KCK community college set to build downtown campus, tackle poverty and disparities
Construction is expected to begin later this year on a multi-million dollar Kansas City Kansas Community College center aimed at offering a range of services to the city’s urban areas.
The four-story KCK Community Education, Health and Wellness Center will provide academic programs, health care services, financial literacy and other training. The 100,000-square-foot center, slated to open in 2025, will go up at North 7th Street Trafficway and State Avenue, blocks from where KCKCC first opened a century ago before heading west to 72nd Street.
“It’s going to change the lives of tens of thousands of people in downtown” for generations, the college’s president, Greg Mosier, said Friday.
Mosier, who has been in higher education for three decades, believes the $62 million project is unique, with a community college partnering with private entities to provide services under one roof.
The project is years in the making. When Mosier joined KCKCC in 2018, he noticed the socioeconomic disparities that have persisted for decades between the wealthier western portion of Wyandotte County and the urban core to the east, such as a 30% difference in children living in poverty. He wondered: “How come we don’t have a campus down here?”
The center plans to offer a host of services aimed at curbing those inequalities, such as technical and academic programs. That includes a two-year associate degree in commercial construction technology for students in 11th and 12th grades.
Financial coaching and retirement planning will be among focuses of the center’s financial literacy.
The top floor will be devoted to Swope Health, which will provide primary care and emergency dental services, among other things. It also hopes to offer mental and behavioral health care, but first needs to get licensed to do so in Kansas, Mosier said.
Funding for the center will come from a diverse pool, including $13 million from KCKCC, $12 million from the state and $500,000 donated by a graduate. The college has so far raised $46 million, with another $3 million pending.
The college, which is working with CommunityAmerica Credit Union, recently announced McCownGordon was chosen as the project’s construction manager. In a news release, the company’s vice president for business development, Pat Contreras, said the center will “provide immeasurable benefit” to the KCK community.
The selected location got some initial pushback: Sitting on the site is the Seventh Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which KCUR reported was built by the Wyandot people and was on the county’s historic landmarks list.
Today, a fence surrounds the boarded up gothic church, which has been abandoned for decades. The Wyandotte County Land Bank took it over in recent years, while the Landmarks Commission decided in 2021 that it could be demolished.
Among those who showed support for the KCKCC project at that landmarks commission meeting was the Rev. Tony Carter, of Salem Baptist Church in KCK, who said Mosier demonstrated a commitment to maintaining the church’s culture.
At the time, then-Wyandotte County Sheriff Donald Ash, who serves as a KCKCC trustee, called the project “a game changer” for downtown residents and noted that two-thirds of the some 400 detainees at the jail did not have a high school diploma or GED.
“The key out of that cycle, of getting spun up in the criminal justice system ... is education,” Ash said, later saying the center could not only be a vehicle for economic development, but “human development.”
The church and other vacant buildings on the block will be knocked down this fall, with groundbreaking in early September. Construction on the center is expected to start this winter.
Mosier said the state-of-the-art center plans to pay tribute to the church in a number of ways, including saving and featuring its stained glass and pews as benches. A conference room will also be named after the church.
“The church will now live on longer than it ever would’ve ... the way it is now,” he said, describing it as decaying.
On any day, businesses across Wyandotte County are short thousands of workers, Mosier said. He hopes the center will help quell generational poverty in the region.
The center, which will be a block from a major bus stop, is nearly seven miles from KCKCC’s main campus. For people without vehicles who might be working two part-time jobs, Mosier said, it might as well be 70 miles away.
“We need to go to where the people need us the most,” he said.
