OFFICIAL: Port Authority Riverfront Project

Issues concerning Downtown as described by the Downtown Council. River to 31st Street, I-35 to Bruce R. Watkins.
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OFFICIAL: Port Authority Riverfront Project

Post by wonk »

I received the below invitation:

The Port Authority has a vision to transform the 55-acres of waterfront property along the Missouri River into a neighborhood development and to establish Richard L Berkley Park as a regional destination. To achieve this vision, the Port Authority is seeking public input and connecting with the community at each step of the project. 

The Port Authority of Kansas City invites you to participate in a public forum on the Missouri Riverfront Development. Please join others at one of the first of three public meetings on the development of the Riverfront.

We seek your input throughout this project in order to effectively shape the Riverfront plan and ensure compatibility with adjoining neighborhoods and development plans. This first meeting will provide an overview of the current development situation and the preliminary site plan.


6:00-7:30 p.m., Wednesday, January 18th
Southtown Council
6814 Troost Avenue
Kansas City, MO 64131

OR

6:00-7:30p.m., Thursday, January 19th
Northland Neighborhoods, Inc.
5312 NE Chouteau Trafficway
Kansas City, MO 64119


We look forward to seeing you at the first meeting as we move forward with the planning and development of the Kansas City Riverfront. If you have specific questions prior to the meeting, please contact Pat Sterrett, Executive Director of the Port Authority at psterrett@edckc.com or 816-691-2115.   
Last edited by trailerkid on Thu Mar 23, 2006 5:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by staubio »

If they are interested in how this will fit with adjacent neighborhoods, why are they holding the meetings nowhere near adjacent neighborhoods?
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by wonk »

It looks like they are holding meetings in central North and South locations. I know they've been before the Columbus Park and Downtown Neighborhood Associations a few times already.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by dangerboy »

^Yeah they've already been meeting with Columbus Park and DNA, these seem to be bigger city-wide forums.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by staubio »

dangerboy wrote: ^Yeah they've already been meeting with Columbus Park and DNA, these seem to be bigger city-wide forums.
They have done a presentation, but I wouldn't call it a forum.  Nobody was soliciting feedback.  Oh, well, I'll try to attend one of these.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by DaveKCMO »

nothing on their website...

http://www.kcportauthority.org/
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by wonk »

Their newsletter that was in the Biz Journal in December said a new web site is going up early '06...
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by DaveKCMO »

good meeting tonight at the southtown council center. basically, they presented the current plan and then broke participants in to three groups to talk about current views on the park and amenities you'd like to see added. one of the most common themes seemed to be the uninviting nature of the park, how it's still disconnected from the river itself and its surroundings, and accessibility. lots of ideas for amenities: shelters, fountains, varying the landscape, wi-fi, bike rental, cafes, pedestrian bridge across the river, playground, etc. lots of disagreement about how to address parking (mass transit/density vs. car convenience).

i highly suggest participating in these forums. whether or not the developers and the port authority listen, it's a good opportunity to meet neighbors, talk in person about many issues we discuss here, and see the big wigs in person (dick berkeley himself was there to participate!).

as an aside, i added a note on a comment card about the planned residential architecture (wasn't a formal topic for the evening) to revive the colonnade style buildings that are unique to KC. thought that would be something the PA or council probably hadn't brought up.

anyone else attend?
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by staubio »

DaveKCMO wrote: good meeting tonight at the southtown council center. basically, they presented the current plan and then broke participants in to three groups to talk about current views on the park and amenities you'd like to see added. one of the most common themes seemed to be the uninviting nature of the park, how it's still disconnected from the river itself and its surroundings, and accessibility. lots of ideas for amenities: shelters, fountains, varying the landscape, wi-fi, bike rental, cafes, pedestrian bridge across the river, playground, etc. lots of disagreement about how to address parking (mass transit/density vs. car convenience).

i highly suggest participating in these forums. whether or not the developers and the port authority listen, it's a good opportunity to meet neighbors, talk in person about many issues we discuss here, and see the big wigs in person (dick berkeley himself was there to participate!).

as an aside, i added a note on a comment card about the planned residential architecture (wasn't a formal topic for the evening) to revive the colonnade style buildings that are unique to KC. thought that would be something the PA or council probably hadn't brought up.

anyone else attend?
I was there, as was Dangerboy.  I was the loudmouth spokesperson for group 2. :-)
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by KCPowercat »

I caught like 3 seconds on the news about it....all I heard was condos and then they interviewed somebody running at the park.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by dangerboy »

Y'all should go to the Northland meeting tonight if you can.  The planners and consultants almost outnumbered the regular folk, few of whom were from the neighborhoods adjacent to the park.

