Re: East Side Development
Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:35 pm
For decades a dividing line, Troost Avenue in Kansas City, Mo., sees new hope
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna918851
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna918851
Reed’s constituents are not so jazzed, though, about the surprise aspect of the city’s plan to take $3 million of the money for 18th & Vine from the only $10 million a year in sales tax revenue that voters approved for the East Side.
And why even have a board to oversee how that money’s going to be spent if the city is planning how to use it without even consulting members?
Reed called the completely justified criticism he was hearing from the advocacy group “a gross misrepresentation” of reality.
Maaaybe not the best analogy to use right nowYou just aren’t getting a clear picture, he told them. Same as when he was a kid, he had to move the TV antenna this way and that to get better reception. Then, when he could see his show at last, he’d say, “God bless Bill Cosby!”
“Because I liked that show,” he explained, when no one even smiled at his analogy.
You thought it was something else? I thought everyone knew when they voted it was a slush fund.flyingember wrote: ↑Mon Oct 15, 2018 4:34 pm That article makes the new sales tax sound like the Go Bond. Something for any pet project that comes up.
https://www.flatlandkc.org/who-will-lea ... ces-mayor/...
So today, Blue Valley is one of Kansas City’s most distressed (and overlooked) neighborhoods.
“We have been put on the backburner a lot,” said Dale Walker, 78, president of the Blue Valley Neighborhood Association.
So Kansas City PBS is zeroing in on Blue Valley and the surrounding area for its coverage of what promises to be a transformative election for the city this year. In June, voters will elect a new mayor and a slew of new city council members. Many of the mayoral candidates are current council members representing districts in and around Blue Valley.
Drilling down to a specific neighborhood spotlights issues that seem intractable and overwhelming in the abstract, such as when people ask how the city can revitalize the East Side.
Our coverage will focus on blight, street crime and economic development, using Blue Valley as something of a testing ground. Perhaps solutions hatched there can work elsewhere — and conversely, can answers in other neighborhoods work in Blue Valley?
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'https://www.startlandnews.com/2019/03/k ... -prospect/Two metro locations and buckets of community support later, Kiddie Depot Learning Center — which offers round-the-clock care and community pre-school — is soon expected to begin work on a $4 million childcare and learning facility on Prospect, McCant said.
“I’ve got over 400 children on the waiting list. So the market is demanding that we build a new facility. [To make it happen] we were approved by the one-eighth-cent sales tax initiative of Kansas City, received some grant funding,” he explained.
Breaking ground in May, the new Kiddie Depot Learning Center will double as the site of a pediatric clinic — providing a space for parents to conveniently access routine check-ups and urgent care needs, McCant added.
“My heart is always for the less fortunate and underserved, underprivileged. … There’s so many services that are needed. So we wanted to be one of the stakeholders that brought some of those additional services back [to the urban core],” he said.
Easy access to medical care won’t only benefit Kansas City kids, it could help parents hold jobs, McCant hypothesized.
“One of the challenges that the parents have is when a child needs shot records [or] they get sick, they have to go downtown to Truman Medical Center, Children’s Mercy — which basically takes a day … it causes them to take a day off,” he said. “There could be an occurrence that comes along with that in addition to missing pay.”
Once it’s completed, McCant also hopes to roll out computer science and coding classes at the learning center — a way of preparing older kids for a modern workforce, he said.
From McCant’s perspective, the city’s urban core is the only area in Kansas City left to be developed. Enhanced access to education in the area could be the most significant step toward rewriting the future east of Troost, he said.
“It is becoming a multiplex of different ethnicities — which that’s what is needed in the urban core. It shouldn’t be all black. It takes us all, you know what I mean? It takes all of us to really bring about the comprehensive development and the type of lifestyle that incubates,” McCant said of ongoing work to heal division felt within the urban core.
Not only has providing round-the-clock care cultivated a safer community for kids, its could serve as a means to strengthen Kansas City’s workforce, McCant said.
“When the word spread to the marketplace that we were that service [meeting parents halfway,] then we went and partnered with a few employers,” he said of growing opportunities for collaboration.
As a result, several local employers have partnered with Kiddie Depot Learning Center, allowing the learning center’s class rosters to grow considerably — a method of community building McCant is hopeful to see grow as he looks toward the launch of the new facility, he said.
https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/k ... urban-core...
Kansas City’s Director of Neighborhood and Housing Services John Wood told 41 Action News "that area overall has lost about 33 percent of its households" during the last three decades "as well as about 33 percent of the population.”
The city wants to bring people back to those neighborhoods and even allocated up $375,000 to help keep the grocery store going.
The goal is to attract 5,000 new households to the neighborhood through a mix of new construction and rehabilitation.
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I do go elsewhere to shop, but if I need something in a pinch I'll go to SunFresh - two blocks versus a 20-30 minute r/t drive to Roeland Park Price Chopper.
I would agree with that assessment on demand for amenities first.
Micro living is happening on many levels and environments, including dignified cheap to relatively highish end - micro apts, tiny homes, RV/trailer 'condos', beds in co-working spaces, living/working the day out of a backpack, etc.
On the flipside of micro living, a friend also does the RV roaming thing while working on the road (like Aerostream but all fiberglass), a growing trend lately. It's getting so high end some trailers are being marketed as 'mobile condos' - very nice yet affordable ones for $40K-$100K on up, even $25K nicer than you'd think. Upper end RV parks are popping up around country with higher end amenities, not your traditional 'trailer park'. One of these might also work just off Troost. Some of the cheaper ones don't allow more than a 1-3 month stay to avoid becoming a 'trailer park'.
While KC metro is relatively cheap for raising a family, KCMO could stand out more by pursuing being on the forefront of micro living and marketing the city as such catering to every type of micro lifestyle. Urban to rural all within city limits, not many cities can do that. Not aware of any city specifically building up a reputation for it. Would tie in well with free bus system if we can make that happen. When you live urban small, the city surroundings are your home (ideally walkable or accessed via free transit) - park is your backyard, bookstore/library is your den, coffee shop is your patio, etc.