Kicking off CREW Kansas City’s 2024 quarterly luncheon series last week, panelists Jonathan Arnold, president and CEO of or with Arnold Development Group; Michael Berenbom, managing partner of or with Lane4 Property Group; Camille Christie, VP of development and leasing with West Star Development; and founder and CEO of or with LocalCode Kansas City (LCKC) shared their visions for transforming the metro area’s commercial real estate landscape through their current projects. Katie Martinovic, VP and principal landscape architect with NSPJ Architects, moderated.
Photo (L to R)): Aija Morris, Jonathan Arnold, Michael Berenbom & Camille Christie. Photo credit: Marcia Charney | MWM KC.
Located at the southeast corner of Prairie Star Parkway and Ridgeview Road in Lenexa, Kan., Vista Village is a mixed-use project under development by West Star Development. The 47-acre development will include retail, dining, office and residential components.
According to Christie, the project is tailored to the suburban lifestyle and community in which it sits, and the city of Lenexa assisted with creating connectivity. With an eye toward enhancing walkability, Christie said the development will feature 10-foot sidewalks, and health and wellness will be a focus of the project.
“A big advantage of our development is the health and fitness and wellness that we’re able to present with the 27 mile long Mill Creek Streamway Park/Gary L. Haller Trail. It’s directly across from our development... It’s a really exciting development, and the area is finally ready,” she said.
In Lee’s Summit, Mo., Lane4 is the master developer for the city’s Downtown Market Plaza project, a public/private mixed-use development. The public component of the project will include a farmer’s market and event space. The ceremonial groundbreaking occurred in October 2023.
The City of Lee’s Summit acquired the project’s land and issued requests for proposals in 2021.
“They had a real sense of what they wanted,” Berenbom said.
According to Berenbom, public/private partnerships work best when all parties have the same goal.
“It’s really, really hard to get a city to support a project. They’re not there to subsidize and incentivize a project that they’re not interested in. The most successful projects I think are usually when the private and public interests are aligned,” said Berenbom.
Arnold, who describes himself as a recovering architect, said he got frustrated seeing projects get value-engineered to the point where they looked like prisons and did not last very long.
“[W]e began to notice probably about 2010 that most of the projects built in that time frame in Kansas City weren’t lasting more than five years before they resulted in lawsuits. . . . So we started looking and saying is there a better way to build,” said Arnold.
Arnold said his search led him to discover Passive House, a set of energy-efficient building standards adopted by the Europeans and designed to last hundreds of years.
“The simplest way to describe Passive House is instead of building really thin walls with huge air conditioners that run all the time, the Europeans figured out how to build thick walls. Put a sweater around the whole building. And then you have just tiny air conditioners and heaters that almost never need to run. They have all these other benefits like a really thermally comfortable way to sit by the windows and not be cold and you don’t hear your neighbors, which is the biggest complaint in multifamily,” Arnold said.
By using the Passive House method of building, operating costs are decreased by capturing the energy savings. In addition, Arnold said insurance premiums are 50 percent of premiums on stick build construction. As a result, the developer can access lower cost capital.
Arnold developed the Second + Delaware Apartments in the River Market, a 276-unit project which opened in 2020 at top of market rates. The project, for a short period of time, was the world’s largest Passive House and has been “wildly successful,” he said. According to Arnold, people don’t expect to pay less to live in a green building.
Arnold currently is working on an historic adaptive reuse to be built to net zero, a mixed-use project which will feature 389 residential units, 83 percent of which will be affordable.
Morris said the mission of LCKC is to help build wealth and well-being in low-income communities through local ownership of businesses and real estate, specifically on the east side of Kansas City, Mo.
LCKC’s first project is the redevelopment of Sanford B Ladd Elementary School located at 3640 Benton Blvd., one of 28 schools closed by Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS). While the majority of closed schools west of Troost Avenue were “snapped up,” many on the east side of Troost remain dilapidated.
Morris, a former KCPS board member, lives approximately four blocks from Ladd School, so this project is very personal to her.
“The Ladd School (site) has about 60,000 SF of historic redevelopment, and we’re putting in an additional 30,000 SF of mixed use,” Morris said.
LCKC is focused on revitalizing and rebuilding a historically excluded community, partnering with first responders, KCPS and teacher organizations to bring in professionals to the east side of Kansas City.
“We’re also looking at bringing in amenities that many people travel outside of the east side for, including, but not limited to, health services, mental health services, sports therapy... We’re also looking at tapping into the black beauty industry. Lastly, we’re just bringing in things for the children. I’m hoping that this will activate my community,” said Morris.
Morris said historically, it has not been profitable to develop on the east side due to lack of density and walkability. In addition, money is expensive.
According to Morris, LCKC has a unique ownership model. At the conclusion of the development and once the project stabilizes, which she estimates to be seven to 10 years, LCKC will sell the project back to the community so the community then owns it and reaps the benefits from all proceeds.
“We want to de-risk the project to make sure the community doesn’t incur any losses,” she said.
_______________________________________
FEATURE PHOTO CREDIT: MARCIA CHARNEY | MWM KC