Columbus Park Residential Plan Backed by Council Committee

By Kevin Collison

A Columbus Park residential development that will include half-million-dollar townhomes won unanimous support from a Kansas City Council committee Wednesday.

The $7 million project proposed by DAK Pacific LLC is planned for a small triangular site at approximately 1015 Pacific St. The development calls for 10, for-sale townhomes, two four-unit apartment buildings and a duplex.

“This has been a really difficult site,” Kevin Klinkenberg, a partner in DAK Pacific, told members of the Council Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee.

“It’s kind of a bit of a bowl and it’s wedged up against the freeway off ramp and so it was more of a challenge than we realized when we first started, but we really like our solution of 10 townhomes and 10 apartments.”

The other partners in DAK Pacific are Andrew Ganahl and Diane Botwin.

An overhead rendering of the layout of the Columbus Park apartment plan. (Rendering from DAK Pacific)

The townhouses will average 2,000 square feet and each have three bedrooms and three bathrooms along with a one- or two-car garage. The sales price is expected to be $500,000.

The one-bedroom apartments will be 750 square feet and rents will start at about $1,400 per month. There will be 10 surface parking spaces set aside for the apartments.

The project has been endorsed by the City Plan Commission and was approved for property tax abatements by the Land Clearance Redevelopment Agency.

The townhouses were granted a 10-year, 75 percent property tax reduction, and the apartments a 10-year, 100 percent abatement.

Klinkenberg told the Council Committee the plan has the backing of the Columbus Park neighborhood.

The Columbus Park Apartment site has been vacant at least 20 years. (Aerial view from LRCA presentation)

“We’ve been meeting with the neighborhood multiple times over the past year to work out design issues they might have and we think the neighborhood is supportive,” he said.

In a previous interview, Ganahl said the project is intended to allow people who enjoy living downtown to move up from apartments into townhouses they can own.

He said the abatement was needed in part because the site, which has been vacant for 20 years, was in bad shape because buildings located there previously had been demolished and the debris simply buried in place.

If the plan wins City Council approval today as expected, construction would likely begin this fall with completion anticipated in early 2024.