Cordish plans $70M in downtown Kansas City rental apartment projects

I know that this doesn’t deal with an indoor sport, but since the P&L District is so identifiable with the Sprint Center I felt it is relevant.
The Cordish Co. plans a pair of residential projects in the Kansas City Power & Light District that represents a $70 million investment.
A new high-rise building at Walnut and 13th streets, just east of Cosentino’s Market, would have 250 units in a long-awaited ground-up residential construction project.
Many of Downtown’s residential projects have been fix-ups to existing, typically historic buildings.
And that’s the second component of Cordish’s plans in the downtown district.
A renovation to the Midland office building, west of Cosentino’s, would yield 68 additional residential units.
Both projects would offer market-rate rental units.
Nick Benjamin, executive director of the Power & Light District, said the Midland renovation is expected to end in late 2013 or early 2014. Construction of the high-rise at Walnut and 13th will take 24 months.
The Kansas City Council will take up a development agreement, probably within two weeks, to subsidize the project with $8 million in cash from a recent bond issuance.
The Kansas City Business Journal reported in April that Kansas City had passed a $63.5 million bond issuance with little public discussion, which included an earmark for as much as $10 million for a “downtown residential project account,” most of which was to finance a contractual obligation with Cordish-affiliate Kansas City Live LLC.
The development agreement between Kansas City and Cordish would include a 25-year, 50 percent property tax abatement.
That’s lower than the standard Planned Industrial Expansion Authority tax abatement, which normally goes for 10 years at 100 percent abatement and then 15 years at 50 percent abatement.
The residential development was part of the original proposal for the Power & Light District. The 2004 master development agreement called for as many as 350 residential units.
But the protracted redevelopment of the Power & Light District portion of Downtown and its opening of retail, restaurant and entertainment locations at the onset of the recession shelved further plans for new residential construction.
The inclusion of a residential component to downtown redevelopment was driven by an oft-cited rationale: The dearth of people living in Downtown bears some responsibility for the slow redevelopment and less-than-projected revenue at the Power & Light District.
City officials have said the city needs 35,000 residents living in Downtown, about double the number living there now.