Discuss items in the urban core outside of Downtown as described above. Everything in the core including the east side (18th & Vine area), Northeast, Plaza, Westport, Brookside, Valentine, Waldo, 39th street, & the entire midtown area.
Downtowner wrote:
I would say Marsh's Sunfresh is the greatest urban blunder, not midtown marketplace.
why? It's a bit suburban, but it's ok. There are far worse urban blunders in KC than having a few big boxes in the core, especially big boxes that replaced GHETTO.
My vote goes to the freeway loop as number one. The second would be removing and never rebuilding a decent urban core transit system, the third would be trying to support union station with a half ass science center.
GRID wrote:
My vote goes to the freeway loop as number one. The second would be removing and never rebuilding a decent urban core transit system, the third would be trying to support union station with a half ass science center.
Biggest Blunders in KC History IMO
1) Blowing a sure chance at light rail a few years ago.
2) TSC's location
3) Kemper's location (lol)
Runner's Up
1) Sprint Not Building Downtown (downtown may have become the next Seattle )
2) The latest TSC Renovation Vote (the city was set back at least 10 years in one night)
Downtowner wrote:
I would say Marsh's Sunfresh is the greatest urban blunder, not midtown marketplace.
That's a good observation. It's smaller but really disrupts the flow and aesthetics of one of KC's premier entertainment areas. Midtown market place is huge but does not impact the urban environment as much because nothing was really going on there in the years prior to construction. I still hate the place though.
but does anyone remember what was on the site before midtown marketplace? wasn't it the end of the old waldo dummy line railroad? and wasn't it mostly run down industrial? like an old railyard or something?
i wish they could realing southwest trafficway between 39th and 43rd to allow roanoke and clark to continue through into westport.
I'm just saying it's the worst possible scenario for a grocery store --- unfriendly staff, high prices (even higher after the remodel), poor quality (the produce is horrible)...greeters at the door that don't say anything, on and on, the worst I've ever seen.
Downtowner wrote:
I'm just saying it's the worst possible scenario for a grocery store --- unfriendly staff, high prices (even higher after the remodel), poor quality (the produce is horrible)...greeters at the door that don't say anything, on and on, the worst I've ever seen.
and wasn't it mostly run down industrial? like an old railyard or something?
A large portion was a city facility for street department trucks and materials.
The environmental clean-up was massive. Street stripe paint trucks being emptied for years on the ground and other wonderful activities.
I know I am resurrecting an old thread, but as this is my first reading through it, I wanted to point out a couple of corrections from my own experience.
What we know now as Midtown Marketplace was a viable, 1920s neighborhood. Almost wholly intact. It was consolidated and cleared using slum clearance eminent domain laws in the 1980s (not 1990s) and later ascribed to Councilman Glover* as his midtown "plan." The streetwall on Main from Linwood to Armour was continuous and was demolished in 1989 as I recall. Linwood was also intact, apartment buildings on the south side as I recall. The jazz club Milton's was on Main near 33d, filling the first floor of a 2-story tudor commercial property, and the several streets behind Main running to Gilham were a mix of multifamily and narrow bungalow housing. It was a poor district, but dense.
When Milton's was demolished, its 1920s bakelite and gypsum "cut-outs" of musicians playing jazz instruments that had lined the interior walls were partly salvaged and ended up at a short-lived bar at 39th and SW Trafficway. Some of the lesser cut-outs were left in the rubble on Main Street and I salvaged one or two myself when home from college that winter. The rubble littered multiple blocks for months. Sometime in the later 1980s the land was completely cleared, including the old streets, stoops, sidewalks, and trees. And it sat like that for several years, eventually yielding Midtown Marketplace.
Someone above mentioned The Landing, JC Nichols attempt at a 1950s suburban mall on Troost at Meyer. I'll note that The Landing did not replace a viable urban neighborhood, but rather some low-use structures. Midtown Marketplace required the complete erasure of an established neighborood district.
*Edited to clarify the post-demolition naming after Glover.
