Kansas City voters will decide whether to sell a park so Ronald McDonald House can expand

Kansas City voters will decide whether to sell Longfellow Park to a nonprofit that helps families with children undergoing medical care that hopes to expand its space to help more caregivers in need.

The Kansas City Council approved last week setting a vote that will ask voters whether to remove Longfellow Park, 502 E. 26th St., from the park system ahead of a proposal to sell the park to Ronald McDonald House Charities of Kansas City, which provides lodging and housing to families with sick children in nearby hospitals.

Ronald McDonald House, which is currently on the park site and has to turn families away due to limited space, is looking to buy the 3.4-acre park near Crown Center and expand onto it while maintaining public access to about 1.5 acres of the site.

Tami Greenberg, CEO of the local Ronald McDonald House, told The Star in an interview that the organization serves families with children fighting serious illnesses and complications: cancer, premature births, organ transplants.

“These families have just encountered what is presumably the biggest challenge of their lives with a sick child,” Greenberg said. “And Ronald McDonald House takes care of families so they can be close to their children when they’re going through medical care. And we don’t have enough room.”

There are currently 94 rooms available and they are full almost every night, Greenberg said, and nearly 700 families had to be turned away last year because the rooms were full. Instead, she said, some families will sleep in a chair by their children in the hospital, or even delay medical care until there’s room at the Ronald McDonald House.

Others simply have to leave their children in the hospital and return home until there’s room.

With the proposed expansion at Longfellow Park, Ronald McDonald House could add at least 40 more rooms for 134 rooms total, allowing the organization to provide space to about 1,400 more families every year. The organization is studying whether that would be enough of an expansion to solve the vacancy issue or if it may need to consider doing more.

The price Ronald McDonald House would pay for the city for the park is currently undecided, should the referendum pass, but Greenberg expects the price to be fair. Costs for the expansion project will come from fundraising and the construction timeline is to be determined.

The Longfellow Park vote will be April 8 in Kansas City. The ballot will also ask voters whether to approve renewing a public safety sales tax for 20 years to cover the costs of building a new municipal rehabilitation and detention center alongside other construction, operational and maintenance needs for law enforcement and emergency service providers.