The steel has been erected. The roof is up. The swimming pool and deck, in the shadow of the Moderne clock tower, will soon be put in place.
Five years after the Kansas City Council voted to provide Lux Living of St. Louis significant tax breaks to turn the 1934 Katz Drug Store site into luxury apartments, the adaptive reuse of the project’s historic facade is finally making progress.
Renewed construction at 3948 Main St., on the southwest corner of Main Street and Westport Road, comes following many months in which little to no construction occurred on the facade, leaving it as an empty shell, and raising doubts over whether the historic portion of the development would ever be finished.
“By mid-year, the historic Katz Building will be fully completed,” Lux’s owner and operator, Sidarth “Sid” Chakraverty, told The Star by email Thursday. “Restoring and repurposing a landmark like Katz is never easy or inexpensive, but we made a commitment to bring the building back and have stayed focused on delivering it the right way…