They let Liberty go to the dogs, and no one seemed to care.
There they were, prancing and strutting down the downtown streets.
A black Labrador retriever wearing a wide, frilly clown collar. A mutt draped in a red-white-and-blue scarf. And they were joined by a smattering of other animals, like a yellow duck riding in a red wagon.
All were part of a parade of pets. It was a scream, a hoot - and one of the reasons Liberty residents treasure their downtown square.
This sense of community helps explain why Liberty earned the No. 6 ranking in The Kansas City Star’s first-ever analysis of suburban quality of life.
This quaint and cozy Northland city offers a balance of old and new, of small-town charms and bigger-city services.
"It’s a balanced community," said Stephen Hawkins, Liberty’s mayor for the past eight years before retiring this year.
"An analogy I always used was, going back to some older days, "The Ed Sullivan Show" on TV had an act where a guy spun plates on poles, and he could get a dozen going at once," he continued. "The task was one of continual monitoring, of attending to the plates that were wobbling and get them going again.
"That’s what cities do to stay good places to live."
Liberty may have lots of plates spinning, but one in particular stands out in the minds of its residents. A survey asked citizens what they thought best represented the town of 28,500. Their top answer was not schools or William Jewell College or Northland growth. It was the downtown square.
To them, the square is much more than a collection of small shops and offices in historic facades around an old courthouse. It’s the city’s gathering place, the center of community life and the hub of its small-town feel.
"It’s the thing that makes Liberty unique," says Clay Lozier, who owns buildings in the downtown.
This suburb was fortunate enough to be born with a heart. Its challenge has been to keep it beating.
`This is the place’
Liberty’s square is exactly that, a square block of streets with diagonal on-street parking and rows of narrow, two-story buildings with ornamental facades, some dating back to the 1870s - or around the time Jesse James’ gang robbed a bank there, which is now a museum.
Most suburban bedroom communities weren’t developed with a downtown. There’s no square in Prairie Village or Leawood or Blue Springs. But suburbs are increasingly spending tens of millions of dollars to build one from scratch.
This newfangled downtown, called a "town center," often includes new sets of civic buildings, retail shops and apartment lots in a clustered, walkable setting, almost Disneyesque. Around Kansas City, Lenexa is trying to develop such a center, as is Gladstone.
These suburban downtowns "provide a physical sense of place and identity that helps tie the varied neighborhoods and community interests together," Samuel Staley recently wrote for the Reason Public Policy Institute think tank.
In Liberty, the community often does come together there.
Take the pet parade. In the middle of it were Tom and Kathy Skolak, strolling with the scarf-draped mutt.
They had walked to this event from their Victorian home just outside the square, in a neighborhood dotted with 1900-era architecture like gabled roofs and wrap-around front porches. The middle-aged couple had been transferred to Kansas City without knowing the area, but as soon as they saw Liberty’s square, they decided "this is the place," as Kathy put it.
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