Movin' to KC, any thoughts on neighborhoods? (Kansas City, St. Louis: apartments, lofts)

[Kscrivner]

I'm originally from St. Louis, but have been living in Seattle for 5 years now. I'm moving to Kansas City to go to KCUMB, which I've noticed is in a semi-seedy neighborhood. Some of the students I talked to warned me against even walking around the neighborhood around the school, is this warranted?

I could also use some advice for areas to live in that are within a short drive of KCUMB. I would love to find an artsy/ hip/ progressive area to move to... any ideas from the KC experts here? Thanks

[xenokc]

KCUMB is on Independence Ave on the NE Side of KCMO, but the school is at the W edge of the NE side, not in the heart of it. The "NE Side" is by far the most diverse area of the metro with a wide variety of immigrants mixed with a history of hookers and dealers on Indy Ave. It's improving but still need to be weary in that area - I wouldn't walk it at night and I'm fairly hardened (originally from seedy parts of STL). That area reminds me of Echo Park in LA... many Arabs to Sudanese to Somalians to Latinos to Bosnians to SE Asians. Some areas of that hood have some really cool old homes that are being gentrified by 'hardened urbanites'. Just depends on what your inner city hardened level is. There is a really cool recreational area along 'Cliff Drive' along a bluff that attracts rock climbers, weekend cyclists and disc golfers. Is isolated from Indie Ave and worth checking out. The road is shutoff to cars on weekends to allow runners, cyclists, recreation.

You'll probably want to live downtown, which is relatively more mainstream... essentially all hoods downtown are doable... River Market is partly young professionals to SE Asian towards Columbus Park, Quality Hlil/Library Lofts is mixed with incoming suburbanites to 'affordable housing' for lower incomers, Crossroads has more creative class crowd but things to do are scattered, W Side has more Latino mix, Union Hill/Martini Corner area has a lot of young professionals. Crossroads and River Market have the cooler warehouse lofts. The W Bottoms is starting to get some traction and has 'real' entire floor warehouse lofts with freight elevator but is pretty isolated from downtown. W Bottoms is eerily cool but not many places to go.

Here's a city guide to give you some context. Living along this MAX bus line is also doable but you'd have to transfer bus to get to Indy Ave. KCUMB is about 2 miles E of the Federal Courthouse on map. There is a very seedy area between E Side of downtown and KCUMB known by street people as "Jurassic Park", which is loaded with wandering homeless people and drug dealing. That's the main area I'd be weary about.

[TabulaRasa]

If I were attending KCUMB, I probably would opt to live in the River Market, Downtown, or Crossroads.

[aragx6]

I answered in your other thread that I would personally look closely at Westport -- it's still only a 10-minute drive from campus. The area around 39th St West (the neighborhood is called Volker), which is walking distance to Westport, is also a great plan. Vintage apartments, good restaurants, coffee shops and both a used bookstore and record store. It's where I live and we've been very happy.

A dear friend attended KCUMB and they all railed about how awful the neighborhood was, and they're not entirely wrong, of course, but much of it is overstated by folks who've simply never lived anywhere at all urban. I doubt you'd run into a terrible amount of danger by walking near campus, but there also really isn't much in the immediate area to walk to, so there's just not much reason to do so. I did have to laugh when we went to her honors event the night before graduation at a local church. The parking lot was small so all these fancy people in their suits and dresses had to park their bimmers on the residential streets -- many of them looked terrified.

I do know that car break-ins occur in the parking lots owned by KCUMB -- don't leave anything (even textbooks) of any value out in plain sight and you'll likely have no problems. One girl I know had her window broken and her GPS -- which was sitting right on her dash -- was stolen. Sucked for her of course, but she should never have left that out; no reason to make yourself a target.

[Kscrivner]

I'm getting more excited to move to KC after hearing there's some cool neighborhoods to dwell in! Thanks for all your help everyone!

[xenokc]

Yeah, Midtown/Westport is usually more active than downtown on a daily basis and not a far drive to KCUMB, worth checking out. Downtown has more energy than Midtown when there are events going on.

If wanting the loft thing, then downtown. Here's a list of a bunch of downtown buildings that converted to lofts...
http://216.119.82.16/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/2010-Housing-Data-Sheet-3rd-Quarter1.pdf (broken link)