City Council voted to approve a development plan on Thursday that will bring a 256-unit apartment complex to Westport.
The complex will be built at the site of the Bank of America building and parking lot at Broadway & Westport Road and will be overseen by Opus Development Group.
On Thursday, City Council voted 8-2 to approve the plan.
However, several neighborhood groups and residents have openly opposed the measure.
Mary Jo Draper, who has lived near Westport for years, worried about the impact of the project on the area.
"That unique sense of character that people feel in Westport is something that's an asset to Kansas Citians," she explained. "Once the city has allowed this developer to build a six-story building here, everybody is going to want to build a six-story building."
With Westport being a place known for local businesses and bars, Draper said adding a big apartment complex to the heart of the area could change the popular spot.
"If we build a six-story building on this corner, the scale is going to be massive," she explained. "[The local charm] is going to start going away and be replaced by large buildings and national shops."
The development project has also found plenty of support.
City Councilwoman Jolie Justus said with Kansas City seeing a possible Streetcar expansion and new KCI terminal in the years ahead, the apartment complex was another sign of a growing city moving into the future.
"Kansas City is on the rise," she explained. "People want to live here, people want to work here, and I look forward to more of this type of development."
Justus said the apartment complex would also likely add much more to Westport than the current site.
"[The current site] is primarily surface parking lots," she said. "This is going to bring probably about 250 new residents into Westport and I just think that's a good thing for Midtown."
With Westport likely to see big changes in the coming years, Draper hoped city leaders would work more with neighbors in the future.
"I think it's an issue of 'what do we all want to see Westport become?' I think that we're capable of having that conversation," she explained. "I want to encourage the city to let everybody that lives here and cares about this area to have a voice in deciding what it should be."
Justus said groundbreaking for the project was still to be determined, but it could possibly happen as early as later this year.
