Union construction workers have spent the last decade building high-end residential towers for Cordish Cos. in downtown Kansas City, MO. One Light, Two Light, and Three Light may not be particularly creatively named, but they have kept union members working and have helped to increase the stock of downtown housing units within the loop. According to staff, those towers are rented at a functionally 100% occupancy rate. A new development, Midland Lofts, that is a significantly more affordable option from Cordish Cos. is reportedly over 80% rented out and the project is not even finished yet.
Now, Cordish Cos. is proposing a new twenty-four-story tower, called Four Light, slated to fill in the 0.84-acre area that includes the parking lot that surrounds B&B Theatres, northeast of Truman Road and Baltimore Avenue, just off of the KC Streetcar line. Plans for Four Light show a $156 million tower with 293 apartments in 16 stories, with a large 22nd-floor amenity level with two outdoor decks. The project will include retail on the ground floor, a seven-level 463-space parking garage and a ground floor two-story combo retail-restaurant building connected to the tower structure.
According to reporting from the Kansas City Business Journal, the tower will include:
- 28 micro units, averaging 485 square ft.
- 56 studios, averaging 606 square feet
- 82 one-bedrooms, averaging 790 square feet
- 28 one-bedrooms with dens, averaging 1,021 square feet
- 85 two-bedrooms, averaging 1,128 square feet
- 14 two-bedroom penthouses on the 23rd and 24th floors, averaging 1,376 square feet
The tower, which has an unclear start date due to ongoing negotiations with the city as well as conversations over design and financing, will be built over a period estimated to last almost two and a half-years.
During its last negotiations with the city in 2018 when Three Light was being discussed, Cordish established loose plans for a Four Light, Five Light, and Six Light that would be built before 2045. These projects have led to significant work for union members across the trades.
Kansas City, MO is having ongoing discussions around how it approaches development. The city hopes to streamline a process that development insiders suggest is too-drawn out and has largely scared off investment from outside the metro, allowing local developers to grow lazy. Significant activism around the fast-rising cost of rent has grown, powered by groups like KC Tenants. Earlier this year, it was made known that Kansas City, MO tied with Austin, Texas, as the hottest housing market in the United States.
Tristin Amezcua-Hogan is the Editor of The Labor Beacon and a member of LIUNA Local 264. Tristin also serves as the Director of Communications for the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and the Chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.
Tristin grew up as the son of a UA Local 669 member in Tecumseh, KS and the great-nephew of George C. Amis, longtime leader of the United Rubberworkers (now USW Local 307) in Kansas. Growing up in rural Kansas as the child of teen parents, Tristin quickly came to appreciate the life-changing benefit of a union job.
Tristin and his partner, Rebeca Amezcua-Hogan, are residents of the Westside, Kansas City, MO's historic Mexican neighborhood. They are proud members of Kansas City's New Reform Temple.
