Redevelopment of a historic downtown district into a new mixed-use community
Quality Hill in Kansas City, Missouri, transformed a deteriorating downtown historic district into mixed-income housing and retail to revitalize the neighborhood. Completed in 1985, the development spans four and a half blocks and includes the renovation of 13 historic buildings and the addition ten new buildings that together provide 363 low- and moderate-income apartments and 52,400 square feet of office and commercial space. The largest adaptive reuse project in the city’s history, Quality Hill helped restore the vitality of the once-thriving district by providing the first downtown housing development in over half a century.
Quality Hill reuses a large number of derelict historic buildings and puts compatible new structures close by, managing to create a coherent neighborhood out of what had become a wasteland.
1987 Selection Committee
Quality Hill is the result of an innovative partnership between the city, a St. Louis-based private developer, and local businesses and foundations—and the first public-private partnership to succeed in the city’s history. The engagement of a wide variety of public and private participants brought the community together in a process that sparked reinvestment in the central business district while preserving the unique character of the Quality Hill neighborhood.