Press
$52M Renovation Begins to Convert Westport High School into Workforce Apartments
“Although class bells have not rung through Westport High School's halls in almost 12 years, the buzz from interior demolition now fills the blighted structure with a $52.2 million multifamily conversion formally underway. Workers began construction in early April on the Apartments at Westport Commons, which will remake the four-story former school at 315 E. 39th St. with 138 workforce housing apartments and 24,000 commercial square feet. Spearheading the project on behalf of local entity HP Development Partners 2 are Andrew Brain of Brain Group and Chip Walsh of Mercier Street LLC.”
– Kansas City Business Journal, April 2022
Kansas City Commercial Real Estate Summit: A market that’s as ‘business-as-usual’ as any in the country
“A tough year. That’s what everyone participating in the Kansas City Commercial Real Estate Summit agreed 2020 has been. But that’s not to say that the mood during the virtual event held Oct. 20 by REjournals.com and Midwest Real Estate News was a gloomy one. Instead, the biggest names in Kansas City’s real estate community agreed that the future still looks bright for this Missouri city’s CRE market…. Another bright spot in Kansas City? The multifamily market, which was the subject of the event’s first group panel [of Logan Freeman, commercial and investment sales with Clemons Real Estate; Jeff Stingley, executive vice president with the Kansas City office of CBRE; E.F. Chip Walsh, founder and principal of CRE development consulting firm Mercier Street LLC; Craig Scranton, principal with BNIM; and Frank Sciara, vice president of Grandbridge Real Estate Capital].”
– Midwest Real Estate News, October 2020
The Many Faces of Innovation in U.S. Cities
“Kansas City, Mo., will soon have the largest co-working space in the world, one that was a large vacant middle school in the city’s center. It will also be among the most diverse co-working spaces — places shared by people working for more than one employer — with both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. The former sports field will be a large urban farm and the headquarters of Cultivate Kansas City.”
– The New York Times, July 2016
School's out, Luxury Living's in at Swinney Elementary
“As Alice Cooper might say, school's out forever at Swinney Elementary. But in the wake of a $15.9 million redevelopment project, the site of the Progressive Era structure at 1106 W. 47th St. is being repopulated as a too-cool-for-school luxury apartment community dubbed West Hill.”
“The easy play would have been to buy (the school), raze it and put up a lot of density,” Walsh said. “But that's not what the neighborhood wanted, and it wouldn't have been a good fit with the fabric of the community.”
