KCFD is using Midtown apartment buildings that could be demolished for training

Kansas City firefighting crews are training this week in and on Midtown buildings that could soon be demolished.

Crews could be seen Thursday morning conducting training exercises in vacant residential buildings, including on the roof of one structure and in the windows of another, in the Valentine neighborhood just east of Southwest Trafficway.

Kansas City Life Insurance, which is headquartered in Valentine, owns the buildings and has targeted them for demolition ahead of possible future redevelopment. The company says the buildings are unsafe, and the city has added them to its list of dangerous buildings with orders to demolish or repair them.

Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins, spokesperson for the Kansas City Fire Department, told The Star that KC Life reached out to the department last week and offered the opportunity to train on residential buildings that it owns and are scheduled to be torn down.

Crews started training on the structures on Monday and will continue through Saturday. Exercises include practicing search and rescue, forcible entry, ventilation techniques, hose line advancement and salvage operations.

“The opportunity to train on real structures, and not training props, is an opportunity that does not come along often, and is only made possible when gracious property owners, such as KC Life Insurance in this instance, grant us permission,” Hopkins said. “We are very thankful for their generosity. Training and perfecting our fire ground skills is vital when real world operations must take place and real lives are at stake.”

Valentine neighborhood organizers and KC Life have been at odds for decades over building demolitions, and neighbors mourned last fall after KC Life knocked down over 20 structures that it owned, leaving entire blocks of Valentine nearly empty.

The company has since filed plans to demolish four more structures in Valentine while presenting an early vision for redevelopment that would include building new apartments. Formal plans have yet to be filed. A Star reporter saw fire crews on three of the buildings Thursday morning.

The four demolitions were temporarily paused by the Valentine neighborhood association’s application to place part of Valentine on the local historic register. That application remains pending; the City Council’s neighborhoods committee is expected to consider it later this month.

The city’s historic preservation commission voted to recommend creating the historic district, while the city’s planning commission voted against recommending an approval which resulted in “no recommendation.”

But in the meantime, the city placed the four KC Life properties on the dangerous buildings list following inspections, meaning they pose a threat to the public’s safety. KC Life has since renewed the process to demolish them.