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The city for all it's pretense is a very regressive, backward one with a typical village mentality that comes with it. I have noticed that most people are even surprised as to why anyone that's not White even considers relocating here, I mean guess this is the last great bastion of the South.
I am a fairly approachable young man and have been to numerous cities in the US, no where did I notice this animosity any higher than here. That too, in the supposedly progressive part of town called Plaza so imagine how it would be if you were to live in lesser progressive parts of the city.
The city for all it's pretense is a very regressive, backward one with a typical village mentality that comes with it. I have noticed that most people are even surprised as to why anyone that's not White even considers relocating here, I mean guess this is the last great bastion of the South.
I am a fairly approachable young man and have been to numerous cities in the US, no where did I notice this animosity any higher than here. That too, in the supposedly progressive part of town called Plaza so imagine how it would be if you were to live in lesser progressive parts of the city.
I'm an African-American, native Kansas Citian, like Mayor Sly James, who grew up about six blocks from where I did on the city's East Side. Mayor James cruised to re-election last year, with solid majorities on both sides of Troost.
Graduate of its most prestigious private prep school, then all-boys, since merged with its all-girls sister school. One of three black students in a class of 53. The school at the time was about 10 percent black overall, which IMO isn't bad for a pricey school of its caliber. Harvard's black percentage when I went there wasn't that much higher, and 10 percent is not that far off the share of blacks in the U.S. population as a whole. I used to ride two buses from my East Side home to its campus on State Line Road, transferring at the Plaza, which is also where my bowling league met when I was in grade school.
Missouri never disenfranchised its black citizens. The Civil War tore the state in two. If you think this is "the last great bastion of the South," I would like to suggest you haven't spent too much time in the actual South, or even in southeast Missouri, the most "Southern" part of the Show-Me State, for that matter.
The city for all it's pretense is a very regressive, backward one with a typical village mentality that comes with it. I have noticed that most people are even surprised as to why anyone that's not White even considers relocating here, I mean guess this is the last great bastion of the South.
I am a fairly approachable young man and have been to numerous cities in the US, no where did I notice this animosity any higher than here. That too, in the supposedly progressive part of town called Plaza so imagine how it would be if you were to live in lesser progressive parts of the city.
You obviously feel strongly enough about this to create a username and account specifically to issue this opinion, but I don't really see where you're coming from at all. I can only imagine that you may have never lived anywhere truly regressive or backward for any length of time. I've been here a decade, have lived in a variety of other settings, representing a range of community sizes and characters, and don't notice any such animosity, per your description. I've always lived and worked and attended school, church, and various recreational activities with a fairly diverse cross-section of citizens, in the time I've lived here.
I don't personally think I'd list the Plaza (where I've been a resident, as well, during my time in KC) as the seat of progressive thought for KC, either. It was literally designed as a neighborhood of exclusivity, by a developer whose legacy is partially that of institutionalized racism. It's a center of corporate retail, home base for some of the more costly legal firms and real estate companies in the region, and in the past five years, has made a concerted effort to push out and demolish the last remaining specimens of semi-affordable and/or mixed income housing, to make room for boutique hotel development and higher end condos. I can think of other Kansas City neighborhoods that are better examples of "progressive" areas. The Plaza's fine, but I don't know that I'd say, "Wow, now THERE is a progressive area."
I don't personally think I'd list the Plaza (where I've been a resident, as well, during my time in KC) as the seat of progressive thought for KC, either. It was literally designed as a neighborhood of exclusivity, by a developer whose legacy is partially that of institutionalized racism. It's a center of corporate retail, home base for some of the more costly legal firms and real estate companies in the region, and in the past five years, has made a concerted effort to push out and demolish the last remaining specimens of semi-affordable and/or mixed income housing, to make room for boutique hotel development and higher end condos. I can think of other Kansas City neighborhoods that are better examples of "progressive" areas. The Plaza's fine, but I don't know that I'd say, "Wow, now THERE is a progressive area."
Ah, it's information like this I find interesting, as I strive to learn more about the city I live in now. I didn't know this about The Plaza, my wife and I have spent one afternoon at The Plaza and enjoyed it immensely. Look forward to going to the KC Zoo this afternoon. It's always interesting to learn about the background of areas and buildings and places in the cities we call home.
