Development firm wins historic restoration award for old church with ‘good bones’

The partners of Cityscape Residential were not new to building in Lee’s Summit, but it was something old that gave the company a long-awaited downtown project.

Cityscape’s restoration and adaptive use of the 1922 Methodist Church at 114 S.E. Douglas St. was honored this year by the City of Lee’s Summit Historic Preservation Commission with the 2022 Graves/Hale Historic Preservation Award. The award, established to honor the work of Lee’s Summit historians Frank Graves and Don Hale, recognizes those who “have demonstrated a commitment to interpreting, retaining and promoting the preservation and adaptive reuse of buildings, districts, structures and cultural landscapes in Lee’s Summit.”

Cityscape partners have more than two decades of history in Lee’s Summit.

“One of our partners has parents and a sister here,” said Ryan Adams, vice president of Cityscape Residential for Kansas City. “We were wrapping up our third community in Lee’s Summit and had tried for six to eight years to find something downtown.

“When the church property became available, we jumped on it.”

The church property turned into Elevate 114, a community of 273 apartments.

Elevate 114 reused the original 100-year-old Methodist Church building for part of its common areas.

“The original church building hadn’t been occupied or heated for a while, so the finishes and structure were in tough shape, but the bones were wonderful,” Adams said.

“The original stained-glass windows and doors were mostly intact, and the structure of the interior dome was in good enough shape to be able to repair. The original chandelier was there physically, although it needed a lot of work to operate again as intended.”

Among the challenges of the project were the stained-glass windows.

“The stained-glass windows were a focus, and countless hours were spent restoring and replacing some of the translucent white interior glass with clear glass so that we could get light into the building,” Adams said.

“We also needed to rebuild the main floor since it was sloped for the congregation, and rebuild the second-floor gallery so that it worked for modern fire codes. Accomplishing all of that without people realizing any big change had been made was our constant focus.”

Adams said the company had the building’s original plans.

“So we thought we knew how the building was going to be framed,” he said. “Let’s just say that they took the plans as more of a suggestion, so we spent a lot of time with structural engineers reworking our plans to accommodate current codes and the structure we found.”

Surprises were encountered in the process.

“The upper floor ceiling is encircled by plaster florets with what appears to be a little ball in the middle. When we first looked inside the property, my partner thought the balls were also painted plaster, but they turned out to be painted-over 1920s miniature lightbulbs.

“So we immediately pivoted and figured out how to re-wire all of those lights that surround the bottom of the dome and re-cast the damaged floral decorative surrounds. It’s the first time that the floral crown of lights has been re-lit in many, many years. We used reflector bulbs to highlight the plaster, and it’s stunning.”