KC mourns ‘pillar of community’ Jimmy Townsend, owner of Green Duck Lounge

Friends on Monday fondly recalled slain businessman James “Jimmy” Townsend, who rescued the Green Duck Lounge and Grill from foreclosure and later restored it into a Kansas City historic landmark.

Townsend, 83, was a well-known and respected business, tavern and property owner. After he failed to show for a meeting Saturday morning, his body was found about 11 a.m. Saturday behind his residence in the 2900 block of Prospect Avenue. Police were not sure when the shooting occurred.

“He was definitely a pillar in the community and his passing is going to take a toll on the community because he was a good man,” said Queea KiKi Miller, who worked for Townsend as a cook and later a bartender. “A lot of people thought just because he owned a club that was what he was all about but no, he owned a lot of property. He was able to house people and he was a good person.”

Friends recalled him Monday as a firm and stern employer who was willing to help anyone once he was convinced their motives were pure. He owned numerous rental properties throughout Kansas City.

“Jimmy was quite a character, good nature and had a lot of friends,” said Alvin Brooks, a former city councilman and founder of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime. “People loved him and he helped a lot of folks and he was good-hearted.”

“I don’t think anybody could say he misused them because he was very helpful to people and people flocked around him,” said Brooks, who first met Townsend when Brooks was a Kansas City police patrolman.

The Green Duck at 2548 Prospect Ave. catered to an older clientele.

Decades before owning the Green Duck, Townsend operated Jimmy’s and Dee’s Steakhouse at 29th Street and Prospect Avenue. It was part of cluster of businesses along Prospect that included the Byron Hotel, where four men were killed in the riots that followed the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Townsend’s killing was the city’s 106 homicide this year. There were 81 homicides in 2014.

“His death is a sign of things gone wrong this year in Kansas City,” said Councilman Quinton Lucas, 3rd District at-large. “I know I hear about upswings in homicides, but this is out of control.”

Townsend owned the Green Duck for more than 25 years. He bought the two-story, red-brick building from foreclosure in the late 1980s and spent years restoring it.

The Jackson County prosecutor’s office shut down the Green Duck as a public nuisance in 2011 after repeated instances of violent crime and drug activity. It reopened in 2012.

In September, the City Council voted to include the Green Duck in the city’s register of historic places. It was determined to be eligible in the area of social history and civil rights.

“It gives us a source of pride,” Lucas said Monday of the Green Duck. “I know before, people would say, ‘What are you talking about it? It is just a bar,’ but it is not. It is an establishment with history.

“It is an establishment that has actually meant something to generations of black Kansas Citians, and I am glad we got it back.”

Now two of the building’s owners have been gunned down.

The Green Duck previous owners included civil rights leader Leon Jordan, who was killed by a shotgun blast outside the tavern early on July 15, 1970. Jordan was a co-founder of the political organization Freedom Inc.

This story was originally published December 21, 2015 at 11:20 AM with the headline "KC mourns ‘pillar of community’ Jimmy Townsend, owner of Green Duck Lounge."