A St. Louis developer will make its entry into the Kansas City market by revisiting a $50 multifamily project where another builder left off in the Crossroads Arts District.

Lux Living plans to demolish a former Faultless Healthcare Linen industrial building at 1923-1945 Broadway and in its place build a five-story, 228-apartment building above a two-level underground parking garage with 209 stalls.

Those apartment and parking space counts are identical to those of a previous $52 million multifamily development by Opus Development Co. LLC.

Opus won City Council approval in February 2017 to build apartments in place of the 54,000-square-foot former Faultless building but ditched those plans earlier this year, returning the industrial structure to the market.

Lux Living intends to demolish this former Faultless Healthcare Linen building to make way for 228 apartments on the northeast corner of Broadway and 20th Street in Kansas City.

In its approval for Opus’ project, the city authorized as much as $40 million in industrial revenue bonds, effectively creating a 22-year set property tax schedule based on expected post-construction market value, plus a sales tax exemption on construction materials.

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Lux Living plans to pursue the same incentives for its development, CEO Victor Alston told the Kansas City Business Journal.

Alston said his group has signed an agreement to acquire the building, contingent on plan approval from the city. Staff have been “very supportive” of the new apartment proposal so far, he said, expressing hope that work could begin quickly in the new year, though he did not provide a specific planned construction schedule.

Documents submitted to the city in late October and uploaded last week to its development database show an apartment breakdown of 114 studios, averaging 540 square feet; 109 one-bedroom units, averaging 675 square feet; and five two-bedroom units, averaging 1,009 square feet.

Alston said these units will lease for $2 to $2.20 a square foot each month and include multiple distinct technological features, including smart locks, built-in Amazon Alexa functionality and speakers.

Lux Living representatives have watched the market for some time, irrespective of the Covid-19 pandemic, which nonetheless gave the developer an opportunity to jump in, Alston said.

“When changes like this happen in the marketplace … that allows us to take advantage of the situation and see if there’s a way to make the economics work, whereas in the past maybe it wouldn’t have worked as well,” he said.

And typically, when Lux Living enters a market, it doesn’t pursue just one project; indeed, Alston said his firm has its eye on projects in other city neighborhoods, beyond the Crossroads.

“We now have the opportunity to go after multiple projects in the Kansas City area,” he said.

The property’s former warehouse originally was part of a four-property portfolio Faultless Linen listed for sale in July 2015; the company later took the other three tracts off the market.