30-story apartment tower would rank among tallest additions to downtown KC in years

A developer whose projects have faced criticism on both sides of Missouri has proposed a new high-rise apartment and hotel development in downtown Kansas City.

Lux Living recently filed plans to build a 30-story apartment building with 300 units and a 200-room hotel at the northeast corner of the intersection of Wyandotte and W. 14th streets.

The height would rival most buildings in the city center and, if completed, the tower would rank among the tallest buildings to join the Kansas City skyline in decades.

The developer has a history of unfavorable press coverage surrounding tenant complaints, lawsuits and use of incentives in St. Louis. And its track record stoked controversy in Kansas City — and led to the unusual denial of incentives for a Lux Living project near Berkley Riverfront.

Last May, the Port Authority of Kansas City board denied an incentive request for a proposal to build 250 new apartments at Berkley Riverfront. That decision came after opposition from KC Tenants and officials with Kansas City Public Schools.

Lux Living later sought to move forward on the $55 million project without incentives and won plan approval from the City Plan Commission in September.

“The developer still holds the option to purchase the site and develop it without incentives, and we anticipate that it will do so,” said Port KC spokeswoman Meredith Hoenes.

It’s unclear whether Lux Living will seek economic development incentives for the downtown project. Company officials did not respond to questions from The Star, but issued a statement acknowledging the proposal in Kansas City.

“We hope to partner with the local community to activate this corner of the convention district. In the meantime, our team has submitted a preliminary design package to the city,” the statement read.

Hoenes said the port authority is not involved in Lux Living’s downtown project. Likewise, the company has not applied for incentives through the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City. Officials with the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, which has come under scrutiny for its recent foray into economic development incentives, did not respond to The Star’s inquiry about the Lux Living proposal.

City records indicate the downtown tower proposal will be reviewed by a city development committee later this month before the City Plan Commission and the City Council consider the project in April.

A representative of the Downtown Neighborhood Association said that organization won’t comment on the proposal until it has met with the developer.

If completed as planned, the project would be one of the most significant developments downtown in recent years.

The proposal includes two parcels separated by a 13-foot wide alley that connects Wyandotte Street to Baltimore Avenue. One of the sites is currently a surface parking lot, while the other is a fenced-in vacant lot.

On the northern parcel, Lux Living plans to build a 10-story hotel with an underground parking garage and a rooftop pool, according to documents filed with the city. The southern parcel would house the apartment tower, which will include 300 units and more than 450 parking spaces.

If completed, it will reach higher than Kansas City Hall and tower over the neighboring Crowne Plaza hotel and 1400 Baltimore building, which was built as a new office for Overland Park’s Waddell & Reed before that firm was acquired.

At 382 feet, the proposed tower would nearly reach the height of the historic Kansas City Power & Light building. In fact, renderings show Lux Living’s tower would nearly eclipse the view of that 1931-era structure from the west.

Still, the structure won’t come close to the tallest buildings in the city like One Kansas City Place, Town Pavilion and the Sheraton hotel at Crown Center.

In opposing Lux Living’s riverfront proposal last year, members of KC Tenants pointed to the firm’s troubled history in St. Louis.

They highlighted coverage in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch regarding complaints from Lux Living tenants who moved into expensive new apartments to find they weren’t yet completed.

Tenants on the other side of the state had been complaining about the firm since at least 2016 when the Riverfront Times documented problems with cockroaches, maintenance issues and bait-and-switch practices from the company, which at the time was called Asprient.

Since then, as the company has grown, it has butted heads with construction labor unions for hiring non-union contractors and filed lawsuits against a competitor and the city. Lux Living also led St. Louis to create new incentive claw-backs after the developer made millions selling two apartment buildings to investors quickly after securing 20-year tax breaks from the city.

The company also failed to disclose previous SEC violations in its application to the port authority, NPR’s Midwest Newsroom reported.

Lux Living CEO Victor Alston was sanctioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017 while running a separate company in California. The federal agency found Alston broke accounting rules, fined him $100,000 and banned him from serving as an officer of any public company for five years.

Port KC officials said the company technically was not required to disclose the issue since Alston was not “formally charged” with a violation.

In May, Port KC officials downplayed the press coverage and continued to vouch for the firm.

“If you’ve been around multi-family business long enough or frankly if you’ve ever lived in an apartment building, you know that tenant complaints are not all that uncommon,” Brian Rabineau, an attorney at the port, said at the time. “There’s always going to be an issue that someone for some reason is upset about.”

But the board overseeing the port still rejected the company’s request for a 25-year property tax break worth nearly $7 million.

The same developer also faced obstacles when publicizing its plans in 2021 to build luxury apartments at the site of the former Katz Drug Store on Main Street.

The location is viewed as the east gateway into the Westport commercial district and the Katz Building and adjoining clock tower is hailed as an historic landmark, owing to its distinctive Style Moderne architecture.

Lux Living sought more incentives for that project than a financial analysis deemed necessary.

Opponents said the development plan created no benefit to the broader public, included no affordable apartment units and incorporated a costly underground parking garage. The project is along the planned 2025 extension of the streetcar line from downtown to the Country Club Plaza.

Facing public pressure, the Kansas City Council rejected incentives requested for the Katz project in June 2021.

But the next month, after public threats that the historic building would be demolished, council members approved a compromise incentive plan for the project. Lux Living will get a property tax abatement for 10 years, fewer than the 25 years originally sought to build new apartments.

The former drug store building has been reduced to a shell and construction on that project is ongoing.