For decades, housing experts, real-estate development leaders, and design professionals have understood the value of adaptive reuse for boosting housing production while preserving local history and architectural fabric. Yet this sector is evolving out of necessity. As the need for more homes becomes increasingly urgent nationwide and as preservationists and the public recognize the cultural value of buildings from the Mid-century Modern era and beyond, finding new retrofit candidates requires a wider lens than ever before. Everyone knows a grand old mill building can become a compelling new residential community. Can the same be said for the scores of more modest commercial buildings awaiting their next chapter?
In fact, creative design and building teams are proving that retrofit success stories are almost always possible—with smart planning and thoughtful solutions. A valuable example stands along Kansas City, Mo.’s storied Armour Boulevard: Interstate Flats is the adaptive reuse of a former corporate bakery headquarters into one of the city’s most unique and desirable new apartment communities. The 1952 building required a deliberate balance of restoring the old, repurposing the obsolete and carefully introducing the new. The elegant redevelopment illustrates the enduring benefits of adaptive reuse, as well as the best practices that are vital to success in retrofitting modernist structures.
A UNIQUELY DELICIOUS HISTORY
Nestled among Armour Boulevard’s grand 1920s apartment complexes, the seemingly modest 2-story brick building now known as Interstate Flats held a lofty status in its first life as headquarters for the Interstate Bakeries Corporation (IBC). By the early 1950s, this organization was well on its way to becoming the country’s largest baking enterprise, eventually owning iconic brands, including Hostess and Wonder Bread. With tens of thousands of employees nationwide producing Ho Hos, Twinkies and other beloved snacks, the Kansas City headquarters building functioned as a vital central hub, and the original footprint was expanded significantly in 1965 as a reflection of IBC’s success.
In a testament to the quality of the headquarters building’s original design, it served as the IBC headquarters for more than half a century, until a 2009 corporate relocation to Texas. After lying fallow for several years, in 2013, Mac Properties LLC purchased the building with an eye toward residential conversion. For Mac Properties, which owned and already had rehabilitated several early 20th-century apartment buildings nearby, this project not only offered a chance to expand its community revitalization efforts, but also a unique opportunity to adapt a historically significant building from the Modernist movement. With great proximity to downtown Kansas City, the location was particularly well-suited to housing.
THE RIGHT PROJECT TEAM
As any real-estate developer knows, a successful residential conversion depends on many factors and the project team is among the most important. To lead the 46,522-square-foot IBC headquarters transformation into Interstate Flats, Mac Properties’ real-estate development team at Silliman Group turned to El Dorado, an integrated architecture, urban design, curatorial, education and fabrication practice known for interdisciplinary thinking and a creative and agile approach to complex design challenges.
Working together with the owners and skilled partners, including historic consultant Rosin Preservation, El Dorado began with a savvy strategy. First, a successful application to the National Park Service resulted in the building’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This crucial move opened the door for state and federal historic tax credits, which dramatically enhanced the economic viability of this substantial project. Because a National Register listing in turn requires project teams to meet stringent historic-preservation guidelines, early stages of the design team’s work involved restoring the building exterior—including a large number of windows on the primary façade—to exacting standards.
This stage of the project also provided an ideal opportunity for El Dorado to utilize its in-house fabrication expertise; the architects designed, fabricated, and installed custom steel components that included sunscreens above the front door on the south and east façades. An homage to history and craft and an important element of El Dorado’s site-specific response to the original building fabric, these custom sunscreens were inspired by the pattern of a Mid-century brise-soleil that was removed due to its poor condition, resulting in an updated façade sensitive to the building’s history and meeting NPS landmarks criteria.
FROM CORPORATE HEART TO RESIDENTIAL HUB
Translating the layout of a large-scale workplace facility into an effective residential program can present a challenge under the most straightforward circumstances. It’s an especially complex task when original interior design elements are a key component of the building’s historic character and appeal. At Interstate Flats, the design team’s innovative repurposing of existing assets was critical to the project’s overall success, allowing the resulting apartment community to enjoy contemporary living while respecting some of the most unique aspects of the Mid-century Modern sensibility and aesthetic.
building’s history and meeting NPS landmarks criteria. PHOTO: El Dorado
Typical of an office building from the postwar era—think Mad Men—the majority of the property’s interior volume had originally operated as a series of flexible open-plan office suites. In each suite, a core of open workspace pools were surrounded by private offices defined by movable Hauserman partitions with aluminum frames, frosted glass and wood doors. Salvaging these vintage partitions became an important goal for the design team, which found a clever way to reuse them as interior walls within individual apartments alongside other retained historic components, such as existing light fixtures.
Reflecting El Dorado’s strategic approach to every aspect of the retrofit, these preserved glass partitions now serve double duty, creating a desirable retro vibe for tenants while filling a very contemporary need. Not only do they enhance daylight penetration deep into the residential units, but they also allow for a more flexible approach to the unit layouts themselves—for instance, enabling interior bedrooms, an
important benefit to the design team in a building where no two apartments have the same exact floor plan.
Even better, through this creative approach to unit mixtures and by incorporating residences into the building’s partially below-grade level, the project team was able to exceed the client’s pro-forma requirements and create an impressive 39 residential units. Although all are unique, perhaps the biggest showstoppers are two adjacent apartments in the area once occupied by Interstate Bakeries’ executive suite. This venue’s traditional wood paneling stood in stark contrast to the overall original interior design scheme. After an extended discussion between the client group and design team, the historic wood paneling was retained and incorporated as a signature element for these two special units.
Other noteworthy achievements in the successful adaptive reuse include a one-to-one parking ratio and the incorporation of tenant-focused amenities, including a courtyard, fitness center, common-area lounge and bicycle storage. In a particularly exciting transformation and example of recapturing square footage for end-user benefit, these amenity areas now sit in what was once the building’s central parking atrium—with different zones demarcated by a sensitively designed glazed wall installed behind structural posts at the building wall.
Upon completion, the project team found its creativity and dedication had been well placed, and Interstate Flats was fully leased almost immediately as Kansas City residents sought out the opportunity to live in such a unique, stylish and functional apartment community. A valuable case study in preserving and giving new life to Mid-century commercial facilities, Interstate Flats also highlights the enduring social and economic benefit of retrofitting existing buildings to address the ongoing need for multifamily housing—with the character and zest inherent in spaces with a past full of special stories. As the client Mac Properties states on its web page about the property, “The only thing cookie-cutter about Interstate Flats is its history.”
PHOTOS: Mike Sinclair unless otherwise noted
Retrofit Team
ARCHITECT: El Dorado
- Former Lead Partner: Doug Stockman
- Project Manager: Steve Salzer, AIA
- Project Architects: Jonathan Tramba and Ted Arendes, RA
- Fabricator: Chris Burk
- Designer: Nick Kratz
DEVELOPER: Mac Properties LLC and Silliman Group
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Centric Construction Group LLC
CIVIL ENGINEER: SK Design Group
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Bob D. Campbell & Co.
MEP ENGINEER: BGR Consulting Engineers, (816) 842-2800
HISTORIC CONSULTANT: Rosin Preservation
Materials
ALUMINUM STOREFRONTS: Tubelite
ALUMINUM WINDOWS: Win-Vent
WOOD INTERIOR DOORS: VT Industries
ELECTRONIC ACCESS DOOR HARDWARE: Miwa
COMPOSITE WOOD FLOORING: KemberLam
TILE CARPETING: J+J Flooring
QUARTZ COUNTERTOPS: Silestone by Cosentino
FAUCETS: Moen
