KCRag Forum

chaglang wrote:Well said, Pash. I don't want to understate the impact of the streetcar, but the change in mindset at City Hall seems to be pretty limited if the topic isn't the streetcar itself. There's still a lack of understanding of what an urban development looks like. The value of the existing street grid is poorly understood. Bike/ped facilities are still absurdly difficult to implement because of a reluctance to make incremental improvements and a SOP of instead waiting years for a moonshot solution to be funded. Not to make this a catch-all whine, but it often feels like the city lacks the ability to take the success of the streetcar and use that knowledge to challenge other assumptions it makes about urban form. To me, the reaction to this Mill Street project ("They really let you do that!?" "How do I get that approved on X street?!") belies how little the city has changed in practice.

it's important to separate stakeholders into the following camps (who all can behave differently and hold differing levels of influence on what gets built and when):

- developers
- public works
- city planning
- neighbors

they rarely align like they did with streetcar, but when they all do really good things can happen (or when two+ align and run roughshod over the holdouts).

most of the projects (that aren't streetcar) that do that are small (angled parking) or not urban (northland costco with TIF), or one of those stakeholders is simply not present or needed (riverfront).

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pash wrote: And if you believe (as I do) that the biggest part of the problem is ignorance that a problem exists, you certainly can't discount the value of the streetcar in getting city leaders and bureaucrats themselves out onto the streets more. They're ignorant, but probably not blind.

...and I hope that super low cost and effort projects like the Mill Street project are allowed to happen all over our city to show the potential of many of our ROWs.

The big change would be to redo how the city determines what to do.

The city has put in bike lanes on a 40mph road and refuses to lower the speed limit from 40mph because the road is designated a certain way.

It also has a standard that things don't change until something bad happens. I've had trouble getting stop signs because there hadn't been enough accidents there.

Go up a corridor like N. Oak and you can see what setting a road by a designation and not what would serve people best does.

Like we need better zoning and changed setback requirements, a major focus is to stop changing things street by street but get a mass change of what a street is citywide. We can't put bike lanes everywhere but if the city decides that no street with homes on it should be on a street over 25mph and change signs out over time we end up with hundreds of miles of bikeable streets

I wish would create a traffic circle at the Westport Rd/Trafficway intersection, and then take out 1 lane and just devote an entire lane to Bikes. Instead we have The Kansas "Golden Triangle" Connector, it basically a freeway.

brewcrew1000 wrote:I wish would create a traffic circle at the Westport Rd/Trafficway intersection, and then take out 1 lane and just devote an entire lane to Bikes.

Too bad that can't be a Saturday morning "paint it" DIY project like the Mill Street project. That is a major trainwreck.

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pash wrote:I think the ideal way to fix it would be to take the interior lanes of traffic heading north and south into a tunnel under the triangle, ermerging north of Roanoke on Summit/Southwest Trafficway and south of 43rd on Bellevue and Madison.

YIKES!

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It's not explained fully in the article, but it looks like Ça Va got around their liquor licensing issues by creating a new business entity, getting a restaurant license for the new business, and then merging the existing business into the new one.

Good news, is a unique place. The law needs to adjust for restaurants that sell high priced wines/champagnes but only do small eats, not being able to hit the 50/50 food/liquor ratio requirement.

brewcrew1000 wrote:

DaveKCMO wrote:

beautyfromashes wrote:The problem isn't with the roads, it's with the St. Luke's fortress of parking lots and blocked roads funneling all the traffic into one spot. You can't block every sub-entrance and exit to an area and complain that the only road left is too congested.

this.

st. luke's has destroyed midtown connectivity.

I agree
St Lukes would be ideal if it was East of Main or West of SW Trafficway. If St Lukes wasn't there I think you would have seen a lot of Hotels and most likely high rise apartments go into that location. Its a real hindrance in any kind of fluid vibrancy/density between Westport and the Plaza.

The good news is that St. Luke's seems to be finally giving a shit about their neighborhood. Their development affiliate, Westport Today, owns a massive amount of property in the Plaza Westport neighborhood (which I think they are trying to rebrand as North Plaza), and they seem to have big plans. I think what they have done so far is a good start.

St. Luke's does appear to have development plans for just about all of their surface lots, according to this plan submitted to the city: http://maps.kcmo.org/kcgis/rest/service ... hments/325

I don't really see any info on what the use of these buildings would be. The discouraging part is that these are owned by St. Luke's and not Westport Today, and this plan is called St. Luke's Hospital Master Plan, so you might assume that these could be hospital or medical office buildings. However, it appears St. Luke's does own the Embassy Suites hotel, so other uses could be a possibility.

It would be beneficial to the community if St. Luke's would commit some of their parcels to building dense housing for some of their workers.

Not a good sign that the new HopCat at Broadway & Westport will look good at this very important corner. This is the alley side and stinks of C.H.E.A.P!

TopCat front today...(the two-story element is the stair/elevator tower to the roof deck).

I noticed that McCoy's looks to be rebuilding their patio. They had fenced off one row of the parking lot closest to the patio. I'm not sure if it is being is being permanently added to the patio, or if it is just fenced off during construction. Hopefully, it is the former.

That whole parking lot is pointless and should all be converted to some sort of patio/beer garden space.

KCtoBrooklyn wrote:I noticed that McCoy's looks to be rebuilding their patio. They had fenced off one row of the parking lot closest to the patio. I'm not sure if it is being is being permanently added to the patio, or if it is just fenced off during construction. Hopefully, it is the former.

That whole parking lot is pointless and should all be converted to some sort of patio/beer garden space.

I agree, i don't get why that parking lot is even there? The parking lot actually looks out of place, I would even feel somewhat weird even parking in those spots especially on a Friday/Saturday night

https://www.equip-bid.com/auction/searc ... tatus=open

Is it true that Murrays is closing?

beautyfromashes wrote:https://www.equip-bid.com/auction/searc ... tatus=open

Is it true that Murrays is closing?

Sad if true, but I have to imagine it's purely by choice. They were only open 3 or 4 days a week for about 5 months during the year.

Love their ice cream, though. The Malt Bodine and Chocolate Flake Fromage will be missed.

I cannot believe Murray's couldn't be sold for more as a going concern vs auction of the equipment.

They could have doubled or tripled business with a few tweaks, including better hours.