Kansas City to help pay for private playground — as long as it’s open to everyone
Kansas City will provide $115,000 to help build a playground in the fast-gentrifying Beacon Hill neighborhood to be owned by the homeowners association, the City Council decided Thursday.
Members voted 12-1 in favor of the plan to provide the funds, raised through the sale of three city-owned lots in the neighborhood.
Some council members expressed concerns last month about providing public funds to build a privately owned playground, but the council’s Neighborhood Planning and Development adopted an amendment to ensure the park would remain open to the public. It passed the committee unanimously Wednesday.
Beacon Hill, which lies near downtown between Troost Avenue and The Paseo and 22nd and 27th streets, is home to an urban renaissance, with dozens of new houses built in recent years. New, architecturally striking homes that cost more than $500,000 sit just doors down from small 100-year-old homes.
The revitalization has come with some tension and fear on the part of longtime residents, many of them Black, of being pushed out.
Councilman Brandon Ellington, 3rd District at-large, represents the area and was the lone vote against it. He said the amendment to ensure the playground would be open to everyone had offered some protections and thanked Councilwoman Andrea Bough, 6th District at-large, for drafting it.
“But I still have concerns and reservations about us giving public money to an HOA, in particular, in an enclave that most of the residents of the 3rd District cannot afford,” Ellington said.
He said city-owned playgrounds in the district desperately need improvements and noted that the original agreement the city signed when it began redeveloping Beacon Hill included a community center.
Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, 3rd District, also represents the area and said her family had owned property in Beacon Hill for decades. She acknowledged there had been discussion of a community center, but said the HOA and the Beacon Hill-McFeders Community Council decided to sell the land for the community center to build more homes.
“This ordinance … keeps a promise, not to the first fidelity of what we asked for as residents who have been through the ups and downs of Beacon Hill year after year, but we came to this agreement together as a neighborhood association and as a HOA to settle on this community space that will be open for everyone,” Robinson said.
