Fixing 'a huge hole' and improving a neighborhood
By Patrick T. Reardon
Published: December 19, 2011
LISC of Greater Kansas City
Back in 1998, the St. Peter/Waterway neighborhood in Kansas City, Kan., had a solid, well-maintained core, but its edges were infested with creeping blight. Boarded-up homes and vacant lots --- "with weeds up to here," said Julie Porter, holding her hand four feet from the floor --- were magnets for rats, trash and crime.
Porter, the executive director of Greater Kansas City LISC, notes that neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kan., tend to be small, "If you have 10 blocks of that sort of blight, half the neighborhood is gone."
Even worse, though, was Waterway Park, a long, linear strip of open land between Armstrong Avenue and Grandview Boulevard near the western edge of the community.
Once, it must have been an attractive community amenity, with a pond in the center as its most distinctive feature. But, at some point, the pond had been drained, leaving what was essentially an open pit. Prostitutes and drug dealers congregated around and in that pit.
"It was a huge hole that, easily, went down 20 feet," says Porter. "You would never want your children around that. It was really dangerous."
In 1998, LISC began working with Catholic Housing of Wyandotte County which later merged with the Neighborhood Housing Services of Kansas City to form CHWC (Community Housing of Wyandotte County). The result has been scores of new homes to fill many of those vacant lots and replace the derelict buildings.
A "re-growing" of the community
Mayor Joe Reardon of Kansas City, Kansas
In those early years of working with LISC, Joe Reardon, the son of Jack Reardon, the city's mayor from 1975-1987, was a board member with Catholic Housing. Today, after following in his father's footsteps, he serves as mayor/CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan.
The new housing, Reardon says, was a key element in the "re-growing" of the community. "It stabilized the neighborhood. It's allowed the neighborhood to be a neighborhood," he says.
Improvement accelerated after 2006 when St. Peter/Waterway became one of six Kansas City neighborhoods --- three on the Kansas side and three on the Missouri side --- selected for the NeighborhoodsNOW program, the local Sustainable Communities effort in comprehensive quality-of-life planning.
When the community prepared its quality-of-life plan, an essential element was fixing Waterway Park.
Re-inventing Waterway Park
"LISC came to us [at the city] and told us, 'You ought to be focused on Waterway Park,' " Reardon says. "People perceived the park as somewhere that wasn't safe to go."
The result — a cooperative effort between the city and CHWC — has been a re-invention of the park.
LISC of Greater Kansas City
CHWC took debris from its housing sites, and, instead of hauling it to a dump, used it to fill the pit in the center of Waterway. The drainage system was improved. New curbs and gutters were installed. A colorful playground was constructed at the south tip of the park.
And a sidewalk was built along the outer edge of the park where, often now during the day, groups of neighborhood residents can be seen, singly and in groups, making the half-mile circuit as part of their exercise regimen.
"It's been an amazing transformation," says Reardon. "It's a community gathering space now."
The Mayor is a strong booster of comprehensive community development which aims at improving a neighborhood's quality of life, including its brick-and-mortar needs, such as housing, and its "softer" needs, such as a healthy lifestyle and job recruitment.
Indeed, he says, "This is the way that all cities should be thinking."
Good out of chaos
Community organizer Steve Curtis advertized for volunteers for an art project by putting his phone number up on the wall to be painted.
Patrick T. Reardon
One example of this is the work that Steve Curtis, a neighborhood resident and CHWC community organizer, is doing to reach out to the newer community people, who tend to be Hispanic, particularly to their children.
On one summer Thursday, Curtis was out at a wooden retaining wall with a crew of high school and medical school student volunteers, clearing brush and preparing the high three-sided surface for a community mural.
On the wall, he had painted: "If you want to help paint a mural here, call 342-7580." Already, he'd had calls from neighborhood children, and he was planning to go to the nearby school to enlist others.
Volunteers prepare the wall for a neighborhood mural.
Patrick T. Reardon
As for the subject of the mural, Curtis says, "The kids will decide. I'm a believer that good things come out of chaos as long as you don't get into the middle of it." He and other adult artists will sketch out the ideas on the wall, but the kids will do the main painting work.
Meanwhile, he's worked with other residents on a community garden, and, with the help of a Spanish-speaking high school junior, canvassed the neighborhood's 800 homes twice.
From Reardon's standpoint, quality-of-life efforts such as those being overseen by Curtis have to be a continuous process in St. Peter/Waterway where, until recently, he had his home.
"We need to be constantly looking at the quality-of-life issues and keep addressing them," the mayor says.
Posted in Kansas City