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Kansas City North Loop/River Market

KSU ARCH 605/706/705, Fall 2003/Spring 2004

Under the direction of Professor Madlen Simon, a group of fifth-year Kansas State University architecture students is creating master plan strategies for mixed-use development in the downtown North Loop/River Market districts. Bordered by the Missouri River to the North and Tenth St. to the South, the area poses difficult urban design and development issues due to an overabundance of surface parking lots, the drastic separation of the CBD from the River Market created by the North leg of I-70/I-35, and derelict industrial properties near the Missouri River waterfront.

Students are fashioning creative responses and re-conceiving the urban potential of the site. Students have documented and analyzed present conditions, developed urban design guidelines, devised prototypes for streetscape amenities such as bus shelters, and proposed a seven-block mixed-use development along Main Street that includes high-rise housing and retail developments. The students have made a particular effort to include family-oriented housing (apartment and condominium units with more than 2 bedrooms), an area of potential demand that is not yet served by the fast-growing downtown loft market. Poised on the edge of the downtown loop, the studio project is an effort to reweave the torn urban fabric of the area while contributing innovative design ideas to the future of Kansas City's downtown.