This 100-year-old downtown Kansas City hotel will become studios and 1-bedroom apartments

With entire floors now gutted and construction underway, a historic hotel in downtown Kansas City is headed toward a new life as a high-rise apartment building.

The development team behind the conversion of the former Aladdin Hotel, 1215 Wyandotte St., staged a “wallbreaking” with local leaders on the 16th floor Wednesday afternoon, knocking down a symbolic wall with sledgehammers as construction continues. The former hotel, which was built in 1925, was last under the Holiday Inn banner and closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The development group, led by area native Zach Molzer, is turning the old hotel into an apartment building with around 120 units, with studios and one-bedrooms, including 14 affordable units set aside for residents with lower incomes. The project will reflect an almost $40 million investment.

The Port Authority of Kansas City has signed off on incentives for the Aladdin project, including about $6.1 million in property tax exemptions over 25 years.

At the wall-breaking, Molzer invoked the century-long history of the Aladdin and the list of famous figures who stayed there: Mickey Mantle, Al Capone, Greta Garbo.

The plans call for preserving historic elements and flourishes of the building, which has numerous ornate features inside and out, and displaying objects from the hotel’s past, like old matchbooks and memorabilia from the hotel’s Zebra Lounge.

“If these walls could talk, can you imagine the stories that they’d be able to share?” Molzer said.

Already, crews discovered that about 30% of the original windows had been covered up, and the conversion project will bring back more natural light as units will feature an average of six windows each.

The Aladdin KC will feature various amenities, such as a sauna, a library lounge, a coffee and snack bar, a co-working space, a fitness center, a spa room and a sauna. The building will also feature a cocktail lounge.

Mayor Quinton Lucas called the Aladdin a centerpiece of downtown.

“The thing about downtown Kansas City, and how we have abandoned and rebuilt and are rebuilding even more, is that pretty much regardless of your age, you remember a time in Kansas City when we turned our back on it,” he said.

Now, Lucas said, the discussion is about housing, excitement and energy and people from all walks of life being attracted to downtown.

Crispin Rea, City Council member for the Fourth District at-large, said the Aladdin project checks the boxes for development he likes to support: filling an unproductive vacant building with people who will call the city home; preserving history; increasing density downtown; and joining the momentum of other investments, including the ongoing reconstruction of Barney Allis Plaza across the street.

Demolition inside the Aladdin began in December 2024 and the building could re-open in May 2026.