LightEdge at SubTropolis lands new tenant, KU Hospital

The University of Kansas Hospital has officially moved into its new private suite at the LightEdge data center facility at Hunt Midwest’s SubTropolis Technology Center.

The new location allows the healthcare provider to commit to the most stringent patient information protection.

LightEdge easily met the hospital’s demand for a partner with the financial backing to ensure long term stability and the option for capacity expansion. The hospital began moving into LightEdge’s Phase I 60,000 square foot underground facility during the first half of 2015 and is now fully operational in the facility.

“The stability and flexibility that we have achieved by moving to LightEdge has freed capital and resources allowing us to stay ahead of technology changes, patient needs and our competition,” said Sean Roberts, systems director for The University of Kansas Hospital.

BluHawk arena + Cosmosphere will be game-changer for South OP

Price Commercial Realty is finally going public with its plan for a massive new 300-acre mixed-use development in south Kansas City. BluHawk is the name for a 100-million-square-foot new retail power center that will occupy a stretch of land situated between 159th and 167th street, bordered by Highway 69 to the east and Antioch to the west.

It’s the southernmost development in Kansas City, with a population of about 40,000 in a three-mile radius. John Nolan, president of Price Commercial Realty, says the questions he gets most often are whether the area is ripe for development and just how much it’s expected to grow.

The demographics

It’s an easy answer for Nolan, who presented details of the BluHawk plan to members of KCRAR Commercial on Wednesday. He responds by plotting its location on a map: Not only is it a short 3.5 miles south of Prairiefire and Corbin Park, the hottest retail areas in the market, but it’s surrounded by high quality $500,000 homes, some of the top ranked schools in the country with Blue Valley schools, and in a 3-mile radius, an average household income of about $150,000.

“At different ICSC events, we spoke with groups out of L.A., San Francisco and Washington D.C. and asked whether they saw numbers like that, and everyone’s response was that they’d be happy to have those numbers at any development,” he said. “We view that as an amazing opportunity.”

And there’s plenty of room for growth. Nolan said the City of Overland Park is looking at more than 500 homebuilding permits issued per year for $500,000 homes. BluHawk will help foster that single-family home growth. It’s currently sold all 60 home lots in its first phase of the plan, and the majority of those homes – about 55 – have already been built. Another 60 homes will come in another phase, and it will include a mix of town homes and villas and other options that have yet to be defined.

The centerpieces

Because it’s a STAR bond project, Nolan said the developers are taking a new approach to attracting tourists. So, instead of first focusing on retailers, they want to create a sense of intrigue and excitement around the plan’s two main centerpieces: a 6,000-seat hockey arena and an 60,000-square-foot extension of the Hutchinson-based Cosmosphere.

“We got together and what we decided to do with BluHawk is create a reverse interest in the area,” said Scott Buescher, vice president of acquisitions and development for Price Brothers. “We’re not going for retail first; We’re going for programs.”

The Cosmosphere located in Hutchinson is the largest non-government affiliated space entity/museum in the world. Although it’s a truly fascinating facility, attendance is falling. Because of that, Price brought in two former Disney employees, who will pack the facility with programming utilizing the building’s 40X theater, a Legos robotics system called Mindstorm, and other technological and educational components.

For the hockey arena, the team is in negotiations to bring a U.S. Hockey League team to the arena as part of a larger concerted effort to get 20,000 Kansas City kids in the metro to play hockey.

“There’s an underlying interest here,” Nolan said. “The purpose of the hockey team is to create a movement in Kansas City much like soccer did with the Legends facility.”

Retail

With the hockey arena and Cosmosphere in place, Nolan said the team is working to bring first-to-market retailers to the area. So far, he’s received commitments from a new-to-market movie theater/bowling alley, and plans to add a number of restaurants.

But the first piece to open in the development will be the portion dubbed BluHawk Marketplace. It will house the newest 60,000-square-foot Cosentino’s concept, a much larger and more technologically advanced than any its similar versions in Brookside and downtown Kansas City. The store is scheduled to open around Thanksgiving this year. An additional 70,000 square feet of retail surrounding the grocery store will also be the first part of the development to open.

So far, other pieces of the plan include a small plot of land that was sold to an area bank, as well as three or four other large parking garages.

Click here to see a full site plan.

For more information on BluHawk, click here. For more information on future KCRAR Commercial events and other industry happenings, check out our event calendar by clicking here. 

Ora Reynolds on Hunt Midwest’s aggressive growth

Ora Reynolds is president at Hunt Midwest.

Today, when you look at the professional day-to-day of Ora Reynolds, you’d never guess she stepped into her job by answering a newspaper ad – but that’s exactly what she did. As president of Hunt Midwest, a sister company to the Kansas City Chiefs owned by the Hunt family, Reynolds spends her days expanding the residential development side of the business and spreading the word about Hunt Midwest’s evolving identity as one of the region’s top real estate companies.

“We understand that our brand means a lot, so we’re trying to take some things we used to do and make them more visible,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds has been with Hunt Midwest since its early days as essentially three companies: a mining company, an entertainment company, and a real estate company. Since then, Hunt Midwest has sold off its mining and entertainment counterparts and has focused on its industrial/commercial and residential development.

In recent years, that’s meant expanding the residential component to encompass a person’s entire life cycle. Hunt Midwest in recent years began developing multifamily projects as well as larger, single-family home communities with heavy amenities for multiple lifestyles.

