‘We’re booming.’ How $150M from Kansas City has boosted development on Prospect Ave.
Marquita Taylor, who has lived near Prospect Avenue her whole life, can’t remember a time like this.
Decades of crime, poverty and blight stunted progress in this part of town, starving the historically black community of grocery and retail stores for years.
But that’s not the story of Prospect today.
There’s not one, but two grocery stores on the avenue. The shopping center at 31st and Prospect is bustling and occupied. And the one across the street is currently undergoing a facelift. Elsewhere, developers plan new daycare centers, office projects and residential development along Prospect.
“We’re booming all of a sudden,” said Taylor, president of the Santa Fe Area Council. “But I’m so happy about it.”
Of course, that boom is modest in comparison to the ever-growing Johnson County suburbs or the trendy Crossroads Arts District. But for the neighborhoods along Prospect, any development — after years of its absence — is cause for celebration.
“For Lee’s Summit and Overland Park, this is normal for them every day,” Taylor said. “It isn’t for us. We’re finally getting these things and it’s tremendous.”
For decades, Troost Avenue has been Kansas City’s unofficial color line, dividing black residents on the east side from white residents to the west. While that is starting to change, decades of segregation and a lack of investment on the east side have denied prosperity for neighborhoods like those that line Prospect.
Recent progress here has come only after years of city intervention.
The city has so far spent about $17 million on efforts to open a grocery store and revive a struggling strip mall at 31st and Prospect.
Across from the grocery store, the city will aid the same developer’s efforts to rehab another strip mall that has already attracted new retail tenants.
Just north of that spot, the Kansas City Police Department in 2015 opened its $ 74 million East Patrol Division at 2640 Prospect.
On Dec. 9, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority will open its $56 million Prospect MAX line that’s expected to boost future development along the 10-mile route.
Collectively, Kansas City has spent more than $150 million over the last five years on projects aimed at redeveloping the Prospect corridor, city leaders said.
Taylor credits the city for stepping up. But she said east side residents played a large role by advocating for themselves, particularly in bringing fresh grocery options to their part of the city.
In recent years, she’s seen the historically black neighborhoods along Prospect change as more white and Hispanic families move in. Though she and others are closely watching home values to ensure current residents are not priced out, she said recent development news has been widely welcomed.
“Who wouldn’t want to live in a community where there’s people, there’s activity, there’s businesses?” she said. “To live in a community that’s thriving, it’s like, oh my gosh, can we have this as well?”
Concentrating on Prospect
Developer Don Maxwell said he’s intentionally focused his efforts on building a concentration of new businesses on Prospect Avenue, which he said is the heart of Kansas City’s black community.
“When we shotgun and do all over the place, you don’t feel the impact,” he said. “But just by standing on this corner, people see new businesses, new jobs being created and they think that there’s hope.”
He sold the Linwood Shopping Center on the west side of the avenue to the city in 2016 as part of the effort to finally bring a grocery store to the deteriorating center. Lipari Bros. Sun Fresh Market opened in June 2018.
Now, Maxwell is working to fix up his Linwood Square strip mall across the street. And he’s got plans for office and residential development along Prospect.
At Linwood Square, current businesses will stay, but he said plans to rebuild facades, gut interiors and improve parking lots have helped him secure a restaurant, a clothing store and a credit union for the redeveloped center.
“All you got to do is look at the activity across the street,” he said pointing to the bustling parking lot of the grocery store development. “We expect the same kind of activity here. We’re starting all over again.”
Linwood Square will receive property and sales tax incentives from the city, along with $2 million from the one-eighth-cent Central City Economic Development Sales Tax, which seeks to fuel development on the east side.
In all, Kansas City Manager Troy Schulte said the city will subsidize about $4 million of the expected $13 million redevelopment cost.
This summer, the City Council gave $375,000 to help the Sun Fresh across the street stay afloat. Schulte said the grocery store is now stabilized and breaking even.
