Wichita City Council delays vote on incentive package for $90M downtown apartment complex

The fate of a proposed $90 million luxury apartment development in downtown Wichita will remain in flux for at least another two weeks.

The City Council delayed a vote on the incentive package for Vantage Point Properties’ planned 370-unit complex at the northwest corner of Waterman and Washington until March 5.

The delay came after council member Dalton Glasscock called into question the financial viability of a proposed parking agreement that would lease 185 stalls at a city-owned lot across the street to the developers for $56,160 a year.

The market rate for renting a public parking space downtown is $40 a month, Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson told the council. For a year’s lease at market rate, Vantage Point would pay the city $88,800.

Glasscock said the discounted rate of $25.30 per stall per month is probably too generous to the developer, considering that the average annual maintenance cost for a stall across the city’s parking system is $400.

By that estimate, the city stands to lose $535,200 on the parking agreement over the next 30 years. But Anderson said the cost of maintaining unstructured parking lots as opposed to garages is probably closer to $200 per stall per year.

Under the terms of the proposed agreement, Vantage Point would not be allowed to profit off of the parking agreement by up-charging tenants to use city stalls.

“I have a sense that the bench wants more answers first before making a decision — not specifically on the project, more on the parking,” Mayor Lily Wu said. “I propose that we take a pause on this.”

The proposed incentive package also includes a letter of intent to issue industrial revenue bonds that would qualify the development for a 10-year 100% tax abatement. Only council member Becky Tuttle voted against the delay.

Development plans in downtown Wichita

Vantage Point’s plan for the 3.2-acre development site is to build a five-story complex with a bottom floor dedicated to parking. But President Paul Jackson said the project will have to be scaled back if an agreement can’t be reached to lease additional stalls from the city lot across the street at 777 E. Waterman.

“We cannot build 370 units without the parking,” Jackson told the council. “Our cost-benefit analysis has been performed for 370 units for the IRB tax abatement, so while I’d love to approve the tax abatement today, if the parking is not approved, we will go back to a 258-unit project and build it on our own project site.”

With council approval, developers expect to break ground on the apartments this summer and have the first phase of units complete by the summer of 2026, in time for the first class of students at the Wichita Biomedical Campus.

“It’s absolutely not designed as student housing,” Jackson previously told The Eagle. “I would say that it’s going to provide much-needed housing for students and professionals and whoever else may desire to live downtown.”

Vantage Point does plan to offer a student rent credit program, setting aside 10% of available units for students and offering a 10% discount to prospective tenants with a student ID card from a college or university in Sedgwick County.

A residential market analysis company hired by the city has said there’s enough demand for 575-767 new housing units downtown each of the next five years.

Jackson said rent at the yet-to-be-named complex will be comparable to other Class A apartments in the area, including 225 Sycamore, River Vista Apartments and The National. According to Apartments.com, rent rates at 225 Sycamore range from $1,232 to $5,515 a month and rates at River Vista range from $1,058 to $2,735 a month. The National is too new for reliable rent data.

The proposed development sits just south of the Cargill Protein headquarters and a few blocks east of Intrust Bank Arena. The property, which Vantage Point began acquiring parcels of in 2020, has sat abandoned since 1954.

“There’s a lot of tracts downtown like that,” Jackson said. “I feel like we’ve taken some risks to step out to that area, kind of following Cargill’s lead. Cargill made a huge commitment to the city . . . when they came out and redid their headquarters building there, and they still had a lot of what I would call dilapidated buildings and structures around their site but I think they had faith that this would eventually happen, so kudos to them for their vision.”

Another important factor for Jackson is the impression he wants to leave on motorists who will be able to see the complex from the highway.

“When you drive by on Kellogg, whether you’re going to or from the airport — I always think about that because you have so many visitors coming into Wichita via the airport, and the impression and the image of downtown that they see, that they take away from Wichita when they go home, is very important,” Jackson said.

Vantage Point has developed a number of luxury apartment projects, including The Avante in northwest Wichita and the SunStone Apartment Homes in west Wichita and Andover.