urbanSTL

Very nice story of one man who really has made a difference in redevelopment:

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... nt-13.html

"In the early 1980s, Bob Frye and his brother bought a rundown, six-unit apartment building in Kansas City’s historic Union Hill neighborhood.

About the same time, Frye made redevelopment of the declining neighborhood the subject of his master’s thesis as a Kansas State University architecture student.

Then, in 1987, he took over development rights and made Union Hill’s resurrection his life’s work.

Nearly 30 years later, Frye is nearing the end of that gargantuan task. By the end of the year, he will complete his final two major projects in Union Hill: the 181-unit, five-building final phase of The Founders at Union Hill apartment development and 13 new single-family homes in the heart of the neighborhood — one of Kansas City’s oldest..."

I seem to recall one of the developers who got the Midtown resurgence started a few years back has a similar story with his work beginning as a thesis for UI.

In addition to working with Cordish on Two Light (the next residential tower for the Power & Light district), KC may see another modern tower too:




A 25 story modern, class A office building just north of the Sprint Center.

I don't like being envious of KC, but it's hard not to be. Our city leaders should be embarrassed. But they're probably not.

Might want to wait and see what actually gets built out. We've seen plenty of pretty renderings before.

It's easy for us to be envious of KC; they seem to have some good momentum going on right now. But let's not forget that there's a lot going on in STL, too. The whole Central Corridor is being transformed as we speak, and Clayton will soon see two or three new towers going up. If we can just get Downtown moving again, then we'll be looking pretty good.

I like KC, but I don't feel like it holds a candle to StL overall. KC reminds me of what StL was like twenty years ago, where there were some isolated pockets of interesting areas but otherwise mostly dead space. Present-day St. Louis has many more appealing urban neighborhoods.

^ I agree we have a greater number of interesting areas overall than KC and many of our peers, but when it comes to downtowns I think it is becoming clearer and clearer that while we are making some progress with ours, the pace of that growth is slipping behind others.... in some cases pretty dramatically.

^ I would describe what has happened in Downtown STL with the loft and apartment conversions over the past 15 years, as bonkers. I hope STL can finally complete/convert all of the rest of the existing building stock, so we can see more new construction. KC is doing well, but I think if you take the last even 5 years, we've outpaced them by a lot, with regards to new and rehabbed apartments. Anyone have any numbers to back that up? I'm just guesstimating. . .

^ To be honest I was really taken for a loop when the Downtown Partnership scaled back our projected population to 8,000 and only adding about 300 a year.... supposedly KC has reached 20,000 downtown but that is probably for a larger Greater Downtown area so it isn't always easy to compare.

I would say though that KC, like a lot of other cities, has really kicked things up into a higher gear the past few years while we've kind of just staid static and have a higher percentage of subsidized units.

Can you share the link to where you got the pictures?