‘A great day’ as project unveiled to restore Satchel Paige home in Kansas City
A coffee shop, event and meeting space, maybe even a bakery in the garage are possible features of a $3 million renovation plan for the fire-damaged former home of baseball great Leroy “Satchel” Paige on Kansas City’s east side.
“We don’t have it set in stone yet,” Vincent Gauthier, managing developer of Pitch Perfect KC, told a crowd of well-wishers, politicians and members of the news media at the project’s unveiling in a sweltering Monday morning news conference outside the 2 1/2-story home at 2626 E. 28th St.
If the project were a baseball game, “we’re in the first inning,” Gauthier said at the lectern to the left of a plaque on loan from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., commemorating Paige’s entry into the hall exactly 50 years ago, on Aug. 9, 1971.
But Gauthier and several others who spoke said the development group shares the same vision with the Paige family, Santa Fe neighborhood leaders and city officials:
The final project will celebrate Paige’s legacy as a ballplayer in the Negro Leagues who became world famous striking out white major leaguers during his many barnstorming tours before the color barrier was broken and Black athletes were allowed into the Major Leagues. By the time he got into the majors, his career was winding down, although his fame never waned.
“This is a great day for our family and our neighborhood,” said Paige’s daughter Pam O’Neal, who grew up in the house with her siblings and still lives a block away from the family home, which has been vacant for 30 years and was severely damaged in a 2018 arson fire.
The city’s Homesteading Authority bought the house after the fire from its longtime owners. Thanks to a $150,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the city replaced the roof, removed the mess and shored up the interior areas that had been scorched. A few months ago, the homesteading authority asked developers to submit proposals on how they would rehab and repurpose the structure.
The group Gauthier heads, Pitch Perfect KC, got the nod in part because of support from the Santa Fe Area Council, the Kansas City Royals, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the Satchel Paige Foundation, which O’Neal and her sister Linda Shelby operate.
Gauthier said Pitch Perfect has gotten initial promises from area foundations to contribute toward the construction costs and a hoped-for $2 million endowment, which would underwrite future expenses.
State Sen. Barbara Washington surprised Gauthier and his partners by announcing at the press conference that the state will contribute $500,000 toward the project, which will help the group make good on its goal of being debt free when the project is complete.
The Santa Fe Area Council has for many years lobbied city hall and others to help preserve the house, which many consider an important part of the city’s history.
Back in the 1950s, when many public accommodations were still segregated, some of Black America’s greatest athletes and musicians would gather to relax at the five-bedroom, 3,672-square-foot house a half block east of Prospect Avenue. Paige himself would cook gumbo or one of his other specialties as Duke Ellington or Count Basie played piano, or members of the Harlem Globetrotters sunk into chairs on the wrap-around front porch.
Marquita Taylor, president of the Santa Fe Area Council, choked up as she said “this is a great moment for us.”
In its proposal to the city, Pitch Perfect KC said it would establish a non-profit corporation to oversee the project and operate the facility long term. Gauthier said he envisioned the space being rented out for weddings and corporation meetings. That and possibly a coffee shop inside would bring in revenue and people to learn about the Paige family and the people who visited them all those years ago, he said.
Who is Pitch Perfect KC? Gauthier is founder and president of the redevelopment companies AuthenticityCity and Urban Redevelopment Interests Inc. and former planning director at the BNIM architectural firm. Other members of the Pitch Perfect KC “collaborative” that submitted the winning proposal to the city are Robert Riccardi, a principal and board member at the architectural and design firm Gould Evans, and Gary Abram and David Oliver at PLX Corp., which describes itself as “a new type of think tank” that advises non-profit groups and private companies.
The Paige family moved into the house in 1950. Satchel Paige died in 1982 and his wife, Lahoma, four years later. The last family member moved out a few years after that and it has sat empty ever since. The fire destroyed much of the interior, but Riccardi said some of the original woodwork survived and will be used to make copies so that the first floor of the house can be restored to its original condition.
The house was built in 1910, according to Jackson County property records.
This story was originally published August 9, 2021 at 12:47 PM.
