A little over ten years ago, in the spring of 2016, Hammerhand Coffee was two weeks from opening its doors inside the Bedinger Building at 1 N. Water Street. The equipment was staged. The espresso machine was ready. Then, on the morning of May 3, 2016, the second floor of the century-old building gave way, taking a wall down onto Kansas Street with it. Nobody was hurt. The coffee shop wasn't so lucky. It spent the next decade bouncing between temporary locations, eventually landing at 249 West Mill Street, nowhere near the square it was originally supposed to anchor.
The lot at the corner of Kansas and Water has sat empty since. If you've lived in Liberty for any stretch of that decade, you've walked or driven past that fenced-off gap more times than you can count. It became part of the square's visual furniture, the missing tooth in an otherwise complete smile.
That's finally changing. But if you've been half-following the news on this project, the more useful thing to know isn't that construction is starting. It's that this is the fourth time in about a year that someone connected to the project has named a start date, and the reasons those dates kept slipping tell you more about how infill projects actually move than any single headline does.
What's actually rising there
Star Development, the Liberty-based firm behind the project, calls it Water Street Lofts. Ground floor commercial space, residential lofts above, and a restaurant patio on the corner facing the square. The price tag is $7.5 million. Project manager Matthew Iway told KSHB 41 he was in high school when the original building collapsed, which gives you a sense of how long this corner has been waiting.
Because the site sits inside Liberty's historic district, the design has been shaped almost as much by committee as by architect. Meeting records from the Historic District Review Commission show the level of detail involved: the project includes roughly 1,600 square feet of gathering space around the corner patio, top-floor windows are planned at about ten feet with nine-foot windows on the levels below, and the architects brought in physical samples of cornice, brick, stone, and awning fabric so the commission could weigh in on whether the materials fit the block. One architect who lives nearby told the commission the early concept didn't quite match the square yet. That kind of pushback is normal for this district, and it's part of why timelines here move slower than a typical build.
The city also cleared the way in March 2024 by approving demolition of the 1960 G.M. Peters Building next door at 11 N. Water, a structure the council decided didn't match the historic character of the block. Even the demolition had to answer to the same standard the new building does.
The dates that kept moving
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only catch one article about this project. The "start date" has been announced and missed multiple times.
| When it was said | What was promised | What actually happened |
|---|---|---|
| June 2025 | Star Development's goal was to break ground "next spring," with an 18-month build to follow | Spring 2026 came and went with no groundbreaking |
| July 2025 | A city council document listed construction starting February 2026, wrapping by mid-2027 | February passed with the lot still fenced |
| September 2025 | Iway told the city council he hoped to break ground in spring 2026, "assuming everything lines up" | It didn't, quite |
| August 2026 | Utility work is underway now, with foundations expected late September or early October | The most concrete date yet, four announcements in |
Iway has been candid about why. Broader economic conditions forced the team to adjust its original plans, and the site itself has thrown up what he's described as constant construction surprises, the kind that come with building on ground that held a century-old structure before it held a decade of nothing. Add the extra review layer that comes with any historic-district project, and a schedule that looked reasonable on paper in mid-2025 kept sliding through 2026.
None of that means the project isn't real. It means the completion target of late August 2027 should be read as a direction, not a promise. The signal worth watching isn't the next press release. It's the foundation pour, which is now expected within weeks.
Why a gift shop owner is betting on it before it's built
The most interesting part of this story isn't the building. It's what nearby business owners have already done in anticipation of it.
Cari Brogden owns Copper Canary, the gift shop just off the corner. She's expanding the business to include a coffee shop, a decision she's said directly ties to the coming development. She isn't waiting for the ribbon cutting to act. She's betting now that more residents living above street level and more foot traffic drawn by a finished corner will support a bigger footprint for her business.
"I think we're just excited to have a new friend across the way to look at," said Laci Waters, who works at Catfish + Tater Boutique nearby, describing what the finished building will mean for a square that's felt incomplete for a decade.
That's the mechanism worth understanding if you live or shop on the square. A single development doesn't just add a building. It changes what other business owners think is worth investing in, sometimes years before the first piece of drywall goes up. Brogden's expansion is a small, real example of that shift already happening around you.
What this looks like on the ground this fall
If you walk the square in the coming weeks, expect to see the practical, unglamorous stage of a project like this: utility lines being relocated and buried under the corner before any foundation work can start. Iway has described the site as a genuine infill challenge, hemmed in by existing sidewalks and storefronts on every side, which limits how crews can stage equipment and materials compared to building on open ground.
That's also, in plain terms, why projects like this move slower than a subdivision going up on undeveloped land at the edge of town. Every foot of ground has something already running through it, and every visible change to the block has to clear a design review meant to protect the character of a square that includes six historic districts and eight individually listed properties on the National Register of Historic Places.
What it actually means for the square
For most of the last decade, the corner of Kansas and Water has been a gap in an otherwise walkable, historic downtown. By the end of August 2027, on the current timeline, it's supposed to be lofts, ground-floor retail, and a restaurant patio facing the square. Hammerhand Coffee, the business that was supposed to open there in 2016, has permanently settled two blocks away on Mill Street and isn't coming back to this corner. What replaces its almost-opening is a different business entirely, one shaped by a decade of committee meetings, structural engineering reports, and a construction team learning what's actually buried under a hundred-year-old lot.
If you've watched that fence line for years without knowing what was actually supposed to go there, now you do. And if the changes happening on your own block ever have you wondering what they mean for your home's value, or you're simply curious what a property near a project like this is worth in today's market, Heather Brown offers a free home valuation for Liberty homeowners who want a clear answer, no pressure attached.
