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Wichita City Council Moves Forward On Developments In Delano, College Hill

Uptown Landing Group
A rendering of the proposed development on Victor Place near Hillside and Douglas.

Wichita City Council members on Tuesday approved two mixed-use developments totaling $65 million dollars.

The council unanimously approved developer Uptown Landing’s proposal for a site near Hillside and Douglas. The group will start construction on the commercial and residential space next year, with an expected completion date of March 2020.

“This has been a vacant piece of land in the College Hill community for a number of years," council member Lavonta Williams said. "College Hill residents are very, very anxious to see this new development going to their community."

Credit wichita.gov
A map of the Delano Catalyst Site.

But the council was divided on a proposal for a $45 million mixed-use building at the Delano Catalyst Site on the west bank of the Arkansas river. The development will include apartments, commercial space and hotel rooms.

The developers, EPC Real Estate Group, are also asking the city to establish a pay-as-you-go Tax Increment Finance district only for the site to pay for a parking lot and the development of greenway space.

Some council members questioned whether it’s the best use of the site. Jeff Blubaugh said the city only just announced the new downtown Hilton Garden Inn less than a mile away.

“I know a lot of the conversations we had is that, you guys, we’re concerned about the over-saturation of hotels downtown," he said.

Council members approved the Delano Catalyst Site project 4-3. Construction will begin in August.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.