The city has chimed in for the first time on the proposed high-rise development that would replace The Crossing, Yello Sub and a hair salon at 12th and Indiana streets.

And from a first glance, staffers say the condo-laden building just wouldn’t fit.

Kansas University graduate students Doug Faltermeier, Olathe, left, and Kirstie Duncan, Fenton, Mo., eat lunch with Matt Shepherd, Olathe freshman, front right, and Dennis Bell, Olathe senior, to Bell's right, Tuesday afternoon at Yello Sub, 624 W. 12th St.

“The scale for the proposed structure is too large for the lot and the area,” staffers wrote in a Historic Resources Commission report.

The report was given to commissioners before their Aug. 17 meeting and states, among other things, that the building wouldn’t fit the neighborhood and would destroy the historic integrity of nearby structures. It also said demolition at the site may not be possible.

Manhattan developer and attorney Robert Pottroff, along with incite Design Studio of Lenexa, proposed in June to demolish the buildings that for years have harbored The Crossing and Yello Sub and replace them with an 80-foot-tall, four-floor, mixed-use tower.

Pottroff owns The Crossing building and surrounding property, and Yello Sub building owner Jeff Morrow has signed off on the project.

The tower would hold 15 condominiums plus a coffee shop, deli, restaurant and hair salon, city records show – basically replacing all of the existing businesses save The Crossing, a popular bar just off the Kansas University campus.

But in the report, city staffers advised commissioners that the proposed building would “encroach upon, damage or destroy the listed historic property and its environs.”

Those environs included the Yello Sub and Crossing buildings themselves – although the report admitted the buildings had changed from their original state – another house at 1142 Ind., the Hancock Historic District and the Snow House at 706 W. 12th St.

Both the Hancock district, along 12th Street from Oread Avenue to Mississippi Street, and Snow House are on the National Register of Historic Places.

State historic guidelines dictate what a new development near a historic site can and can’t involve. Demolishing structures near a historic district generally is prohibited, and any new buildings must be comparable in scale, height, facade, window patterns and other features.

The report states the proposed building failed to meet many of those standards.

Commission member Jay Antle said although he’s been on the commission for only a little more than a year, he’s never seen a project of this scale that was so far from complying with historic standards.

“The overall massing of the structure seemed inappropriate,” Antle said. “At the end of the boulevard there, it just doesn’t work.”

Antle said many commissioners took issue with the overall “commercial” feel – for example, the large amount of office-style glass that would surround the building.

But rather than reject the development outright at the Aug. 17 meeting, Antle and other commissioners tabled the issue to allow developers time to retool their proposal and resubmit it, likely at next month’s meeting.

For the developers at incite Design Studio, members of the Oread Neighborhood Assn. will help mold how their plans will change, developer Randy Bartel said.

Bartel and other developers will meet with neighborhood residents Saturday to hash out plans.

“Obviously, their opinion is going to count greatly,” he said.

But Bartel said many of the design concerns didn’t come as a shock. In preliminary meetings, city staffers indicated the project wouldn’t fly as is, Bartel said, so they are more than prepared to alter their original plans.

“We don’t want to tear anything down that’s going to add to the neighborhood,” he said. “We understand this is the beginning of a process.”