vote,” said Laura Burkhalter, president of the Southmoreland Neighborhood Association, where the home, at 4526 Warwick Blvd., is located. Burkhalter said she thinks the City Council has sent a message: “It’s not just anything goes in terms of demolition.”
Steve Vawter, whose family has called the mansion home for 62 years, was all but speechless at the decision, uttering a single word, “disappointed,” in the hall outside the council chamber. Asked what the future holds, he said, “Good question. Don’t know.”
But his attorney, Leonard Rose, said, “They just did what has never been done before in Kansas City. They need to get ready to get sued. It’s unconstitutional. … They know not what they do.”
For five months, neighbors and owners have battled over the home’s fate. What neither side disputed is the mansion’s beauty.
The house was built in 1913 west of what is now the Nelson-Atkins Museum Art for George B. Richards, the wealthy owner of the Richards and Conover Hardware Co.
Designed by the Root & Siemens architectural firm, the 7,400-square-foot mansion is made of red brick, with towering white columns, ornamental plaster ceilings, stone fireplaces and a sweeping grand staircase. A separate carriage house sits out back.
Steve Vawter of Kansas City and Matthew Vawter of Boulder, Colorado, inherited the home from their mother, Susie Vawter, upon her death in 2020.
But from the Vawters’ perspective, the home is also a money pit, with heating, cooling, plumbing, electricity and other elements in need of such repair that they have received restoration estimates of between $1.4 million and $1.9 million. They hold that that has made the house effectively unsalable on the residential market.
The land, they insist, is worth more than the house on it. Their desire has been demolish the house and sell the resulting 0.9-acre empty lot for potential multi-story apartments or other commercial development, if the lot can be rezoned from residential to commercial. The Vawters originally asked $2.5 million.
In July, real estate broker Whitney Kerr Sr., who represents the Vawters’ interests in the property, said they entered into an agreement with local apartment developer George Birt to purchase the lot for $1.9 million, contingent on commercial rezoning and the home not being placed on the historic register.
“A $1.9 million contract is being interfered with by the city and by a homes association that has no skin in the game,” Kerr said. “It’s a terrible precedent for the city to do. By this action, the only thing we have left to do to protect the interest of our clients is to sue. And the measure of damages is $1.9 million. That’s not going to be a light matter.”
The Vawters and Kerr also argued that a high-rise development would not materially change the neighborhood. The mansion, in fact, is the only single-family house remaining on the block, which is bounded to the north by All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church and the Kansas City Art Institute and, to the west, the Simpson House event space inside a 1909 limestone mansion. To the south stand multiple apartment complexes including the 12-story Oak Hall. Other parcels adjacent to the Vawter home are zoned for commercial buildings as high as 100 feet.
Neighbors, meantime, along with the preservation group Historic Kansas City, have viewed the potential destruction of the house as a sin to architecture and history.
Ryan Hiser and his partner, David Tran — who have turned two of the neighborhood’s historic homes into the Truitt Hotel and the Aida Hotel KC — offered the Vawters $1.1 million for the house, with plans to spend up to $1 million more to renovate and convert it into another boutique hotel.
The Vawters considered the price too little by half.
So to stall potential demolition, the Southmoreland Neighborhood Association applied for the home to be placed on the city’s historic register — albeit without the Vawters’ approval or knowledge. The law allows a neighborhood association to make an application. It does not say an owner’s permission is necessary.
Neighbors argue that Kerr and the Vawters never seriously considered the residential market for the home. It has never been on the residential MLS, the multiple listing service, used by Realtors.
If not bought by a family, they suggest the house could be renovated for another use. Other grand homes in the area have been repurposed, including the home next door used as the Jannes Library & Learning Center, part of the Kansas City Art Institute, and the 1909 Simpson House event space.
Other homes have been turned into office space for the Nelson-Atkins.
The application process, alone, halted any changes to the exterior of a building for about six months.
In late August, the council’s Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the council place the home on the historic register. But earlier that month, the Kansas City Plan Commission voted 3-2 against, agreeing that the owners should have the right to dispose of their property as they see fit. Before that, in May, the Kansas City Historic Preservation Commission was on board with historic designation.
“We’re very, very happy,” said Margot Sims, on the Southmoreland Neighborhood Association’s cultural and preservation committee. “The only thing we’re worried about is that this is only for three years.”
Historic designation requires the owners to maintain the exterior of the home. They are not allowed to make any significant changes without city approval. The interior, however, is not similarly protected.
“They’re required to maintain it. If they were wise, they might look at advertising it more effectively on the (residential) market,’ Burkhalter said. “We think it would sell.”
This story was originally published September 28, 2023 at 6:12 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the architectural firm that designed the house at 4526 Warwick Blvd. The firm was Root & Siemens.
