On Monday, PortKC President Jon Stephens held an informational presentation for a proposal that’s been a long-time coming at 16th and Broadway.

Development History

The site, previously home to a Denny’s and the Quixotic night club, is perched on top of a hill on the Crossroad’s westside. In particular, just west of the Kauffman Center and immediately southeast of the 670/35 interchange. It’s a site that’s been eyed for development for years.

In the 2010s, Copaken-Brooks planned an office and residential development on the site. In 2019, local developer Dave Mashburn introduced a 3 tower, $100 Million project with a 220-room hotel and 220 apartments. Eventually, that plan lost one of it’s residential towers for a smaller office building. Later on, Mashburn quietly had the plans revised to feature a taller mixed-use tower.

In 2023, applications began being filed with the FAA for preliminary approval to allow a building up to 40-stories and 500ft on the site at 1650 Broadway. By this time, a joint venture of EPC Real Estate and GDC Financial acquired the land. The intent, at the time, was for a two-tower development with apartments and a hotel making up the taller of the two towers and the shorter being an office building. Conceptual renderings were shared by Kevin Collison on his CityScene KC blog. Throughout 2024 and 2025, news about the FAA throwing curveballs into the approval of the building’s proposed height came and went with the FAA ultimately approving buildings of up to 500ft on this site. The developers would later admit that the office component was being shrunk and that three towers might rise here instead of two.

Which now brings us to this week.

The New Proposal

With the PortKC presentation, we got to see our first look at the first formal development proposal for this site in several years. EPC and GRC brought in VeLa Development, a firm founded by former Cordish-executive Nick Benjamin a number of years ago. VeLa currently has two projects under construction in Phoenix and Nashville with others planned in Colorado Springs, Tampa, Raleigh, and Charlotte. VeLa’s based in the Crossroads.

The development team brought in Hoefer Welker to lead design (the same firm is working on the 800 Grand project).

The development is planned to be split into 3 phases with the first phase consisting of a 33-story apartment tower with 392 apartments, 481 parking spaces and commercial space. The building’s preliminary name is “Encore”.

Encore’s planned site is at the northern end of the entire development zone meaning that it’ll rise immediately next to the 670/35 interchange and replace the Quixotic night club building. An aerial rendering shows a potential future hotel just south of Encore which, per an overview presented at the PortKC meeting, could be “phase 2”. Phase 3 isn’t shown and is likely either going to be additional apartments or office space depending on demand for either usage when the time comes to consider such a proposal.

The 392 apartments are split up between standard apartments, duplex units (which might mean bi-level) and penthouse units. 143 units will be studios, 118 will be one-bedrooms, 134 will be two-bedrooms, and 6 will be three-bedrooms. Only a handful of units will have a direct view of the Downtown skyline while the others will have views of Kauffman Center and the Crossroads, the Westside or Quality Hill and the West Bottoms.

Because of the hill I mentioned earlier, the building will be extremely prominent on the skyline when viewed from almost any direction. From the West and East, the building will appear slender. From the north and south, wide. The lack of comparatively tall buildings nearby means this 372ft tall building will be a landmark in its own right.

The cost of the entire first phase is estimated at $215 Million.

The development team will seek incentives through PortKC and are going to commit $2 Million to the City’s affordable housing trust fund in exchange for those incentives. Per the preliminary project schedule, PortKC will consider the incentive ask at their February meeting and, possibly, vote to approve the incentives this spring with the development possibility bringing ground at the end of this year. Construction could be completed in 2029.

A Debate About Incentives

As always, its fair to expect a spirited debate surrounding incentives for this project.

PortKC states that the properties, as they exist today, generate only about $47,500 per year in property taxes and about $1.6 Million over 20 years. Contrast that with the expected 20-year incentive timeframe from PortKC, they estimate that about $20.3 Million in property taxes will be generated over a 20-year span from this project. A gain of $18.7 Million over the current conditions. That leaves out additional tax revenue generated from increased sales and earnings taxes that’ll come from residents shopping, dining, being entertained and working/living in the City limits.

This is new money being injected into the City’s coffers over a 20-year span when, at that point, the incentives will expire and the property will be generating whatever the property tax is at that time. Contrary to popular belief, and is the case with all projects that receive a tax abatement, this isn’t a check that being written by the City and handed to developers. It’s an abatement of a certain percentage of the new taxes that would be generated after completion of the improvements to the property. Such a structure helps close the gap between construction costs and returns on investment. Without closing that gap, nothing would be built as investors and banks would be less willing to dish out money to complete financing, and the law of supply and demand would naturally increase rents across the entirety of the local market.

A High-Rise Development Frenzy

Downtown KC is presently home to multiple new residential high-rise proposals by multiple players. Cordish is actively working through the process on Four Light (with 5 Light planned in addition to buildings south of 670). The BR Companies and UMusic have their owned planned apartment and hotel tower at 800 Grand, which will be connected to the Scarritt Building. At 9th and Central, Arnold Development Group presented pans for a 27-story apartment tower on a present-day surface parking lot as part of his overall “9th and Central” developments in that area of Downtown. At 10th and Central, a 19-story building is planned with few details available at this time. While short relative to these other buildings, Copaken-Brooks is actively constructing the 16-story “Refinery” apartment building in the Crossroads,

Of these, only 10th and Central is a commercial building. The others are residential. When you consider that the bunch will add over 1700 new residential units to Downtown, if they’re all constructed, it might be smart to ask about demand for such products. Rent in these buildings is expensive, no doubt. The Light Towers have proven that they can be filled up. But those three buildings have been constructed over the past decade. All the buildings I mentioned above could hypothetically rise simultaneously or in somewhat rapid succession.

While I greatly appreciate these investments, and the desire to make the skyline evolve, I hold some skepticism that all these can work successfully. I’ll add that it’s great that Downtown’s reached the point where new construction proposals are becoming more common place and I hope the trend continues, just steadily.

The gallery below includes renderings of the Copaken, Mashburn and previous EPC visions for this site.