Kansas City is eyeing this huge park as next up for riverfront transformation

Closed to the public for nearly two decades so that its poisoned soil could be cleansed of toxic chemicals, Kansas City’s long-neglected Riverfront Park could be on the verge of a bright future.

The park — which city officials have largely forgotten for the past 22 years — has gained some important advocates in recent months.

Both Mayor Quinton Lucas and the city’s port authority, PortKC, have separately gone public with their support of connecting Riverfront Park with the city’s trail system and making other improvements.

Since this spring, PortKC has been in talks with the city parks board about a plan where PortKC would possibly adopt the park and work with volunteer groups to clean it up and add amenities ranging from fishing docks to camping areas. Maybe even trails for dirt bikes and other outdoor activities could go in beneath the park’s thick canopy of trees.

“The momentum seems to be growing,” said Roger Guibor-MacBride, a member of Friends of Riverfront Park who sponsors boat trips on the river that conclude at the park’s boat ramp on the south bank of the Missouri River two miles east of Bally’s Casino at 1700 Monroe Ave. “The potential for community involvement through recreation is through the roof.”

More eyes on the park

This summer the city finally made some basic improvements at the park that Friends of Riverfront Park member Allen Cessna had sought for years. The broken streetlights that illuminate the parking lot have been repaired, and a new gate has been installed that can be locked at night, thanks to funding Cessna secured last year through the city’s Public Improvements Advisory Committee process.

During this year’s PIAC round, Cessna hopes to get the city to replace the pit toilet that was destroyed by a flood six years ago with some kind of restroom facility. There isn’t one there now, not even a porta-potty.

Cessna says he was excited to meet with PortKC officials and read the mayor’s recent Facebook post promoting Riverfront Park improvements and a new trail connection.

“Your article last year kind of got things rolling,” Cessna said.

The Star’s reporting in June 2024 raised public awareness about the park’s rise, fall and potential promise. It told how the city government paid too little attention to the park’s upkeep and had made little to no investment aimed at making one of the region’s biggest urban recreation spaces more welcoming to the public.

Momentum on the riverfront

Since then, Kansas City has taken a shine to Riverfront Park, which is not to be confused with the much smaller, manicured Berkley Riverfront Park in the burgeoning riverfront district immediately north of downtown where the KC Current have their soccer stadium.

PortKC is coordinating all that construction at the Berkley Riverfront and working with city officials and other entities in connecting the once isolated area with the rest of the city.

As the KC Streetcar finishes up its link to a station that is within a short walk of CPKC Stadium, and as construction continues on a pedestrian bridge to the River Market area, PortKC is separately working on two trail links.

One under way will link the Riverfront Heritage Trail through Berkley Riverfront to the West Bottoms. The other now in the planning stages would extend the Heritage Trail along the levee east, to Riverfront Park and eventually all the way to the Blue River.

PortKC pitched the idea to the city’s parks board last spring when officials screened a very preliminary proposal that would have PortKC adopting a portion of the park initially, roughly 230 acres from its western border to the Chouteau Bridge.

The proposal said the authority would clear the vines and other invasive species beneath the trees so the park would be more walkable, PortKC communications director Meredith Hoenes said.

Maybe they’d add some docks where people could cast a fishing line, or open up a camping area, or a pump track for cyclists like the newly renovated one in Shawnee Mission Park.

“We’re very excited about the potentials,” Hoenes said, and the brainstorming is only beginning.

She said PortKC hopes to reconnect with the Board of Parks & Recreation Commissioners late this year or early next with a refined proposal. The mayor recently gave the planning some juice when he announced on Facebook that the city wants to build on the success of the commercial development PortKC has fostered in the Berkley Riverfront area by starting to focus on the recreational possibilities east of there.

“Among our greatest accomplishments in the last six years is reconnecting our community more fully with the Missouri River,” Lucas responded in writing when The Star asked him to explain what he has in mind.

“With responsible investment and collaboration with the Parks Board and Port KC, I expect Kansas Citians to add River Front Park to the list of our most outstanding municipal parks spaces like Swope, Loose, and Penn Valley Parks.”

Decades in the making

That was the idea when Riverfront Park was envisioned in the 1960s by then parks superintendent Frank Vaydik. It was going to be outstanding, he said.

His idea was for it to be a community gathering place, with ballfields and picnic areas surrounded by thick woods along the Missouri River. When Kansas City celebrated the nation’s bicentennial in 1976, it was Riverfront Park where they shot off fireworks.

But only a small area near the boat ramp was ever developed. And by the time the city got around to planning for big improvements in the 1980s, the park was shut down by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The area had formerly been the city dump. The EPA designated it one of the first Superfund cleanup sites because the dirt was contaminated with all kinds of nasty chemical residues. And when the environmental remediation was finally completed almost 20 years later, city officials had by then lost interest in Riverfront Park and did little to promote it to the taxpayers who pay for its upkeep, such as it is.

Now, that’s changing. Judging by the demand for apartments and entertainment options in Berkley Riverfront and points west of there, Kansas Citians are increasingly eager to be near the river that brought people and commerce here in the first place after the explorers Lewis and Clark passed through on their way to Oregon.

Lucas would like to keep the momentum going, he said, and he sees Riverfront Park as key.

“While we appreciate the residential, business, and entertainment development west of the Bond Bridge, ensuring there is ample park and trail space for recreation ensures (that) water-adjacent improvements are accessible to all for generations to come,” he said.

Right on, says Guibor-MacBride, who calls the growing partnership of park backers both “awesome” and promising, considering how alone he and other members of Friends of Riverfront Park once felt.

“I think the riverfront is really looking up,” he said.

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This story was originally published August 31, 2025 at 6:16 AM.