Positive actions are helping rebuild Kansas City’s urban neighborhoods

One of Kansas City’s most challenging issues is how to deal with abandoned properties and the urban “disinvestment” that has sorely defined so many neighborhoods.

Fortunately, some neighborhood leaders and community partners are seeing opportunities to make pieces of the urban fabric whole and vital again. And their activities are setting positive examples for cities here and elsewhere.

In the 4300 block of Tracy Avenue, for example, three standing houses are slated for rehab while groundbreaking will begin this spring on six attractive new homes.

This will happen across the street from the former Bancroft School, which now is home to 90 or so Kansas Citians who live in sleek apartments made out of classrooms or in one of the new adjacent buildings.

This re-population of the Manheim Park neighborhood results from a can-do collaboration involving the Make It Right Foundation, which actor Brad Pitt founded following the hurricane devastation of New Orleans a decade ago. Kansas City architectural firm BNIM was among those working on new housing solutions in that city, and its expertise and partnership are continuing here and elsewhere.

One of the cooler elements of the Manheim project is that along with BNIM, five other Kansas City architectural firms developed individual home designs. All are modern and friendly takes on the historic bungalows that characterized this and other midtown neighborhoods. The program envisions building as many as 50 houses in adjacent blocks. That’s a mere slice of this gargantuan problem, but it reflects important progress.

More inspiring news on the abandoned-housing front occurred in January, when Kissick Construction Co. began tearing down 10 houses in the Marlborough district of southeast Kansas City at its own expense. The city fell behind its goal of demolishing 1,000 decrepit properties in two years, and Kissick’s Pete Browne volunteered his employees to pitch in and challenge other companies to join the effort at improving the cityscape.

Rebuilding long-ignored sections of the central city is a painstaking and necessary, block-by-block enterprise. The return on investment — for property owners, urban dwellers and the city’s overall health — will be enormous.

This story was originally published March 9, 2015 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Positive actions are helping rebuild Kansas City’s urban neighborhoods."