Last edited by herrfrank on Tue Mar 04, 2014 11:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
herrfrank wrote:What we know now as Midtown Marketplace was a viable, 1900s-10s neighborhood. Almost wholly intact. It was consolidated and cleared using slum clearance eminent domain laws in the 1980s (not 1990s) as part of Councilman Glover's midtown "plan." The streetwall on Main from Linwood to Armour was continuous and was demolished in 1986-7 as I recall. Linwood was also intact, apartment buildings on the south side as I recall. The jazz club Milton's was on Main near 33d, filling the first floor of a 2-story tudor commercial property, and the several streets behind Main running to Gilham were a mix of multifamily and narrow bungalow housing. It was a poor district, but dense.
Your timeframe is off. you're combining multiple projects spread across a decade into one that started in the 1990s.
Glover didn't even join the council until 1991. He worked for the state until 1987 and then ran for the council but lost in 87. He got in when a large percentage of the council was term limited in 1991 under the late 80s charter change.
It's about time say nearby residents. The Glover Plan, in part, began in the early-1980s as the Warner-Miller Plaza Redevelopment, a two block long redevelopment scheme that sought to revitalize the heart of a once-vibrant commercial and residential strip. The plan languished, however, and as it did, the uncertainty of residents around the redevelopment also grew. Another redevelopment project, the Luzier Plaza plan at Gillham and Linwood, also grew but went nowhere.
By the time Jim Glover was elected to the city council in 1991, neighborhood groups were desperate to do something about the crime and blight that had bloomed with the neighborhood's deterioration. In reality, say some neighbors, a group of unscrupulous landlords and a few drug houses caused most problems. Redevelopment plans gone awry did most of the damage.
Glover and the city council cobbled together the Luzier Plaza plan and what had grown from Warner-Miller into one, giant, allegedly grand plan. Although many individual residents and businesses protested, neighborhood groups bought into a plan to start with a clean slate, getting rid of drugs and prostitution -- but also homes and legitimate businesses in the area stretching from Linwood to 35th Terrace and from Main to Gillham.
The land was cleared by the end of 1993. The developers and Glover seemed to have tenants for the big-box development in the bag. But then months of delays extended into years. The weeds grew. The morale of Midtown residents sunk. Buildings on the periphery of the empty land now stand boarded and vacant. Block did not return repeated calls for this story.
Progress continues "by excruciatingly slow increments," Block said, to replace Kmart and Payless Cashways Inc., which last year dropped plans to build a home improvement store at Linwood and Main due to financial difficulties.
Forgot that KMart and Payless were once considered for the shopping center. Instead of a few unrealized pad sites we could be looking at an abandoned KMart box.
flyingember wrote:Your timeframe is off. you're combining multiple projects spread across a decade into one that started in the 1990s.
Glover didn't even join the council until 1991. He worked for the state until 1987 and then ran for the council but lost in 87. He got in when a large percentage of the council was term limited in 1991 under the late 80s charter change.
It's about time say nearby residents. The Glover Plan, in part, began in the early-1980s as the Warner-Miller Plaza Redevelopment, a two block long redevelopment scheme that sought to revitalize the heart of a once-vibrant commercial and residential strip. The plan languished, however, and as it did, the uncertainty of residents around the redevelopment also grew. Another redevelopment project, the Luzier Plaza plan at Gillham and Linwood, also grew but went nowhere.
By the time Jim Glover was elected to the city council in 1991, neighborhood groups were desperate to do something about the crime and blight that had bloomed with the neighborhood's deterioration. In reality, say some neighbors, a group of unscrupulous landlords and a few drug houses caused most problems. Redevelopment plans gone awry did most of the damage.
Glover and the city council cobbled together the Luzier Plaza plan and what had grown from Warner-Miller into one, giant, allegedly grand plan. Although many individual residents and businesses protested, neighborhood groups bought into a plan to start with a clean slate, getting rid of drugs and prostitution -- but also homes and legitimate businesses in the area stretching from Linwood to 35th Terrace and from Main to Gillham.
The land was cleared by the end of 1993. The developers and Glover seemed to have tenants for the big-box development in the bag. But then months of delays extended into years. The weeds grew. The morale of Midtown residents sunk. Buildings on the periphery of the empty land now stand boarded and vacant. Block did not return repeated calls for this story.