(quoting TabulaRasa)I don't personally think I'd list the Plaza (where I've been a resident, as well, during my time in KC) as the seat of progressive thought for KC, either. It was literally designed as a neighborhood of exclusivity, by a developer whose legacy is partially that of institutionalized racism. It's a center of corporate retail, home base for some of the more costly legal firms and real estate companies in the region, and in the past five years, has made a concerted effort to push out and demolish the last remaining specimens of semi-affordable and/or mixed income housing, to make room for boutique hotel development and higher end condos. I can think of other Kansas City neighborhoods that are better examples of "progressive" areas. The Plaza's fine, but I don't know that I'd say, "Wow, now THERE is a progressive area."(end quote)
Ah, it's information like this I find interesting, as I strive to learn more about the city I live in now. I didn't know this about The Plaza, my wife and I have spent one afternoon at The Plaza and enjoyed it immensely. Look forward to going to the KC Zoo this afternoon. It's always interesting to learn about the background of areas and buildings and places in the cities we call home.
Though the funny thing is, while TabulaRasa is right about Jesse Clyde Nichols' application of racism to the sale of homes in his exclusive Country Club District, at whose north edge the Plaza sits ("1000 Acres Restricted", and the signs didn't need to explain what the restrictions were), he was pretty much following standard industry practice at the time: the National Association of Real Estate Boards - today's National Association of Realtors - promoted covenants attached to the land prohibiting the sale of property to blacks (and Jews in most cases, which is why the first neighborhoods to "flip" from all-white to all-black once covenants were ruled unenforceable in 1948 were Jewish ones) after the Supreme Court struck down racial zoning in 1917. (Yep, we came that close to having real American apartheid.)
But when I was a kid, in those heady days when the Civil Rights Movement's successes made so much seem possible, the Plaza was neither as corporate or as thoroughgoingly upscale as it is now. It had a Woolworth's, a supermarket, a Sears store and a bowling alley, fer Chrissakes. I used to bowl in a league at King Louie Plaza Lanes - and my Dad maintained a bank account at the Plaza Bank of Commerce. Mom sometimes shopped at Chasnoff on the Plaza, and I remember getting fitted for my first suits at Rothschild's there.
Maybe all that was also the fruits of the Civil Rights Movement. But I didn't feel like I didn't belong there, even if Gov. Warren Hearnes sent the National Guard there in 1968 when we were torching 35th and Prospect. And I remember walking into the J.C. Nichols Company offices in high school and complaining to Barbara Barickman that the changes JCN was making at the time were taking away "my Plaza." "There's still The Landing," was her response. Yeah, right. (And we shopped there too. It had a pretty nice restaurant, a Macy's, a Chasnoff, a branch of Adler's, and Eddie Jacobson's men's store - Jacobson was the business partner in Harry Truman's unsuccessful haberdashery.)
Those changes only accelerated, as far as I can tell, after the J.C. Nichols Company was sold and dismembered.
But hey: you can take solace in knowing that the Urban Land Institute's highest award for imaginative development bears Nichols' name.
The KC Zoo was magnificent yesterday. Full of good cheer, beautiful regal animals and fun. The Siberian tigers walked right up to us and stared us down. Dared us ta make a move. We used our free Jackson County resident passes mailed to us from the Zoo. Our regular prices now default to $7.00 a head. We'll be back. And to further my comments about KC friendliness, the Zoo docents were helpful, patient and kind and encouraged questions. KC is a good place, not perfect.
MarketStEl - appreciate your comments on the Plaza above, too. Anything new and different and historical is great - I should go to the magazines and books rack at Price-Chopper or HyVee or check all the grocery stores out and see if KC has an 'Images of America' book for sale. They're softbound books selling for $21.99 - I'd snatch it right up - I get one for wherever we move to to learn more about the cities and their backgrounds. They are released by Arcadia Publishing - I'll head to their website later and see if they've released one on Kansas City. They have tons of photos and stories about notable people, places and things in your city of the U.S.
The KC Zoo was magnificent yesterday. Full of good cheer, beautiful regal animals and fun. The Siberian tigers walked right up to us and stared us down. Dared us ta make a move. We used our free Jackson County resident passes mailed to us from the Zoo. Our regular prices now default to $7.00 a head. We'll be back. And to further my comments about KC friendliness, the Zoo docents were helpful, patient and kind and encouraged questions. KC is a good place, not perfect.
MarketStEl - appreciate your comments on the Plaza above, too. Anything new and different and historical is great - I should go to the magazines and books rack at Price-Chopper or HyVee or check all the grocery stores out and see if KC has an 'Images of America' book for sale. They're softbound books selling for $21.99 - I'd snatch it right up - I get one for wherever we move to to learn more about the cities and their backgrounds. They are released by Arcadia Publishing - I'll head to their website later and see if they've released one on Kansas City. They have tons of photos and stories about notable people, places and things in your city of the U.S.
God bless Arcadia Publishing. The "Images of America" series is just one of dozens they produce to (re)introduce readers to valuable local and regional history via chapbooks heavy with vintage photographs.
