Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well, the stadium issue has really broken down just as I had predicted. Jackson County basically risking losing both KC's teams to KS because they are intimidated by a downtown stadium. I mean Downtown KC is nothing but parking lots and all people are worried about is parking.
Some things about KC will never change.
I've heard that part of the problem may also have been the rather weak improvement package the Hunts put forward for Arrowhead.
I do also recall some noise about losing four blocks of the Crossroads, which is the only part of downtown KC where things actually happen and people can be seen on the streets, as an objection. But since the site included the no-llonger-used Kansas City Star printing plant, it wouldn't have been that big of a loss, espeically since the lother lost buildings could have been reproduced on some of those parking lots.
But your comment also touches on KC's status (and, I guess, conception of itself) as a drive-everywhere place, the one thing about it I do not like at all (and I suspect you may share that sentiment). What good is free public transit if the buses don't run all that frequently?
Passed through the KC airport last Dec. Looks real good.
Hope everyone is handling the current 100 degree Temps. You guys got some lakes around to cool off?
I do also recall some noise about losing four blocks of the Crossroads, which is the only part of downtown KC where things actually happen and people can be seen on the streets, as an objection. But since the site included the no-llonger-used Kansas City Star printing plant, it wouldn't have been that big of a loss, espeically since the lother lost buildings could have been reproduced on some of those parking lots.
But your comment also touches on KC's status (and, I guess, conception of itself) as a drive-everywhere place, the one thing about it I do not like at all (and I suspect you may share that sentiment). What good is free public transit if the buses don't run all that frequently?
Yeah, the streetcar is nice, but KC has let its bus system go to crap. It's a fraction of what it used to be 20 years ago. No point it having free buses if there is no service or a bus comes every 30-60 minutes.
The area where the stadium would have gone in the Crossroads is far from being a vibrant neighborhood. It's mostly parking lots, the empty star building etc. I stay in downtown or crossroads every time I'm in KC and most of the crossroads is empty of people. There are pockets activity, but none are near where the stadium would have gone.
A stadium would have enhanced and activated that part of downtown, not destroyed it. Not to mention all the extra infrastructure improvements it would have brought to the area.
Whatever I guess. Hopefully they find a way to make it happen. But people in KC need to get out more and see what vibrant urban areas are really like. Hint. They have lots of people out and about at all times. And the land use is not 80% parking.
Yeah, the streetcar is nice, but KC has let its bus system go to crap. It's a fraction of what it used to be 20 years ago. No point it having free buses if there is no service or a bus comes every 30-60 minutes.
The area where the stadium would have gone in the Crossroads is far from being a vibrant neighborhood. It's mostly parking lots, the empty star building etc. I stay in downtown or crossroads every time I'm in KC and most of the crossroads is empty of people. There are pockets activity, but none are near where the stadium would have gone.
A stadium would have enhanced and activated that part of downtown, not destroyed it. Not to mention all the extra infrastructure improvements it would have brought to the area.
Whatever I guess. Hopefully they find a way to make it happen. But people in KC need to get out more and see what vibrant urban areas are really like. Hint. They have lots of people out and about at all times. And the land use is not 80% parking.
Preach, Brother, preach.
But the irony is, KC is also home to an early Auto Age development that showed how one could design an urban district that could handle cars without discouraging people from moving around it, namely, the 103-year-old Country Club Plaza. (And it and Westport are as close as KC comes to the types of districts you're talking about.)
I say about it that we knew some things about how cars and cities could coexist back when autos were young that we simply threw into the trash as the years rolled on. Prairie Village Shops, a later Nichols development built right after World War II ended, shows the transition from the Plaza way of thinking to the shopping-mall one.
Status:
"Thrifty has left the building"
(set 14 days ago)
13,020 posts, read 13,843,686 times
Reputation: 9772
This past weekend I had a chance to drive out to Wyandotte County Park via State Ave. I was impressed with all the development. They're giving the "eastside" a run for their money. I have no idea what all those buildings were nor what's planned for all that opened dirt. I drove out to !26th and State and turned into the park.
But the irony is, KC is also home to an early Auto Age development that showed how one could design an urban district that could handle cars without discouraging people from moving around it, namely, the 103-year-old Country Club Plaza. (And it and Westport are as close as KC comes to the types of districts you're talking about.)