You're right about Glover -- the name the Glover Plan did not get attached until later. But I stand by the destruction dates. That streetwall on Main was demolished in the 1980s, with the last structures gone by mid-1990 at the absolute latest. I was working in Chicago starting in 1990 and then 1992 in Europe and could not have come back to salvage what I did. (The final clearing may have completed in 1993, but the demolition started in 1987 or so). I don't know if anyone who knew Milton Morris is still alive to confirm, but I recall that his building went down in the late 1980s in the wintertime while I was home on Christmas break from college. And buildings on the blocks behind Main, slow slope to Gilham were already half-demolished by then.
It did occur in phases, but there was a long period of rubble-strewn lots throughout the parcel we call Midtown Marketplace.
Last edited by herrfrank on Tue Mar 04, 2014 10:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
kcjak wrote:Forgot that KMart and Payless were once considered for the shopping center. Instead of a few unrealized pad sites we could be looking at an abandoned KMart box.
Walmart made a proposal to build a Sam's Club and Walmart on the site, at no cost to the city, but was turned down.
I am fairly sure that kchistory.com has photos of Warner Plaza taken just prior to demo. If they aren't there, check the American Memory section of the Library of Congress site.
chaglang wrote:I am fairly sure that kchistory.com has photos of Warner Plaza taken just prior to demo. If they aren't there, check the American Memory section of the Library of Congress site.
There are photos on the HABS site and I think the Missouri Valley Special Collections does as well.
I think that Midtown Marketplace is in fact the city's greatest blunder. Either that, turning the Paseo into housing projects, or the downtown interstate loop. These were three large scale projects that completely destroyed large chunks of the city.
An honorable mention would have to be Penn Valley Community College. I need to find some pictures of the neighborhood that was demolished, but I do know we are talking about large scale demolition. The blocks that house the college was at one time a very dense Irish neighborhood.
There were many in the city and in the neighborhood that welcomed this project. Before the demolition of the neighborhood there were some good parts to it but the bad parts outweighed the good. The only way to get rid of some of the businesses were to buy out the buildings and tear them down. And the tear down mentality was quite in style at the time - look at the neighborhoods destroyed to rebuild schools in the KCMOSD. The addition of the major stores were seen as a salvation for the area. No longer would residents have to leave the area to fill the needs that these stores provide.
Now, 20 years later, judging the project using different guidelines does provide a different result but at the time, using the guidelines at that time, will provide a result that this project was good for the neighborhood.
aknowledgeableperson wrote:There were many in the city and in the neighborhood that welcomed this project. Before the demolition of the neighborhood there were some good parts to it but the bad parts outweighed the good. The only way to get rid of some of the businesses were to buy out the buildings and tear them down. And the tear down mentality was quite in style at the time - look at the neighborhoods destroyed to rebuild schools in the KCMOSD. The addition of the major stores were seen as a salvation for the area. No longer would residents have to leave the area to fill the needs that these stores provide.
Now, 20 years later, judging the project using different guidelines does provide a different result but at the time, using the guidelines at that time, will provide a result that this project was good for the neighborhood.
Well, yes it's obvious that the people were stupid then. If we had skipped over this period of time in city redevelopment we would have a whole lot more of it still around.
And yes I realize that the neighborhood was in bad shape. It was sleazy and a bit dangerous. So what though? That doesn't mean we should tear the buildings down. I will never understand how some think that the key to getting rid of crime and decay is by demolishing buildings. The buildings don't commit the crimes. The people do. When you tear down the buildings you are not getting rid of the people and the problems, in fact you are creating a new set of problems by destroying any semblance of local pride.
There was some good architecture in this hood, and it would have made for a cool, unique neighborhood in today's Kansas City. Really sucks that certain people were so short-sighted.
You're right though in that at the time, these actions were incredibly normal. There is no way to expect them to do it any differently after all the other mistakes made in this period of a few decades.
I would not called them stupid. The priority at the time was to build some retail in the area as well as to get rid of some of the blight and get some questionable businesses out of the neighborhood. How else to accomplished those three goals, knowing what was known at the time and following practices at that time? Where else would one put stores like Costco and Home Depot in the area? I would think those who have and still do shop in the area would not call them stupid.
It was a steep price to pay to get rid of a porn palace and a sex toy shop plus a few other non-desirable businesses but sometimes that is the price to pay to clean something up.
For me the worse thing about the project is the wall on Linwood.
)
