New apartments planned for Old Hyde Park

The 23-unit Gillham Park Row development is planned for a site across from Hyde Park once occupied by the Outrigger apartments, a bland building dating from the 1960s that was demolished in 2011. Hoffman said the project would be the first new development in the Old Hyde Park neighborhood in 30 years.

The major thrust is to give renters and alternative that doesnt exist, a smaller building with modern, clean, loftlike space, Hoffman said.

The project is close to Armour, where about two dozen historic apartment-hotel buildings have been converted to market-rate apartments. Because of preservation standards, those buildings do not have the balconies and other amenities that a new-built structure allows.

Hoffman, who is developing the project with Lance Carlton, hired Draw Architecture + Urban Design of Kansas City to design a three-story building that was intended to complement the nearby historic apartments and homes, and offers views of the park. Many units also would have balconies or patios.

The redevelopment plan also calls for restoring an adjoining home at 3614 Gillham Road that dates to 1897.

Although Hoffman has the support of several neighboring property owners, the Gillham Park Row design is opposed by the board of the Old Hyde Park Historic District.

Martin Phillips, president of the district, said his board wanted the new building to more closely resemble its early 20th-century neighboring structures.

Its a nice design for maybe the suburbs, he said, but we wanted them to use more design features of the early 1900s. We feel in a historic neighborhood, we need to keep that look and feel.

Hoffman said his architect responded to requests from the neighborhood to incorporate more brick and other modifications to respect the context of the historic area, but were not rebuilding a 1910 colonnade apartment building, referring to an old architectural style.

Im a former head of the Historic Kansas City Foundation, and I support historic preservation, Hoffman said, but were dealing with an empty lot.

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New apartments planned for Old Hyde Park