Union Hill's rebirth ends with a 181-apartment, 13-home bang

By Rob Roberts

Reporter – Kansas City Business Journal

In the early 1980s, Bob Frye and his brother bought a rundown, six-unit apartment building in Kansas City’s historic Union Hill neighborhood.

About the same time, Frye made redevelopment of the declining neighborhood the subject of his master’s thesis as a Kansas State University architecture student.

Then, in 1987, he took over development rights and made Union Hill’s resurrection his life’s work.

Nearly 30 years later, Frye is nearing the end of that gargantuan task. By the end of the year, he will complete his final two major projects in Union Hill: the 181-unit, five-building final phase of The Founders at Union Hill apartment development and 13 new single-family homes in the heart of the neighborhood — one of Kansas City’s oldest.

Platted in 1857, Union Hill covers roughly 16 blocks south of Crown Center between Main Street on the west, Gillham Road on the east, 31st Street on the south and 27th Street on the north.

Frye said the neighborhood blossomed in the 19th century with the construction of fine Victorian homes, many of them older than 1880 and still standing. As an architect, Frye can discern the 1880s vintage via the arched brick over the home’s windows, a giveaway that they were built “before steel.”

During the 1940s through 1960s, urban decay set in, prompting the city to approve a 1980 redevelopment plan that allowed developer Jim Young to receive 25-year property tax abatements to assist with Union Hill’s rebirth. Frye bought Young’s development rights in 1987 and built about 70 of the 200 new townhomes that have helped turn Union Hill around. In addition, about 100 of the neighborhood’s single-family homes have been restored by their owners, he said, and with the completion of The Founders project, more than 500 apartments will have been added to the mix.

Frye completed his first Union Hill apartment project, including 114 units, 17 years ago, and he wrapped up the first 227-unit Founders phase in 2007.

Then the recession set in, so Frye waited for signs that the economy was heating back up. Then he pounced on development of the final Founders phase.

“We’re going to be first to market” among several downtown-area apartment projects now in the pipeline, Frye said. And Union Hill will offer something that most of his competitors can’t.

“It’s a real place,” Frye said. “It’s a neighborhood.”

Each named for a Kansas City founder buried in the neighborhood’s historic Union Cemetery, the five new apartment buildings will open between June and the end of the year.

The first to open will be the 23-unit Taylor Building at 230 E. 30th St. Modeled after apartments in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, it and two other 23-story buildings under construction nearby will be clad with cast-stone exteriors inspired by structures in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, Frye said.

“My mason said he had never seen this much masonry on a non-government building,” Frye said.

The three 23-unit buildings, which have been dubbed Platinum Apartments, include structured parking, elevator access, balconies and high-end interior finishes. Available in one- and two-bedroom plans, both with den options, the Platinum apartments will rent from $1,245 to $1,995 a month.

Rounding out the first phase will be the more contemporary-styled Loft Apartments, including the McGee Building, which will open at 2980 Gillham Road in July, and the McCoy Building, which will open later in the year at 3030 Gillham Road.

Those two 56-unit buildings also will include structured parking and most of the features included in the Platinum Apartments. In addition they will include access to the Union Hill Athletic Club in the historic Greenlease Cadillac Building at 2929 McGee St. Frye completed renovation of that building, including 29 luxury condos, in 2007, before the condo market went south.

“Fortunately, we got them all sold,” Frye said, though one condo, a 4,000-square-foot penthouse unit priced at $1.7 million, is now ready to go back on the market.

By contrast, Frye’s new Loft Apartments will include studios through two-bedroom units, adding a rental range of $850 to $1,810 to Union Hill’s eclectic mix of cost and lifestyle options.

Frye said he develops all his apartments with enough quality to “be worth remodeling in 30 years and still be standing in 100 years.”

That was not the case with some 1970s apartments that he recently demolished to make way for 13 new homes, priced from $367,000 to $470,000, in the heart of Union Hill.

Development incentives have expired for a portion of Frye’s Union Hill redevelopment plan. But he said most of the new homes would come with 25-year property tax abatements.

One of them, a three-bedroom, 2.5-bath home at 3015 McGee, is being featured on the Spring Parade of Homes tour. Like the others planned nearby, it has been designed to blend with the surrounding century-old-homes but to incorporate features homeowners would expect to find in upscale suburban neighborhoods.

In contrast to the suburbs, the neighborhood Frye and others have invested more than $200 million in reviving has some vibrant urban neighbors. Immediately north is Crown Center, which is flanked by Union Station and the new Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City building to its west and Hospital Hill to the east. To the south, Chicago-based Silliman Group LLC and companion firm Antheus Capital LLC have taken on $150 million in multifamily redevelopments on or near Armour Boulevard since 2007. And just across Gillham Road to the east are the 76 new apartments and condos that developer John Hoffman has developed during the past decade

“This is Kansas City’s Lincoln Park,” Frye said of the the restored Union Hill neighborhood. “It’s that super-nice residential area right at the edge of the central business district. Technically, this is part of Downtown. But we’re only about seven minutes away from the Country Club Plaza (to the south) and about seven miles away from the river (to the north).”