The corner of 16th Street and Broadway Boulevard in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District is, for now, an unremarkable stretch of surface lots and low-slung buildings a few blocks south of downtown. If three development partners get their way, it will soon hold the neighborhood’s tallest structure: a 33-story, 371-foot apartment tower flanked by a 15-story luxury hotel and an 11-story office building.
The project, called Encore at 16th and Broadway, would span roughly four acres and carry a price tag developers estimate at more than $430 million. It would deliver 392 apartments, 282 hotel rooms, nearly 800 parking spaces, a pool deck, and shared amenity floors to a district famous for First Fridays art walks and converted warehouse lofts but that has never hosted a building taller than about eight stories.
EPC Real Estate Group, Dan Carr, and VeLa Development Partners are the firms behind the effort. They describe Encore as the first phase of a broader, multi-parcel redevelopment and say they intend to break ground in late 2026, with residents moving in by 2029, according to the project’s official page.
What the plans call for
The residential tower would be the centerpiece: 33 stories and 392 apartments stacked above 481 parking spaces, according to the Kansas City Star. Beside it, the 282-room luxury hotel would rise 15 stories with 313 parking spaces of its own. An 11-story office building completes the trio.
Lead architecture firm Hoefer Welker describes the master plan as a multi-phase undertaking exceeding $430 million. The Star’s reporting places the total closer to $440 million. Both figures are preliminary, and the final number will shift as designs are refined and financing terms are set.
For scale, the Loews Kansas City Convention Center Hotel that opened downtown in 2020 cost roughly $325 million. The One Light and Two Light apartment towers in the Power & Light District each ran in the range of $100 million to $130 million. Encore, if built as proposed, would surpass all of them in combined scope and cost.
Why the Crossroads matters
The Crossroads Arts District stretches from the railroad tracks south of downtown to the edge of Crown Center. Over the past two decades it has shed its industrial past and become one of Kansas City’s most walkable neighborhoods, filled with galleries, independent restaurants, and adaptive-reuse loft buildings. Construction in the area has mostly stayed mid-rise; the seven-story Arterra residential building on Main Street, for example, is representative of the scale developers have favored in the district. A 33-story tower at 371 feet would be visible for miles along Broadway and would fundamentally change the district’s low-rise character.
That shift is part of what makes the proposal significant. The Crossroads has absorbed steady residential growth without a single high-rise. Encore would test whether the neighborhood’s infrastructure, street grid, and identity can accommodate a development of downtown-scale density.
Public agencies and incentives
Reporting from the Kansas City Business Journal indicates the developers have been coordinating with the Port Authority of Kansas City (Port KC), which has the power to issue industrial revenue bonds and facilitate tax incentives for large-scale projects. Port KC has played a similar role in other major Kansas City developments.
However, no finalized incentive package or development agreement has appeared in city legislative records as of May 2026. Large mixed-use projects in Kansas City routinely rely on a blend of private equity, construction debt, and public tools such as tax-increment financing or property tax abatements. Until those agreements pass through public hearings and City Council votes, the full capital stack behind Encore remains undefined.
Regulatory hurdles still ahead
Detailed renderings and press coverage can make a project feel inevitable. Encore is not there yet.
A review of the Kansas City City Plan Commission’s online docket shows no completed rezoning approval, special-use permit, or staff recommendation specific to the 16th and Broadway site as of early May 2026. The city’s Compass KC permitting portal does not display a full submittal or review status for the project. Environmental reviews, traffic impact studies, and infrastructure assessments, all typically required before construction permits are issued for a development of this scale, have not surfaced through the city’s Legistar legislative tracking system.
The late-2026 groundbreaking target and the 2029 move-in date come solely from the development team. Until building permits are issued and financing is closed, those dates are aspirations, not commitments.
The hotel question
No operator or brand has been publicly named for the 282-room luxury hotel. That gap matters. Securing a flag or franchise agreement is typically a prerequisite for hotel construction financing, because lenders want to see a recognized brand’s revenue projections and management commitment before writing large checks.
Downtown Kansas City’s hospitality market has been rebuilding convention and leisure demand since the pandemic. A confirmed operator would signal that at least one major hotel company believes the Crossroads can support a 282-room luxury property. Without that announcement, the hotel component carries more uncertainty than the residential tower, which can move forward on apartment pre-leasing and multifamily lending standards.
Three milestones that will shape Encore’s path
As of May 2026, Encore at 16th and Broadway is a detailed, ambitious proposal that has not yet crossed into approved, fully financed construction. The development team has published a master plan, local media have added specifics drawn from submitted documents, and the architecture is far enough along to generate striking renderings. The harder, slower work lies ahead: securing City Plan Commission approval, finalizing any public incentive agreements, closing construction financing, and signing a hotel operator.
For Crossroads residents and business owners keeping an eye on the site, three milestones will tell the story. A City Plan Commission hearing will show whether the city’s planning staff supports the density and design. A public filing on incentive requests will reveal how much public subsidy the project needs. And a formal hotel brand announcement will indicate whether the hospitality component is real or still searching for a partner. Each step will clarify whether the Crossroads is about to get its tallest building or whether the plan gets scaled back along the way.
