The Port KC Board of Commissioners in a Monday afternoon meeting approved the next step for development of a market-rate apartment building near the Country Club Plaza, effectively approving teardown of some of the city’s last affordable housing units.
Port KC board members approved Overland Park-based EPC Real Estate Group’s request for tax breaks on the Lewer Apartments, a 278-unit luxury apartment complex that would generate an estimated $5.3 million in new property taxes over the next 20 years. The building’s construction would also come with “increased contributions to the KC streetcar,” according to a slideshow in the meeting. Commissioner Matthew Oates, a former member of the Kansas City Public Schools board, was the only no vote.
Opponents of the project who testified at the meeting said the Lewer project would destroy the Plaza Broadway Apartments, four 84-year-old buildings that contain some of Kansas City’s last 45 naturally-occurring affordable housing units. Supporters of the Lewer project called those existing units “unrentable.”…