I say about it that we knew some things about how cars and cities could coexist back when autos were young that we simply threw into the trash as the years rolled on. Prairie Village Shops, a later Nichols development built right after World War II ended, shows the transition from the Plaza way of thinking to the shopping-mall one.
Yeah and it's time KC let the Plaza evolve too and stop trying to hang onto its car oriented roots. Or it's going to die. It's nowhere near as vibrant as it used to be. It's no longer a regional destination because retail is no longer a destination on its own. The internet and competition in the suburbs has made the Plaza's design obsolete.
The Plaza needs more density, especially in the core retail part of the Plaza. It's a glorified strip mall. It's too single use (retail only). They need to build 5-7 story residential on top of the garages and on top of the retail. Build up more density in the plaza so that it's more self sustained by those that live there. It needs people out walking around all the time, not just people driving in from the suburbs to shop. The plaza needs basic retail like grocery stores etc and it can also have luxury retain return when the area is a destination again.
They need to pedestrianize JC Nicole's Parkway and give the road lots of pedestrian friendly treatments. Build a public square, add a fountain in the middle of the street. Widen the sidewalk to incorporate sidewalk cafes, add food trucks, street performers etc. Do something to get that "stroad" out of the plaza.
Tie the plaza with a pedestrian promenade to the tram stop on Main Street.
Create a true 24 hour urban "neighborhood" that is vibrant all the time and that will create the ambiance and atmosphere to attract people down there from the suburbs again. Retail alone won't do it.
KC is a stubborn place though. They do not like change there. But the plaza desperately needs to be reimagined.
Yeah and it's time KC let the Plaza evolve too and stop trying to hang onto its car oriented roots. Or it's going to die. It's nowhere near as vibrant as it used to be. It's no longer a regional destination because retail is no longer a destination on its own. The internet and competition in the suburbs has made the Plaza's design obsolete.
The Plaza needs more density, especially in the core retail part of the Plaza. It's a glorified strip mall. It's too single use (retail only). They need to build 5-7 story residential on top of the garages and on top of the retail. Build up more density in the plaza so that it's more self sustained by those that live there. It needs people out walking around all the time, not just people driving in from the suburbs to shop. The plaza needs basic retail like grocery stores etc and it can also have luxury retain return when the area is a destination again.
They need to pedestrianize JC Nicole's Parkway and give the road lots of pedestrian friendly treatments. Build a public square, add a fountain in the middle of the street. Widen the sidewalk to incorporate sidewalk cafes, add food trucks, street performers etc. Do something to get that "stroad" out of the plaza.
Tie the plaza with a pedestrian promenade to the tram stop on Main Street.
Create a true 24 hour urban "neighborhood" that is vibrant all the time and that will create the ambiance and atmosphere to attract people down there from the suburbs again. Retail alone won't do it.
KC is a stubborn place though. They do not like change there. But the plaza desperately needs to be reimagined.
JC Nichols Road currently vs what it could be.
When I was a lad there, the Plaza had a supermarket — and a Woolworth's, and a bowling alley.
I remember going back in the late 1970s. when all three of those had disappeared and a Saks Fifth Avenue had replaced the Woolworth's, walking into the J.C. Nichols Company offices at 310 Ward Parkway, and complaining to Barbara Barickman (who was an executive there and the mother of a Pem-Day classmate of mine), "What did you do to my Country Club Plaza?"
"There's still The Landing," was her reply. (That mall, at 63d and Troost, didn't have a supermarket or bowling alley either, and it only had a Macy's department store, though it did have an upscale steakhouse.)
The King of Prussia mall here shows that you can have mid-market and upmarket retail coexisting. And I suspect you are right that returning some of that neighborhood-serving retail and recreational uses might bring foot traffic back to the Plaza.
I do, however, believe that any new residential construction in the Plaza itself needs to fit in, or at least not clash, with the Moorish Revival architecture of the development. There are also opportunities to build denser residential on land immediately bordering the center (e.g., the low-rise apartment buildings immediately to the Plaza's north could be replaced with larger ones, and the houses to the west of Broadway on the south bank of Brush Creek could turn into apartment buildings instead.
BTW, it's Mill Creek Parkway once again. The city took J.C. Nichols' name off the boulevard leading into the Plaza from Westport because of Nichols' ardent championing of racially restrictive covenants that banned sales of properties in his Country Club District ("1000 Acres Restricted") to Blacks. (The Nichols family also gave its blessing to the reversion to the parkway's original name.)
