When it opens later this year, Zach Molzer's $38 million conversion of the Aladdin, a historic yet abandoned 16-story hotel, will redefine who gets to live in downtown Kansas City, Missouri – and how.
As an apartment building, the Aladdin will offer the sort of "creative class" amenities you'd expect in a trendy New York complex but rarely find in the heartland. (Think: a dog washing station, a sauna, and an in-building coworking space and coffee bar.) Yet rents for the Aladdin's studio and one-bed units start at just $1,100 a month and cap out at $1,900, making them affordable for people who earn between 60 and 85 percent of the area's median income. When we met him onsite at the Aladdin this spring, Molzer told GPLetters that he wants the building to serve recent college grads, who want to enjoy everything their urban core has to offer but currently struggle to find places where they can afford to live on their own.
The Aladdin is, according to local reporters and politicians, part of a larger story of urban renewal within "the Paris of the Plains." Of a decades-long project to bring diverse culture and life back to a core gutted by a particularly bad mid-20th century suburban exodus, which has culminated in a wave of ambitious development over the last few years.
And Molzer, a Kansas City native and one of the most charismatic and digitally savvy developers you'll ever meet, is eager to tell that tale. In shortform video and punchy posts, pushed out to well over 700,000 social media followers, he doesn't just talk about the Aladdin's amenities. He also pumps the potential of Kansas City and the role he believes his projects will play in pushing it forward. "I am going to put Kansas City on the map," he recently Tweeted/Xed. "Not if, when."
His posts – bombastic, quippy, yet educational – have gone viral, especially over the last year. But Molzer acknowledges that many of his followers aren't necessarily interested in the arc of Kansas City and his thesis for the future of the urban core. They're captivated by his baby face.