Minimal effort. No issuing press release to media to publicize need to move the houses. No contacting Historic Kansas City for help finding parties who might be interested. Maybe they did, but I doubt it since HKC didn't publicize the need to move these houses on their endangered list.smh wrote:Hi, good morning. I never said it was a very public effort. However, I do know they put out an RFP for relocation and received only one response.FangKC wrote:Then please describe the very public efforts they made, and provide the examples (media clips, newspaper articles, press releases, public statements), because I'm just not seeing it.
How many people in the community are even aware of the RFPs being issued? Who did they send them to? What publications did they publish in?
I'm sorry, but you have not convinced me that they made any real effort, or really cared about saving these houses. The whole idea of this is stupid. I am betting that the "reflection space" is a a placeholder and in a few years they will erect another RMH annex. If they really needed a reflection space, why not work with the CIty to create one in an already existing park across the street, next to their other annex building? The City rented them park land to construct a two-wing building. Why would they have a problem creating a nice garden space?
I'm also willing to guess that they didn't want much publicity about it because they realize that if they continue building annex after annex that the neighborhood and community will eventually get tired of it and protest.
Now, mind you, I think the RMH does good work, and I'm not even opposed to them building more space. It's just the approach they are taking. They don't need to demolish more buildings. There are other places they could build their annexes without tearing anything down.
I know how these organizations work. I used to work in public affairs/public relations for one. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that the board of directors didn't want it publicized. They didn't want to risk bad publicity. It's unfortunate because had it been handled correctly, there would have been none. It was just laziness.