A friend of mine is the author of one of the volumes in that series, "Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia." I have, but seem to have misplaced, "Boston's Red Line: Alewife to Braintree." And there's one that just about every Philadelphian probably should have if he or she doesn't: "Wawa." (The convenience-store chain established by the dairy headquartered since 1900 in the Delaware County community of that name* in 1964 is a true regional phenomenon that has a devoted, almost cult-like following. The chain's opening its largest urban location on Friday in the block next to where I work. I plan to drop in.
(*"Wawa" is the Lenape word for the bird the rest of us call the Canada goose, probably derived from the sound of its call. That's why the chain has a Canada goose in flight as its logo.)
"KC is a good place, not perfect": I'd wholeheartedly endorse that sentiment, only replacing "good" with "great." I tell people up my way all the time that I wouldn't trade growing up there for growing up anywhere else in the country. And it seems that every KC expat I've met here on the East Coast feels the same way about the place. We may never live there again, but we all love it to death.
Edited to add: Boy, have we gone off topic. This is supposed to be a thread about what we hate about the place, and here we've hijacked it and turned it into another lovefest.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 11-29-2016 at 09:52 PM..
I'm more annoyed by cover charges at P&L, $5 to get inside square, and then another cover to get into some bars? I just skip the area entirely now
Hey, they gotta pay off the $280 million in bonds the city floated to build it somehow, and the sales taxes generated by businesses in the development aren't producing anywhere near enough revenue. I think the city refinanced the bonds to lower the annual payments, but as a result, it'll be something like 2040 before they're paid off.
(*"Wawa" is the Lenape word for the bird the rest of us call the Canada goose, probably derived from the sound of its call. That's why the chain has a Canada goose in flight as its logo.)
I saw a flight of them flying southwesterly above us as I drove down to 103rd St. yesterday on Highway 49/71/435. I called them out to my wife and she said nothing. I said "They're too cold, they're headin' outta here!"
"KC is a good place, not perfect": I'd wholeheartedly endorse that sentiment, only replacing "good" with "great." I tell people up my way all the time that I wouldn't trade growing up there for growing up anywhere else in the country. And it seems that every KC expat I've met here on the East Coast feels the same way about the place. We may never live there again, but we all love it to death.
I wouldn't jump in after 3 1/2 months and disagree with you. Everyone here has been nice and has welcomed us. Our local Congregation of worshippers is so friendly and warm and welcoming. I am studying for a big Medical test in my field at this time and am going to be testing in December for the credential that comes with it. My workplace is very Midwest no-nonsense and kind of...gruff at times. But I feel I am becoming a better worker in my field at this place of employment. I work at a Medical Clinic in Lenexa.
Edited to add: Boy, have we gone off topic. This is supposed to be a thread about what we hate about the place, and here we've hijacked it and turned it into another lovefest.
Hey, they gotta pay off the $280 million in bonds the city floated to build it somehow, and the sales taxes generated by businesses in the development aren't producing anywhere near enough revenue. I think the city refinanced the bonds to lower the annual payments, but as a result, it'll be something like 2040 before they're paid off.
Cover charge has nothing to do with the repayment of bonds. It's simply a cover charge for an entertainment district. A district where you can walk around with alcohol from place to place. People are obviously paying it or they would not charge it. Cordish probably uses the money to help market the district, maintain the open public spaces etc which benefit the tenants.
I'll say this again about the bonds. The bonds were not used to build the bars and restaurants. They were used to move and rebuild underground utilities, prepare the land for development (remove blighted buildings etc), build new streets, street lights, sidewalks etc and build very expensive underground "public" parking garages that are needed and used by not only the P&L District, but the Sprint Center as well.
The bonds were used to rebuild a massive portion of infrastructure in downtown Kansas City, which needed to be done anyway. This simply allowed Cordish to come in and build the actual retail district mostly with their own money. Something like 300 million dollars. I think some of the bonds also went to help restore the main street and midland theaters, neither would have happened without some public help.
It was probably the best money KCMO has spent in a long time. If it were not for KCMO doing their part, there would be no P&L District, no Midland Theater, no H&R Block tower, no Sprint Center and Downtown would still be the disaster today it was in the 1990's. That few hundred million the city spent to rebuild the south side of downtown is what has triggered everything else that has happened since.
It was worth every single penny.
People have got to get over their fear of spending public money on infrastructure in KC. KCMO generally does it right. Meanwhile out in Johnson County and Wyandotte County, the city and state gives away much much more public money to the actual private side of developments in greenfield areas and nobody cares. Totally bizarre.
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