KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Oak Place Apartments at the University of Missouri - Kansas City will be demolished less than 15 years after opening.
In an email to the UMKC community on Wednesday, UMKC Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal said university officials have decided to demolish both wings of the apartments.
In March 2018, nearly 200 UMKC students were forced to move out of Oak Place after the school found significant plumbing and mold issues in some of the apartments.
At the time, the apartments were only 10 years old, prompting the university to file a lawsuit against the companies that worked on the building
In Wednesday’s email to the UMKC community, Agrawal said the university had reached a settlement with its insurance carriers earlier in March, but “other litigation continues to move forward.”
While he said that repairing the apartments would have been preferable, “ongoing inspections related to the lawsuit revealed even more extensive damage than previously known.”
Also in the email, Agrawal said the demolition time frame is this summer.
Both housing wings and the retail space will be torn down, according to the letter, but the parking garage will stay.
Agrawal said in the announcement that he authorized a “campus student housing study” to determine “current and future demands for affordable student housing.”
The university, he said, also will take into consideration city plans to extend the Kansas City Streetcar.
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