And what you propose for Mill Creek Parkway, which grazes the Plaza's east side, should be done to either 47th Street or Nichols Road. Those two streets run along the axis and through the middle of the Plaza rather than skirting it. Besides, there's already a fountain at 47th and Mill Creek Parkway — from which Nichols' name has also been removed.
When I was a lad there, the Plaza had a supermarket — and a Woolworth's, and a bowling alley.
I remember going back in the late 1970s. when all three of those had disappeared and a Saks Fifth Avenue had replaced the Woolworth's, walking into the J.C. Nichols Company offices at 310 Ward Parkway, and complaining to Barbara Barickman (who was an executive there and the mother of a Pem-Day classmate of mine), "What did you do to my Country Club Plaza?"
"There's still The Landing," was her reply. (That mall, at 63d and Troost, didn't have a supermarket or bowling alley either, and it only had a Macy's department store, though it did have an upscale steakhouse.)
The King of Prussia mall here shows that you can have mid-market and upmarket retail coexisting. And I suspect you are right that returning some of that neighborhood-serving retail and recreational uses might bring foot traffic back to the Plaza.
I do, however, believe that any new residential construction in the Plaza itself needs to fit in, or at least not clash, with the Moorish Revival architecture of the development. There are also opportunities to build denser residential on land immediately bordering the center (e.g., the low-rise apartment buildings immediately to the Plaza's north could be replaced with larger ones, and the houses to the west of Broadway on the south bank of Brush Creek could turn into apartment buildings instead.
BTW, it's Mill Creek Parkway once again. The city took J.C. Nichols' name off the boulevard leading into the Plaza from Westport because of Nichols' ardent championing of racially restrictive covenants that banned sales of properties in his Country Club District ("1000 Acres Restricted") to Blacks. (The Nichols family also gave its blessing to the reversion to the parkway's original name.)
And what you propose for Mill Creek Parkway, which grazes the Plaza's east side, should be done to either 47th Street or Nichols Road. Those two streets run along the axis and through the middle of the Plaza rather than skirting it. Besides, there's already a fountain at 47th and Mill Creek Parkway — from which Nichols' name has also been removed.
It will be interesting to see what the Plaza becomes under new and hopefully competent management. As you correctly note, it's been through several iterations from neighborhood shopping to a regional draw for high end goods. While I'd like to see a return to more the regional and high end model, that will be a difficult task considering how the wealth in KC is no longer concentrated in the immediate Plaza area and new competition has sprung up elsewhere in the metro, specifically along 119th and 135th streets.
The thing the Plaza desperately needs is an influx in residential which behooves them by increasing the population in the surrounding area that can afford the goods sold there. But I agree, at least in the Plaza proper, everything should be done to preserve the Moorish architecture. I don't have any issues with putting taller modern residential towers east and north of the Plaza to replace lower density housing.
It would also be great to make Nichols Road a pedestrian only street. Give the Plaza a plaza. KCMO doesn't need to show pictures of somewhere else in the US to suggest what the Plaza could be, just look at the Plaza during the Plaza Art show. The transformation during those 3 days should be the model of for the future.
Kaufman Stadium is pretty old. It was built in the early 70's opening in 1973 making it over 50 years old. I don't think anyone has an issue with the park itself (other than it is definitely going to need an extensive renovation) but many do have an issue with the location. It was build in a semi-industrial/residential part of KC both of which have gone downhill since that time and the stadiums have never sparked any sustainable offshoot development. Consequently, people in KC drive to the stadium, park in its extensive surface parking lots, and go home.
The owners are now wanting a stadium that is more integrated with the city, closer to a large downtown population that can simply walk to the stadium or take the the expanded street car, with plenty of restaurant/bar options available (with come controlled by the owners). Kaufman has a great design and is a pleasant enough place but I rarely go to games any more. Partly because the Royals suck but mostly because I just don't like where the ballpark is. There's no options for a dinner before or drink afterwards. It's a very sterile environment which many Kansas Citians don't seem to mind but it's not my preference.
The stadium isn't in it's original condition.
A $250 million renovation package (that included some work on Arrowhead) started with Kaufman towards the end of the 2007 season, and the Kaufman part was finished before opening day in 2009 (I went to a couple of games earlier in 2007, and also a game in 2010 after the renovation was complete. I've never been to a Chiefs game at Arrowhead).
I don't post because of KCMO and KCKS being lumped together even though they are very dissimilar. The person running that has obviously never lived in KC.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