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Hunt Midwest is providing capital and construction management for its boutique luxury apartment project, Mission 106 at Mission Farms. The 139-unit includes 7 townhomes and is a joint venture between ePartment Communities LLC and master developer Doug Weltner.

“We like to do larger [projects] because there are more barriers to entry,” Reynolds said. “Not everyone has the people and financial resources to build a 1,500-home community with neighborhood services, so that gives us a competitive advantage.”

Reynolds says she sees a big opportunity in a new, widening market created by millennials’ shifting lifestyle patterns. She says statistics show that more than 50 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds and 41 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds are still living with their parents. They’re also delaying obtaining full-time jobs, and need the geographic flexibility an apartment offers, and are waiting longer to get married.

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In 2010, Hunt Midwest launched a joint venture with Principal Senior Housing to invest $32 million into starting a senior living platform in Kansas City. Since then, that investment has doubled to $65 million.

“Those patterns have moved the cycle for a homebuyer out, and it’s created a wider swath of apartment people,” Reynolds said. “It’s all about household formation and job creation, and that’s what we think is really feeding the apartment market right now.”

With a proven multifamily concept, Hunt Midwest ownership in recent years began to wonder: “What’s next?” With many of its communities master-planned for additional uses like senior living, the company decided to form a joint venture with Principal Senior Living in 2010. From the first initial project came the decision to build a $32 million, four-project platform in Kansas City. Today, Hunt Midwest now has four senior living communities up and running and four more under construction or design – a $65 million investment.

“That’s been really exciting because it takes our single-family buyer at all their life cycles, then moves us into when someone needs assisted living or memory care,” Reynolds said.

And that’s only the residential piece of the puzzle for Hunt Midwest. In its industrial/commercial division, the firm is having its best year ever. Its sprawling 1,100-acre Subtropolis, the world’s largest underground business park, now leases 6 million worth of space to a plethora of companies. In 2014 alone, Hunt Midwest added 1 million square feet – the most ever added in a year – including a 475,000-square-foot build-to-suit central distribution facility for a Denver-based e-commerce company, Food Service Warehouse.

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SubTropolis became home to Food Service Warehouse in 2014, Hunt Midwest’s largest build-to-suit in the market. The 475,000-square-foot facility has made the underground business park its central distribution facility for all of its e-fulfillment needs.

On its surface, Hunt Midwest is also benefitting from its proximity to the Ford Kansas City Assembly Plant in Claycomo, Mo., and has become home to Automotive Alley, where Ford Transit vans are kept before they’re outfitted.

SubTropolis Technology Center also opened in 2014 as the first data center in the underground park. It’s anchored by LightEdge Solutions and currently houses four fiber carriers.

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Subtropolis Tech Center opened in 2014 and houses four fiber carriers.

As if that wasn’t enough, Hunt Midwest is also looking at opportunities in the 15,000-acre Twin Creeks area, where it’s contributed $16 million to a $34 million effort to get the area sewered. With 5 people per acre, the area could potentially house 75,000 new residents over time.

Hunt Midwest owns 300 acres in that area, where it’s currently planning Park Place North, a development that will consist of a full range of housing from single-family homes through senior living facilities.

“In 1993, we opened our fist community in the Shoal Creek area, where we put in about 2,000 homes. There, we went in with homes and the retail followed those rooftops,” Reynolds said. “Here, it’s going to be the reverse, but we hope we can do what was done in the Liberty/Shoal Creek area on the Platte County side.”

As much as the company has expanded in recent years, Reynolds says Hunt Midwest must be cautious in its investments.

“We get to be entrepreneurial, but there’s a safety net,” she said. “We are stewards of the Hunt name, and we never can do anything that would risk that, so we tend to be more conservative when we’re looking at projects we can’t control what we think are the important pieces. We won’t get involved unless we think we can control that reputation we have.”

So what does Reynolds consider the biggest reason for Hunt Midwest’s success?

“I prefer to use what I call a ‘rifle approach’ to closing deals as opposed to a ‘shotgun approach.’ You can run around and look at a variety of deals where you don’t have the expertise, or you don’t know how you’re going to get to the end, so I like to go after projects that fit our expertise and where we want to go,” she said. “I learned a long time ago that you have this business plan, and you’re trying to get there, and you may not get there exactly the way you thought you’d thought you would – but as long as you get there, it’s okay.”

1914 Main officially opens its doors

Developers of the newest apartment project in the Crossroads Arts District cut the official ribbon this morning to debut the new addition.

Scott Richardson and Andrew Ganahl, partners of the Denver-based development group Linden Street Partners, were initially lured to Kansas City for their first project because of the streetcar announcement. It was only appropriate that at this morning’s kickoff ceremony as city officials gave their excited remarks, shiny new streetcars hummed along the tracks on the street.

The project team included Centric Projects, general contractor; KEM Studio, architect.

To read more about the 44-unit project and learn about the development team’s next plan for more Crossroads apartments, check out this recent article.

For more photos, see our Facebook page.

New owners give Corinth Square a facelift

Construction crews have kicked off renovation efforts at Corinth Square. Under new ownership of First Washington Realty Inc., the shopping center is getting an update to its northwest corner, which will bring the corner up to date with the rest of the improvements LANE4 Property Group completed years ago.

“We are excited to give this corner of Corinth a facelift,” said Monica Mallory, regional property manager for First Washington Realty. “The shopping center looks great after a renovation a few years ago. Once we’re finished with this construction, the northwest corner will look just as sharp as the rest of the center.”

All stores will remain open during the two-phase construction process, which is scheduled to last a few months. McCownGordon Construction is the contractor on the project.