Downtown Streetcar study

Business Journal: KC Council proposes special district to help pay for streetcar

Meanwhile, architecture that is actually unique to Kansas City continues to crumble around us.  The Plaza is an important symbol of the city and increasingly an important employment center.  However, it’s the buildings scattered all over the city make our neighborhoods great places to live.  Imagine what could be done to save these truly unique pieces of Kansas City history if preservationists gave them even a fraction of the attention, energy, and resources they are devoting to the Plaza.

Holy Name Church

Holy Name Church
This incredible Gothic-style church at 23rd and Benton in the Washington Wheatley neighborhood is slated for demolition within weeks. Unfortunately the history of this church is buried deep in the city’s rarely-voiced racial history.  The church opened for business just in time for white flight from the city, leading it to become the one of the first integrated churches and ultimately one of the largest black Catholic churches. It also played a central role in the April 1968 race riots that erupted after the city’s botched reaction to the Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. The Holy Name is an incredible lost opportunity to link the city’s social historic, built environment, and architecture in one compelling story.

• Pitch: Holy Name Catholic Church and the MLK riots.
• National Trust for Historic Preservation: Learning from Washington Wheatley: African-American Heritage in Kansas City.
• Missouri State Archives: Reflection on the Kansas City Riot of 1968, Reverend David K. Fly (audio).

Cosby Hotel

Cosby Hotel
When this Library District building was on the verge of becoming yet another Downtown surface parking lot, it was a collection of Downtown residents, a Facebook group, and the KC Rag forum that led the charge to publicize the issue and pressure the City Council to give the building a reprieve.  The historic foundation came around to the cause embarrassingly late, almost too late for the building’s sake.

Colonnade Apartments

Colonnade Apartment Buildings
One of two architectural styles unique to Kansas City the Colonnade apartment houses, brick six-plexes featuring large balconies with prominent white columns. The 500 or so buildings remaining from the 1920s are still very popular with urban residents in Midtown, the East Side, and the Old Northeast. The apartments were uniquely designed for our local climate in an era before air conditioning and other modern conveniences. Unfortunately despite landmark status, many of the colonnades are crumbling from neglect or abandonment. More about colonnades.

Hyde Park Shirtwaist

Kansas City Shirtwaist Houses
The other uniquely local architectural style is the Kansas City Shirtwaist house, an adaptation of the American Foursquare style that generally features lap siding on top and stone or brick on the bottom, plus the traditional KC front porch.  Limestone shirtwaists are the ultimate in locally-sourced building materials - the stone was quarried on site from the house’s basement or from a nearby quarry. For example, the stone on many Midtown Shirtwaists came from what is now the popular Roanoke Park. These local gems dominate the housing stock in most urban core neighborhoods and are a favorite of long time residents and gentrifiers a like.  With no coordinated system to protect shirtwaists, many are lost to neglect and demolition every year.

Laugh-O-Gram studio

Walt Disney’s Laugh-o-Gram Studio
Not enough of us know that Walt Disney got his start here in Kansas City.  Mickey Mouse and modern animation was born in the Laugh-O-gram Studio at 31st and Forest, a lock east of Troost Avenue. Despite years of effort to preserve this building, it’s sad state is a big embarrassment for the community and its future is far from certain.

In a city with such a rich history, it’s not realistic to save everything.  It’s very important that the community and its preservationists make very wise choices about how best to use limited resources.  These days it seems the Historic Kansas City Foundation is playing the flamenco guitar while the Rome burns.

So the question is, were any KCMO tax dollars used in the CVA’s efforts to help Overland Park lure this convention from City? Is this yet another instance of the City shouldering the burden of funding a regional service only to have that investment be used against it? Unless the CVA completely separates staff, office space, computers, etc. for KCMO and non-KCMO work, the answer is probably yes.

Don’t expect the regional in-fighting to abate anytime soon. Kansas Governor-elect Sam Brokeback campaigned hard on jobs and listed as one of the few things on which he was willing to spend taxpayer money.  And don’t look to regional groups like the Chamber of Commerce, where President Jim Heeter fled to Mission Hills after a losing attempt to become KCMO Mayor, and where new Chairman Greg Graves commutes in from 177th Street way beyond the southern exurbs.

Oh, and they are also coming for zoo animals.  Just as they take our businesses, now they are taking our zoo – one animal at a time!

Get details and tickets here.

The upshot is that the building in an existing TIF district (Baltimore Place) and Rick Powell is at least two years behind his promised timeline for redeveloping it.  These two things mean that the City already has the authority to seize the building and give it to another developer like Adam Jones.  It’s just a matter of the City Council having the political will to do it.

Seizing the building would not only save an historic structure, it would send a message that developers who get big tax breaks are expected to be good stewards of the public money.

This is KC’s third showing on a Guy Fieri show this summer.  Earlier shows feature KC BBQ and Swagger in Waldo.