Suburbs Bringing In Downtown Amenities
Creating vibrant walkable communities is now preferred over single office buildings.
KANSAS CITY—Suburbs across the nation now look for comprehensive projects that, unlike standalone office buildings, will transform their downtowns into destinations for a wide variety of users. Overland Park, KS, a western suburb of Kansas City, will soon have just such a development.
The Opus Group and OPRE LLC just started construction on Edison District, a 125,000-square-foot mixed-use office and retail development. The partners expect to complete the five-story building, which will transform an entire downtown city block, by the fall of 2019.
“We’re very pleased to be working with Tim Barton again, after completing Freightquote’s headquarters in 2013, to bring an innovative and invigorating new office and retail offering to Overland Park,” says Oscar Healy, regional vice president, Opus Design Build, LLC. “This project uniquely complements the growing Overland Park community by providing exciting new office and entertainment options for those who live, work and play here.”
Located at the southwest corner of 80th and Marty Sts., the class A suburban office building will feature a first floor food hall offering seven different culinary options, with a coffee shop, Asian-inspired cuisine, and grab and go fare. The ground floor will also include a custom bar area with overhead doors leading to an outdoor courtyard and seating area for guests. The second floor will feature a modern shared office space designed and operated by Edison Spaces. Speculative office space will take up the remaining third, fourth and fifth floors.
Edison District will also include an outdoor event plaza, doubling as a surface parking lot when not in use, to accommodate local art fairs or other local events. Additionally, the development will have a 4.5-level structured parking garage with more than 400 parking spaces, 24 of which will remain public at all times; the rest will be open to the public after office hours and on the weekends. The parking garage will connect to the building through a second floor skyway for covered entry to and from the office spaces.
Barton will develop of the building, with Opus Development Co., LLC providing development support services. Opus Design Build, LLC is the design-builder and Opus AE Group, LLC is the interior designer, architect and structural engineer of record. AREA Real Estate Advisors will market the speculative office space for lease.