Like everything in KC, parking was the biggest concern.  I'll agree the current parking situation is kindof sad, but there was still the regular blue hair contingent that was shocked (shocked!) at the idea of parking offsite and taking a shuttle for one of the big festivals.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by DaveKCMO »

staubio wrote:I was the loudmouth spokesperson for group 2.
nice to put a face with the (screen)name, staubio. i was the one who chimed in at your 8th comment about parking. good presentation! i was in group 1, but didn't present. so were you in the group with berkeley? how was that? seems like it'd be weird to have people bashing a park that has your name all over it. i would have been like "beotches, i RAN this town!".

dangerboy, what group were you in?
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by dangerboy »

^same group as staubio.  We didn't have Berkley, but we did have his associate who spoke about the ad hoc group that wants more parking and less noise...
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

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dangerboy wrote: ^same group as staubio.  We didn't have Berkley, but we did have his associate who spoke about the ad hoc group that wants more parking and less noise...
Yeah, we have some real winners. 

The presentation outlined the great things about great parks in other cities.  Finally, I got fed up about all of the people bringing up parking and asked where people park in Central Park. 

...and then some heads exploded and there was blue hair everywhere.

One of the people in our group was from Belton and had lots of suggestions on where to put parking lots.  Most of them were content with destroying the park to make it convenient for the one time a decade they'll attend an event there.

The "counter proposal" supported isolating the neighborhood from the park to deal with noise and it advocated lots of parking.  Old school was out in force.

The only thing that was new to me in the plan presentation was the proposal to move Riverfront Dr south a bit, so a local street would run between the development and the park.  Supposedly Riverfront Dr is slated to be 4 lanes.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by dangerboy »

staubio wrote:The only thing that was new to me in the plan presentation was the proposal to move Riverfront Dr south a bit, so a local street would run between the development and the park.  Supposedly Riverfront Dr is slated to be 4 lanes.
I like that idea a lot. It makes for a local street between the neighborhood and the park, and shifts the commuter or pass-through traffic to the very south edge of the new neighborhood.  They already have the right of way reserved to make the current Riverfront Drive four lanes, and add a twin to the Grand Ave. Viaduct.  It's part of making the Front Street corridor four lanes all the way from Downtown to I-435, where it will eventually hook up with the Lewis and Clark Expressway comining in from Independence.

There was also an option presented to change the shape of the park so that the middle of it bowed out to the south.  This would give the neighborhood a crescent shape that would wrap around part of the park.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by kard »

I went to tonight's meeting.  I guess I wasn't reading very closely to the messages here; I totally missed the "we're going to turn this hunk of land in to a neighborhood" part instead of just making a more usable riverfront "park".

Plans for the 55 acres:
Mixed use/mixed income housing and office space
  1200 Condo/Townhouse units
      some ranging $150-200k
      majority ranging from $200-300k
      some ranging >$300k
  80,000 sq feet of retail
  250,000 sq feet of office space
  1 billion parking spaces (just kidding, although the blue-haired lady was back and said "We in Kansas City expect lots of parking, and we expect it free/cheap!"  Then she said the park was too small and that it needed to be bigger, which I didn't understand.)

They mentioned something about pedestrian and vehicular links into Columbus Park, but it sounded like something the developers wanted to do instead of something they'd been asked to do (I say that, because I got good vibes from these guys.  Not so much from some other folks.).  Like dangerboy was saying, the "other" (recommended?) option was to change the shape of things in to more of a crescent and change Riverfront Drive from one large 4-laner in to two smaller streets creating a more interactive route and averting the potential game of Frogger when crossing to the park.

Development is expected to start in 12 - 18 months and is being done by a company named Forest City.

Council Members John Fairfield and Charles Eddy were there, running for office, saying how great this would be.  Fairfield got on a little light rail soapbox towards the end, saying how he envisions this being a stop on "a future light rail line".

All-in-all it was interesting.  They promised to have details of these meetings and the project on their site, of which they said they have a new one:  http://www.kcportauthority.com/

The next meetings are scheduled for Feb. 8th and 9th.  I highly recommend going.  I'm thinking then we'll be able to see then if they listened to what folks were saying or if they just held these to hear themselves talk.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by KCPowercat »

I for one don't think this area will work with residential but hey, what do I know?
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by trailerkid »

KCPowercat wrote: I for one don't think this area will work with residential but hey, what do I know?
It's similar to the East Village in terms of scope. Why do you say they won't draw residential? If Forrest City puts together a development that is easily linked to other downtown 'hoods and attractions as well as one that is pleasing to the eye-- it'll succeed in drawing potential residents.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by dangerboy »

I can understand the skepticism at creating viable real neighborhood. It's a physically isolated site.  Success will depend on attracting a good range of retail and services, plus connecting it to Columbus Park and the River Market.

They are planning on two connections to Columbus Park: Lydia Street and then either Harrison or Campbell Streets.  Both need good bike/ped accomodations in addition to carrying automobile traffic.  Also important will be a bike/ped lane on a twin span for the Grand Blvd. viaduct and finally connecting the Riverfront Heritage Trail under the HOA bridge.
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Re: Port Authority Hosting Public Meetings on Riverfront Jan 18 an 19

Post by DaveKCMO »

stapleton, stapleton, stapleton... that project has total cache. the only available *natural* waterfront view in town (fake JOCO and JACKO lakes don't count for me). next door to downtown *and* a casino. i don't see how it *won't* sell.

...unless, they don't address the dog food plant across the way and the amenities in the park (fountains! piers! cafes!).
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