‘Put through the wringer’: TikTok celeb turns historic KC church into $3M wedding venue

The crystal chandeliers are up, the old floors are gone. What was once the historic church’s heavy dark wood sanctuary now shines in satin white.

Outside, on Thursday night, a new wrought iron gate, scrolled with the initials “MA,” was swung open to greet friends and family for the grand opening weekend in Westport of Melrose Abbey — a $3 million wedding and event venue that, to hear developer Johnny Youssef describe it, has been the most expensive, exhausting and obstacle-strewn project that he and his wife, Abbey, have ever undertaken.

“Knowing what we know now, would we do it again? No,” said Youssef.

A public open house was set for Friday night for some 400 people who acquired free tickets.

“Johnny, poor guy,” Abbey Youssef said, “was really put through the wringer on this one.”

That is not to say that the Kansas City couple is not proud of the outcome. The church is the couple’s first commercial project. Youseff’s 133,000 TikTok followers and 130,000 Instagram followers know him mostly for his stylish ability to transform beleaguered houses for flipping or rental.

“It turned out better than we dreamed,” Abbey Youssef said of the church. Some 40 weddings have been booked so far into 2025, with the venue’s rental price ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, depending on the day.

“I’m proud of what we have done,” Youssef said.

Starting in August 2022, the Youssefs all but gutted the 102-year-old former Broadway Baptist Church. For a decade, it had sat empty and unused at Broadway Boulevard and 39th Terrace. They bought it for $700,000 and had hoped to finish the project for another $700,000.

Instead, Johnny Youssef estimates it cost at least $3 million. Part of the project, but still unfinished, are four hotel rooms at the rear of the church for wedding guests. He expects to finish them before year’s end.

Over nearly two years of construction, the Youssefs faced continued hurdles, from escalating costs to repeated theft and vandalism to neighbors’ complaints. Air conditioning units were stolen as were construction materials. On Thursday morning, the Youssefs had just finished removing graffiti from the church’s limestone for the umpteenth time (another reason for the wrought iron fence).

Although the church’s sanctuary can hold as many as 600 people, neighbors who were worried about limited parking have required the Youssefs, at this point, to book weddings of no more than 240 people, limiting the scope of their business.

Meanwhile, to help subsidize the church project, the Youssefs paid $400,000 at a bank sale for a signature property in Kansas City that they had hoped to flip.

At 6,200 square feet and with six bedrooms, The “Rockhill Clubhouse” is a single-family residence that was built circa 1902 at 610 E. Emanuel Cleaver II Blvd. It is part of the affluent Rockhill neighborhood and sits just to the east of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s rolling lawn. Constructed by William Rockhill Nelson, the late founder of The Kansas City Star, the house features a second floor solarium whose glass windows span the length of the home.

Youssef’s plan has been to gut and completely renovate the house, modernize it and sell it for $1 million to $1.3 million, using the difference to underwrite the church project. Construction is still ongoing. The home has also been broken into four times, including once in which a vandal slathered gallons of paint across its finished floors and walls.

This week, a reckless driver on Cleaver Boulevard jumped the curb, crashing into and toppling a large section of the stacked limestone wall and its wrought iron fence. The driver was uninsured and Youssef’s homeowner’s insurance won’t cover it because the wall is not part of the dwelling.

Youssef said that if he gets $1.1 million for the home he will essentially break even.

“I just want to sell it, take my losses, and get out of it,” he said.

Although both projects have historic value, Youssef noted that neither qualified to receive historic tax credits because of his extensive modern remodels.

“The huge lesson — and it’s not a good lesson — is how hard it is, what an uphill battle it can be, to come to Kansas City to say, ‘I want to fix something that has historical value,’” Youssef said. “I would have loved it if the city offered some kind of help.

“I can understand why you have a busy city like Kansas City, with beautiful buildings left in the middle of it, and no one willing to fix them up.”

On Thursday evening, Faith Connelly, 28, and Andrew Martin, 29, of Kansas City were among several couples who booked the venue for their wedding while it was still under construction. But they’d been following its progression on social media.

“They’d hardly started anything,” Martin said. Their wedding is planned for New Year’s Eve.

“They’d just finished plumbing. It was a compete shell,” Connelly said. But it was the sanctuary that sold them.

“I think we just came in. We walked into this room. Even thought there was really not much done at all, it just took your breath away. … I mean we wanted something that felt really intimate, but also that felt very timeless and classic.”

More than the sanctuary, the space includes a groom’s suite, a bride’s suite. The ground floor has been renovated as a modern reception area.

Maiya Reese, 27, of Kansas City and fiancé Matt Waller are set to be married in November. Waller’s mother discovered the venue over social media and photos to her future daughter-in-law. Reese, living in Dallas, sent them to her mother back in Independence.

“She’s like, ‘Mom, we’ve got to look at this place,” said her mother, Elaine Henderson. “We FaceTimed her on our first time here. There was still construction going on. We couldn’t even go to the reception hall because it was torn up. The chandeliers weren’t up.

“Then, when they came home for an engagement party, she just fell in love with it.”

On Thursday evening, Henderson was at Melrose Abbey showing Reese the completed venue over her phone.

“I think it’s beautiful,” Reese said over the phone from Dallas. “I think it’s elegant, sophisticated. I feel like it’s very up-to-date.”

“I think the bridal suite is what did it for her,” her mother said.