Kansas City officials try to block demo of Midtown buildings with historic designation
Two Kansas City Council members are seeking to block the demolition of historic Midtown buildings.
In an unusual effort, 4th District representatives Eric Bunch and Katheryn Shields filed paperwork Thursday asking for historic designation for the buildings at 31st and Main streets. City leaders generally don’t seek historic designation without the property owner’s consent.
“This is extraordinary action but these seem to be extraordinary situations,” Shields said.
Price Management Company, which owns the properties, filed applications with the city last week to demolish the structures, some of which date back to the late 1800s.
“We have a little different situation here in that this is a developer who in the last several years has bought and torn down a lot of historic property and not done anything with it,” Shields said of Doug Price, who owns the company. “So I’m hoping we can maybe make a case to our council colleagues.”
Price could not immediately be reached Thursday.
Price Management had planned to tear down the buildings within 30 days and had shared no plans for future development. That land is likely appreciating in value with construction of the Kansas City Streetcar extension underway.
The application means no work can be done on the buildings for the next six months, Shields said. She expects the city’s Historic Preservation Commission to consider the 48-page application next month.
If that body recommends a historic designation for the property, the issue will move to the Kansas City Council for approval.
Without the historic designation, there’s nothing the city or neighborhoods can do to stop demolition of the Midtown buildings.
“The Main Street corridor has lost many historic buildings and many that are left are threatened,” Historic Kansas City said in a statement Thursday. “The City has no ordinance protection for any significant and meaningful review of snap demolitions of most historic buildings.”
Bunch said the city needs to rethink its relatively liberal policies surrounding demolition of buildings.
“We should be looking at demolitions period,” he said. “In the future, we need to think about demolitions and their environmental impact and their impact on affordable hosing in some cases. We just need to be more thoughtful about protecting our building stock, historic or not.”
While the historic designation application will effectively put a moratorium on developing or demolishing the buildings in question, Bunch said there are plenty of ways to breathe new life into them.
“We have historic adaptive reuses all the time. There’s an entire tax credit program for that,” he said, referring to the state’s historic tax credit program that has funded redevelopment of hundreds of historic buildings. “This building here at 31st and Main is big enough that you could do something pretty special with it and there’s available land around it that you could incorporate.”
