'We can do better': KC seeking community ideas to 'reimagine' Watkins Drive
From its earliest concepts, a north-to-south highway through Kansas City was a volatile idea.
The first renditions of a Country Club Plaza route in the late 1950s ran into harsh opposition from the powerful neighborhoods of mid-Kansas City sending the plans eastward. Those neighborhoods didn’t want it either, but political will worked against them.
At a cost of some 2,000 homes and 25,000 livelihoods, according to the NAACP, the highway ultimately plowed through predominantly Black, east Kansas City neighborhoods.
Learn more, get involved at ReconnectEastSide.com
KCUR: Highway 71 tore through Kansas City's Black neighborhoods. Can that damage be repaired? Read more
As small concessions to the destruction of neighborhoods, the design by court decree incorporated large green medians, stoplights and ornate bridges and other measures to try to preserve some neighborhood continuity.
But, some 40 years after the construction began, Kansas City is looking to reimagine the highway with a common understanding that Project Manager Jason Waldron said everyone can agree on:
“We can do better,” Waldron, the director of public works in Kansas City, told an audience gathered recently for the Urban Summit meeting at 27th and Prospect.
The city got its artery. Up to 62,000 cars a day now travel the 10 mile stretch of U.S. 71 through Kansas City that was completed in 2001. And it was named for Bruce R. Watkins and its beautiful bridgework at 63rd Street was named for Mamie Hughes — champions of the East Side who fought for the integrity of the impacted neighborhoods.
But the highway has proven to be one of the most dangerous thoroughfares in the city, and it has done deep and long-lasting damage to the neighborhoods it split.
So Kansas City this year launched Phase One of a three-phase project to remake or reconfigure Watkins Drive.
The city wants to hear your stories, Triveece Penelton, a project consultant with Vireo, said at the Urban Summit.
“What are the issues?” she said. “What are your needs? What are the opportunities?”
The city has been meeting with many neighborhood associations and civic groups and will continue through the summer. The website for the project — ReconnectEastSide.com — keeps a listing of those opportunities to learn about the project and share ideas.
A major event in the process will be a community summit June 24 at the Blue Parkway Sun Fresh, 4209 E 50th Terrace in Kansas City.
It’s an ambitious project. The city wants the community’s help in understanding the impact of the highway and the details that need changing. The collaborative process in three phases is scheduled to continue into 2028.
Everyone wants, somehow, to build a safer roadway, and reconnect broken neighborhoods, with aesthetic beauty, while managing thousands and thousands of vehicles.
“For a century,” Waldron said, “we let roads tell us what our communities look like. But now, we’re going to let communities tell us what roads look like.”
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer