Downtown KC adds eighth hotel to project pipeline

It looks like downtown Kansas City will get yet another new hotel.

A partnership of real estate developers based in Madison, Wis., plans to spend $33.3 million to acquire and rehabilitate the historic Brookfield Building, a long-vacant and deteriorating office tower at 101 W. 11th St., the southwest corner of Baltimore Avenue and 11th Street.

Brookfield Hotel Investment LLC’s plans call for the second through ninth floors of the 12-story building to be occupied by a 113-room hotel operated under the Hotel Indigo flag, a boutique arm of the InterContinental Hotels Group.

The developers plan 27 market-rate apartments — including six studios, 18 one-bedroom units and three two-bedroom units — on floors 10 through 12.
The first floor will include the hotel lobby and commercial spaces, the developers indicated.

They are negotiating with parking providers near the Brookfield Building to secure long-term parking commitments for the project.

Built in 1929, the Brookfield was purchased last year by Sunflower Development Group LLC, a Kansas City firm with a history of transforming distressed downtown properties.

Sunflower began the process of getting the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places to make its redevelopment eligible for historic tax credits. But Brookfield Hotel Investment LLC now has the property under contract and expects to close on the $2.4 million acquisition in October.

Pat Murfey, a broker with Evergreen Real Estate Services, is representing Sunflower Development Group in the transaction.

If the necessary city approvals can be obtained by that time, the new owners would begin remediation and construction immediately, with completion expected by the spring or summer of 2017.

The development team taking on the project, its first foray into the Kansas City market, includes Great Lakes Management Group, a hotel development and management company that operates 10 hotels in Wisconsin and Iowa, and Kothe Real Estate Partners LLC, which has worked on more than $500 million worth of commercial development projects in Wisconsin.

The developers have requested a 25-year property tax abatement, including a 100 percent abatement of all new property taxes generated by the improvements for the first 10 years, followed by a 50 percent abatement for 15 years.

Rob Roberts Reporter Kansas City Business Journal