By Kathy Feist
As people begin to make holiday plans to return home to the community they grew up in, a new future (and futuristic) community is being created in south Kansas City.
The Glade, promoted as a “city within a city,” is a 325-acre community located between 71 Hwy and I-435 on 87th St., directly west of Cerner’s Innovation Campus. When completed, it will boast 263 garden-style apartments and townhomes, two single family home communities, a senior center and 4 million square feet of a biotech campus and a mixed-use village that provides a Main Street feel. The village will include a library, amphitheater, farmer’s market, parks, and walking/biking trails. All this while sustaining the surrounding natural habitat.
It is estimated that The Glade will be home to 2,500 new residences and 7000 residents.
The project is the brainchild of Jim Stowers III, owner of Oxford Cos. and son of James Stowers, Jr., founders of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. In 2014 Stowers proposed a $1.3 billion biotech research park/residential housing for the area called Oxford on the Blue. The Glade is a $5 billion updated version of that plan.
Urbane, the apartment complex under construction now, is being developed by Indianapolis developer Milhaus which purchased 8.6 acres of property within The Glade. Rent per unit is expected to be around $1100 a month. Leasing is expected in Spring 2022.
This summer, Stowers along with Ryan Co. will begin constructing a 120,000 sq. ft. life science/office building and a 100,000 sq. ft commercial greenhouse and farmer’s market on the northwest end of The Glade.
The life science and office building are only a small part of a 1 million square foot biotech research park called the Center of Excellence in Precision Health Medicine. The park will include lab-ready spaces for genomic research, genetic counseling and sequencing, clinical research organizations, health clinics and higher education.
Stowers’ vision is to create a community that will advance research in precision medicine, life sciences and agribusiness. Its intended design–with its walking paths and small town community– will foster “purposeful collisions” among researchers. “The purposeful collision on campus between corporations specialized in science and research is designed to transpire not just within the walls of a building but in the outdoors as well. All the life sciences will meet together in one space,” says Brandon Brensing, director of real estate development with Ryan Cos. “There is no project that rivals it.”
The developer rendering on their website is far more dense and has 26 large office buildings on the north end. I have to assume that’s the real story. Did they present the rendering in this article to meet the Conservation Development standard in the Blue Ridge Area Plan? Did they provide you with the rendering in this article and say it was more recent than their website? Something is not right.