Tiny space, big windows: Look inside Kansas City’s new shipping container apartments

He used to a be model. She was a model , too, and sometimes still is.

On Monday morning, 38-year-old fashion model turned real estate developer Paul Nagaoka and his wife, Jennifer, sat posing for promotional pictures on a white foldout couch inside a model of a different fashion. It was the first model studio apartment, furnished and decorated, inside the steel shipping container apartment complex soon to be completed atop Signal Hill overlooking Kansas City’s West Side.

Where it’s located, on the crest of busy Broadway Boulevard and 31st Street, tens of thousands of drivers each day have been watching the stacked steel container complex develop over the last three years. The first of its planned 48 studios is done.

By April 1, 12 are scheduled to be ready for rental. All 48 are set to be open by early June. Nagaoka and his construction partner, Troy Paul, agreed to reveal the model in what is to be called Signal Hill Studios.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for 13 years,” Nagaoka said of the time that has passed from his concept to the anticipated opening. Also on Monday: a photographer from apartments.com was on site to take photographs for the rental app.

In May 2021, in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Star published a profile of the project and of Nagaoka, 6-foot-1, a “free-diving, spear-fishing, rock climbing, married father of two young sons” who, living in Singapore, traveled Asia as a muscled model and TV actor.

“Have you seen those Dos Equis commercials?” Nagaoka (pronounced Nah-gah-oka) joked then. “My goal is to be the most interesting man in the world by the time I’m that guy’s age.”

At that time, Nagaoka, through his development company, Syndicate Real Estate Development LLC, spoke of having the project finished by the end of 2021 or early 2022. The pandemic changed those plans.

“All our guys got sick,” said Troy Paul, the builder. He is a partner with Nagaoka through the company, SBF Containers, which stands for Simple, Beautiful, Functional Containers.

Supply chain problems surfaced, too, Paul said. “Getting products sometimes was so time consuming, it would literally delay us for months.”

The outside is still a construction zone of mud and gravel, backhoes and earth movers. Concrete still needs to be poured to complete parking and an access along 30th Street to the south.

Inside, photographer Paul Versluis, 51, snapped photos of the Nagaokas — black skirt for her, hip black suit and skinny tie for him, to be ready for the their website and promotional materials. The apartments aren’t for everyone, Nagaoka acknowledged. Definitely not for a family. They’re perhaps even a squeeze for a close couple.

“We’ve had in the United States for a really long time, ‘How big a space can I have?’” he said. “All around the world people function well and in really creative ways in smaller spaces. We have less waste. And less waste is something that we’re both really passionate about eliminating. That kind of philosophy goes into everything.”

Even for a studio, the space is small, 320 square feet —16 feet wide (the width of two shipping containers) and 20 feet deep (the depth of half a container). Tack on another 40 square feet for an outside wood deck or, on the first floor, a front patio. Nearly everything else but the bathroom — which has a full-sized tub, shower, vanity and floor-to-ceiling tile — is necessarily small.

But Nagaoka said their aim was to give it all a workable mix of midcentury modern, and a “Japanese, modern aesthetic.”

“It’s very modern,” he said. “That, you know, is my passion. I love design and this is, by far, the most fun and beautiful thing I’ve built.”

As studios, the units are single room with a tiny kitchen area with a two-burner stove, a convection microwave instead of an oven, a combo washer/dryer, tiny sink, a stretch of quartz countertop, custom cabinets and shelves, a refrigerator that stands about nose high. The model unit included a TV and TV stand with drawers, a couch (foldout for a bed) and a desk.

Some of the units will have the option of a fold-down Murphy bed.

The floors, shiny white epoxy, are meant to draw the eye upward, Nagaoka said. Ceilings are 9 feet high, giving a greater sense of space. Each apartment is fronted by floor-to-ceiling windows for light.

The complex, which is three stories tall, has 24 studios that face east, but one could argue that the 24 that face west have the best views. On the north side the decks look out on a sweeping view of Kansas City’s downtown skyline.

A dog park with a fire pit and community garden will be put in on the north side.

In 2021, Nagaoka was saying the units would cost $675 to $775 per month. Now, he and Paul said, they are not yet certain. The pandemic and inflation changed much. The price will likely be higher, but it’s yet to be determined.

Like many cities, Kansas City is facing a massive shortage of affordable housing downtown and across the metro.

Defining what is affordable can be squishy. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says it means residents pay 30% or less of their gross income on rent and utilities. In Kansas City, meanwhile, the City Council recently defined it as about $1,200 per month for a one-bedroom apartment.

How that translates to a 320-square-foot studio is hard to say.

Something else changed around the container complex: relations with nearby neighbors, which were terrible in 2021. Residents in three homes just to the east complained about having a three-story complex looming over them in their backyards. Over time, neighbors have mostly comes to terms with the inevitability of the project.

Nagaoka and Paul are building a new driveway for one resident. This week they offered to paint the neighbors’ homes, a benefit to the developers looking to prettify the area, and to the homeowners as well.

Before the development came to the hill, “We were peaceful, we were quiet,” neighbor Steve Carrillo, 66, said this week. “Now we’re going to have a ton of people there.

“But, you know what, everybody’s got a right to live where they want, as long as they don’t step on people’s feet.”

So he’s made peace with the development.

“Yeah, I mean, they’re already there, man,” said Carrillo, who receives disability payments. “Who am I to fight, you know? I’m not one of those guys to go over there and make a stink about stuff.” Now, if the promise works out, he said, he’ll get his house painted.

“I said go for it,” Carrillo said. “That’s saving money I don’t have.”

Nagaoka and Paul said potential renters have already expressed interest.

Nagaoka’s original vision was to build the complex as a proof of concept, with the possibility of replicating and scaling Nagaoka steel container apartment complexes nationwide.

“The vision is still the same,” he said. Whether it is realized or not, this project, he feels, has fulfilled his vision.

“I’m incredibly happy with the end product,” Nagaoka said. “It’s everything I dreamed of being able to build.”