Update: 03/03/2023
New renderings have been made available for 60 apartments coming to 300 N. Kirkwood Rd. Of greatest note is the inclusion of balconies for the first time, a change that Kirkwood’s City Council encouraged the developers to explore during the hearing. We also have gotten our first rendering of the building’s pool deck:
I’m glad the balconies are in there (even if I wish they were a little bigger), so props to the Council for that one. Beyond that, it’s a little disappointing to see the building set back a few feet from the sidewalk given its ground-floor retail, and I would love for the street trees to separate the sidewalk from the street rather than the sidewalk from the building. It’s a small detail, but small details make a difference in walkability.
The next steps for the project include Architectural Review Board (ARB) approval, followed by the issuance of a building permit.
Update: 10/20/2022
The Kirkwood Apartments passed their first reading before City Council 7-0. The developers will now have one year to finalize their plans before a pro-forma second reading before the council and final approval. For more specifics on the vote, check out this story on Kirkwood’s budding attainable-housing movement which had their fingerprints all over the Council’s questions and commentary to the developers.
Update: 10/02/2022
The “Kirkwood Apartments” go before City Council for their public hearing this Thursday and it looks like these bad boys are going to happen. They comply with all the necessary zoning requirements meaning that even if council members wanted to oppose the project, they wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
While the approval of the project isn’t much in doubt (unless the Architectural Review Board (ARB) really gets zealous), this public hearing will be important in determining the quality of the project. Now, because we don’t really have leverage, this will mean offering to forgo certain aspects of our own code in order to attain things that might be important to us.
Beyond improving the architectural quality of this project, which should be handled at the ARB hearing, I think perhaps the biggest tweak Kirkwood urbanists could push is the continuation of the sidewalk along the northern border of site: a change that P&Z asked the developer for but which the developer decided was unworkable while still maintaining the greenspace/landscaping required. It’s a good tweak not because this sidewalk is particularly useful right now, but because maybe one day it will be and we should try and think ahead. Maybe one day someone will want to develop the back half of the parking lot the Commerce Bank sits on and when that day comes, it’ll be nice to already have a cohesive sidewalk network in place.
Ideally, we would signal to city council that we prefer the sidewalk to the bushes that are required , and then City Council should signal to the developer that they don’t care about the bushes either and just to go ahead with the sidewalk and forget the landscaping requirement. Even more ideally, we keep the landscaping and continue the sidewalk and gain the extra space needed to pull off both by ditching the seven parking spots taking up all that space. Kill two birds with one stone: Compel the developer to build the public good of the sidewalk while ditching the thing that is bad for urbanism (parking).
Maybe this idea is too much nitpicking and not worth the effort, but maybe you have another change that you think would be worth the effort. This is how you would do it: we’re willing to give on this if you are willing to give on that.
Anyway, it would be great to offer your support of the project Thursday night, either in person or via email (Any citizen comments received by e-mail by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 6, 2022 will be distributed to the Mayor and City Council.)
Looking forward to getting this thing done and welcoming more families to Kirkwood.
Original Story: 08/12/2022
The northern portion of Downtown Kirkwood could take another step in its transformation from a parking wasteland to a walkable, vibrant neighborhood thanks to a new proposal listed on the Planning and Zoning Committee’s agenda for next Wednesday, August 17th. That proposal calls for 60 apartments, 2,000 square feet of restaurant space, 2,000 square feet of retail space, and 1,300 square feet of office space to be constructed as part of a new four-story, 94,000 sq ft building at 300 N. Kirkwood Rd. PW Architects, Stock & Associates, and Central States Construction are listed on the application.
The lot is currently occupied by Commerce Bank but is set to be vacated once Commerce wraps up construction on their new building at the northwestern corner of the block. Commerce originally planned to flip the property to a developer who had proposed a 125-unit mixed-use senior living facility for the site back in 2020, but that plan was ultimately shot down by Kirkwood City Council which cited a preference for a project that catered to younger, more economically-active residents in the city’s downtown.
The new plans call for 10 one-bedroom units, 36 two-bedroom units, and 14 three-bedroom units to occupy the top three floors of the building. A total of 110 off-street parking spaces are proposed for the site. The plans call for a pool deck and renderings depict the ground floor tenets as a fitness facility, office space for Central States, and a cafe.
Will it Happen?
It is unclear to me what variances the Kirkwood Apartments would need. The project meets the height, density, setback, parking, bike rack, and retail requirements for the site. The only expectance to this adherence is the landscaping buffer requirement along the site’s eastern border, but here the developers are simply continuing the buffer design the Planning and Zoning committee requested for the Commerce Bank site next door and I’m sure would be happy to change this relatively minor detail in their plan if City Council had a change of heart and asked them to do so. Te Kirkwood Apartments are exactly what our code, as currently written, calls for.
Then, when you count the votes, the project seems all the more likely to get through. The 152-unit James, which lies one block to the North of the proposed site and required a much higher degree of variance approval, was approved by a 5-2 vote, with Mark Zimmer and Liz Gibbon voting no. Now, one of the yeses, Kara Wurtz, has since been term-limited out of the council and was replaced by Nancy Luetzow, who was in turn one of only two council members who voted no on both The Madison in 2018 and The Barclay in 2019. But even so, 4-3 would still see the approval of the Kirkwood Apartments.
(And I’m not ready to give up on Luetzow yet! The other council member that voted against The Barclay and The Madison was Maggie Duwe, who then reversed course and counted herself as one of the five members that supported The James a couple of years later. I’d be thrilled to find out that Luetzow has taken a similar path and is ready to vote accordingly. Housing issues are often really counterintuitive and sometimes it just takes a little bit to figure it out; I’m rooting for you Nancy!)
The one other potential hiccup for the project is the architectural review process. The building leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically. I think that’s generally fine, if not ideal (the Commerce Bank that currently sits on the site is an ugly, squat little building), but if the architectural review board requires upgraded materials and design, we’ll have to wait and see how much of those upgrades the developer can afford to eat. Hopefully ARB can thread the needle of the quality-price tradeoff here and everyone can walk away with a good deal, but this would be sneaky way of killing an otherwise viable project if someone wanted to.
Anyway, I think this project will happen, and I’m really really excited about it. The Kirkwood Apartments sits right next to a bus stop, extends the Kirkwood Rd street wall, further connects The James to the heart of Downtown, and adds retail space that its residents, and those of The James, and everyone else in the neighborhood will get to enjoy, no car required.
At a big-picture level, it builds Kirkwood’s tax base, supplies additional customers for our downtown businesses, and helps to keep Kirkwood the attainable, welcoming community it’s always been.
Thanks for reading and have yourself a Friday night, Swarm. Kirkwood is buzzing.
So what impact will this building and the one north have on the sewer system?
And storm water runoff?
I would imagine that any changes in stormwater runoff would be fairly minimal. The lot as it currently sits is almost entirely covered by a parking lot and bank building, both of which are already impervious, so replacing one building with another one won’t do much. The additional trees the plan calls for (significantly more than are currently on the site), might even improve the situation. In terms of wastewater, I’m not aware of any sewage capacity issues in the Kirkwood area so I don’t expect these sixty homes would put the system under too much stress, but MSD will examine the plans as part of the approval process so we should be able to anticipate any issues before they occur.