He noted that redeveloping the strip mall has come with a smaller city obligation than what was required to redevelop the retail center with the grocery store to the west.
“The goal is that we continue to put public investment in and eventually the private sector will take over,” Schulte said. “And you’re seeing that.”
Prospect is the ‘spine’
City Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, who represents the area, said the city is intentionally targeting development on Prospect, which serves as the heart of the community. It’s where east side residents naturally congregate to shop, eat and visit the library.
“Prospect is the spine of economic development on the east side,” she said. “Our hope is that we can put enough concentration and laser focus on one major corridor.”
But blight makes it hard to recruit private developers and lenders, she said, so incentives are important to help “balance the scales.” With development now on the way, Robinson said the area must tackle another challenge: density. Population is forecast to continue declining on the east side and she said the city must reverse those trends to bring the impoverished area up to middle class standards.
“It is declining so we also have to look at how do we bring back residents along the corridor,” she said. “So the work’s not over.”
The nonprofit arm of the Kansas City Area Transit Authority has purchased several properties on or near Prospect ahead of its new MAX route, said CEO Robbie Makinen.
“We’re now in the development business,” he said. “We’re a part of this community and we’re going to be a part of its development.”
Prospect will become the transit agency’s third MAX line, which make fewer stops and use larger buses with more amenities. Prospect’s line includes Wi-Fi at all stops, several raised platforms for level boarding and heated pavement that will melt ice and snow in the winter.
The $56 million project includes $7 million for buses; $14 million for engineering, design and property purchases; and $35 million on constructing shelters, sidewalks and traffic signal improvements.
The Prospect MAX will run from Barney Allis Plaza in downtown over to Propsect on East 12th Street. From there, it will run as far south on Prospect as East 75th Street.
Makinen said the route will connect east siders with employers across the city. But it should also make commercial development more viable along the corridor.
“I want the Prospect corridor to be the jewel in the crown of the ATA,” he said. “I think we’re going to help it come back.”
Doing business on Prospect
For nearly four decades, Johnny Pryor has enjoyed a steady stream of customers at his Johnny’s Donuts and Hamburgers, near 44th and Prospect.
Resting his hand on a grease-stained white apron, he said the restaurant was a neighborhood establishment long before he walked in the door 37 years ago. And business has stayed strong at the no-frills joint, where a single burger goes for $3.25. Pryor serves customers of the carryout-only restaurant from behind a glass divider that stands between a small lobby and the kitchen.
In recent years, the 65-year-old Pryor has noticed some changes around Prospect. The neighborhood is growing more diverse and he sees more white faces nowadays. He’s got no complaints about the current state of affairs but said any future development is welcome news.
“It’s kind of keeping its own,” he said of the neighborhood. “But a good lift wouldn’t hurt. I’d like to see it.”
Myron McCant said that lift is already well on its way, though it was long overdue: “The urban core is really the only thing left to redevelop,” he said.
He said depressed property values and low household incomes in the area make it difficult to secure bank financing for new projects — as do connotations of high crime and blight.
“But at some point in time, if we’re going to change it somebody has to go in and make a difference and be a pioneer,” McCant said. “We were willing to be one of the pioneers.”
He and his wife, Penny Dale McCant, have operated two child care facilities in the area for several years. They’ll soon begin construction on a new 24-hour childcare facility that can accommodate as many as 400 children over a 24-hour period — nearly quadruple current capacity.
The 14,100-square-foot facility will include 4,500 square feet that he plans to rent out for pediatric care or other services. The $3.5 million development at 22nd and Prospect will be aided with $1 million from the Central City Economic Development Sales Tax. Last month, the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority board recommended a property tax abatement for the project.
About a block away from his KD Academy, another developer plans to build new duplexes, he said. And an affordable housing project is planned farther south of his project.
“There’s just a lot going on,” he said. “I’m very optimistic. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be investing three-and-a-half million dollars in the community.”
The Star’s Allison Kite contributed to this story.
