Wall Street Journal ponders luxury living in urban Kansas City, with an odd sense of downtown

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It’s been a big week for East Coast establishment media exploring civilization in flyover country.

Yesterday, The New York Times dropped a lengthy tome about this year’s wacky Kansas legislative session and how it went on far too long. Wichita House member Gene Suellentrop’s nephew, normally a video-game writer, penned the story in the first person. It’s not especially revelatory to those who have watched the sausage-making in Topeka over the past year, but it’s well-written and thoughtful.

Then today, The Wall Street Journal’s real-estate section examines luxury living in Kansas City’s central core. The overall gist of the piece: As in Pittsburgh and Cleveland and plenty of other places, young professionals and empty-nesters with money to spend in Kansas City are opting to live in tony downtown dwellings.

Again, it’s nothing terribly new to local readers, but it highlights the growing appeal of living closer to the city’s center. 

One example: Local architect Jay Tomlinson’s purchase and rehab of a previously run-down two-story building along Walnut just south of Truman Road in the Crossroads Art District. Tomlinson refashioned the building just down the street from the firm where he works into six apartment units that rent for up to $1,600 a month. He added a third floor to the building: a penthouse for himself and his wife.

Not mentioned in the story is that Tomlinson’s project, like most luxury downtown residences, received a tax break from a city agency.

The story has a squishy definition of downtown. While most see downtown Kansas City bound by the Missouri River to 31st Street and between Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 71, the WSJ piece seems to lump the Country Club Plaza-area neighborhoods into the urban core.

The piece highlights a Sprint executive’s purchase of a Sunset Hill home for $2.7 million under the headline “Luxury Living in Downtown Kansas City.”

Sunset Hill is unquestionably luxurious by anyone’s definition. But downtown? Not so much.