By STEVE PAUL The Kansas City Star
From his desk at the high-style home furnishings store he owns, Rod Parks will have a front-row view of the new downtown.
The big corner windows of Retro Inferno, at Grand Boulevard and Truman Road, overlook the highway canyon of the South Loop and, beyond that, the excavation under way for a new entertainment district called Kansas City Live. Parks can also see the blocks where a huge new arena will rise.
As a merchant in the Crossroads Arts District, a downtown neighborhood that's been awakening for years, Parks wonders how all that activity will affect him.
"I bet I'm in the crosshairs of some people," Parks says.
And he's not alone.
Many of the artists, business owners and creative entrepreneurs who have brought the onetime industrial Crossroads district back to life in the last 15 years have been watching the downtown rebound with mixed feelings.
In some ways they sense a struggle going on for the soul of their neighborhood: Yes, the downtown rebirth is great, but can the Crossroads retain its creative edge in the face of a $2.5 billion redevelopment juggernaut just next door?
The answer may lie in a tangle of economics and urban design.
On the one hand, rising property values, and thus taxes, are forcing the issue. In reaction, some Crossroads leaders are working with city and business interests on a tax-abatement plan to help the art community deal with the pressure.
"Most other cities use artists to develop neighborhoods like this," says Suzie Aron, a real estate investor, broker and arts supporter who heads the Crossroads Community Association. "We are much further along - our neighborhood is already developed - so now we're trying to save it."
As for design, the vibes of encroaching mega-developments are pulsing through the district, raising questions about how size, scale and details contribute to the neighborhood's urban fabric and its self-image.
The Crossroads is an area of roughly 100 blocks bounded by Interstate 35 and Bruce R. Watkins Drive from Truman Road to the railroad tracks behind Union Station. Its mix of old brick facades and high-ceilinged, former warehouses has been a low-expense magnet for artists since the late 1980s. Along with the creative interests and the influx of residents, it retains a diverse range of businesses from automotive shops to high-end restaurants.
Bracketed by the high-rise stature of the Central Business District and Crown Center, the Crossroads in some ways has become the meat in the sandwich of a greater downtown. Its one-of-a-kind shops, galleries, design stores, loft buildings and creative businesses stamp it as a distinctive district. Its promoters point to recent mentions in national media as validation of their difference. The First Fridays gallery crawl attracts thousands of strollers, winning over many first-time visitors.
As the larger developments in the South Loop lean toward brand names and mass market appeal - names such as ESPN Zone and Hard Rock Cafe have been floated as typical attractions - Crossroads people see their district as a vital and complementary contrast.
Yet, neighborhood pioneers know that in city after city, successful artist-led urban transformations are usually followed by bigger crowds and mainstream developers. Then another transformation begins, which smoothens the chaotic edginess that defines frontier districts and forces the artists out.
Aron and a committee have been working on a tax-abatement plan for arts uses in the Crossroads and seeking feedback from city and business leaders. A draft proposal would establish a special district under the auspices of the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority and mitigate tax increases caused by rising property values. Aron hopes a program could be in place by spring.
Already some artists have moved out of the busy, central part of the district and are igniting interest in less-expensive blocks east of Oak Street. Another group of galleries, artists and businesses are in the midst of remaking a long-forgotten triangle of buildings west of Broadway.
But both of those moves also signal that the Crossroads is still growing as a creative district.
The idea of a baseball stadium in their midst has been a recent catalyst for debate. For one thing it raises the question of how a stadium would affect the Crossroads' small-scale entrepreneurship and pedestrian-oriented environment.
Nathan Graham begs to differ. He's a New Orleans transplant and proprietor of Tchoupitoulas, a coffee shop on Walnut Street that sits on one of several possible stadium sites around downtown.
"Even if it costs me a business," Graham says, "I think a stadium is a great opportunity for the city."
Still, some Crossroads leaders have been vocal about the consequences of a stadium.
"We're a community that's pulled itself up by the bootstraps when nothing was going on in the Loop to speak of," says Brad Nicholson, a developer who has been active in the Crossroads for years. "Everybody says what a great neighborhood it is. We just need to make sure we don't go start destroying large sections of it."
Many in the Crossroads have been content to see their neighborhood grow incrementally. They hope that slower growth will help fill in long vacant lots, or "gaps in the teeth," in ways that are compatible with the district and that also foster entrepreneurship.
"Look at this little building," Aron says.
She is standing on the sidewalk in the 1500 block of Main Street. Across the way is a three-story stone-fronted building, which houses the Lane Blueprint Co. It's the last late 19th century building remaining on its side of the street. Built in 1889, it also would give way to a stadium, under one potential location.
Yet, says Aron, those are the kinds of buildings where small businesses create jobs and ideas and lend a city its uniqueness.
"We need to find ways to help developers build a whole block of buildings like this," adds Kevin Klinkenberg, an architect who joined Aron on a recent walk in the district.
Some downtown interests say it's premature to worry about a baseball stadium and what effect it might have on the Crossroads. And they argue that no one is trying to drive out small operators. Just the opposite.
"Small entrepreneurial business is incredibly important to the sustainability and vitality of downtown," says Bill Dietrich, president and CEO of the Downtown Council, which has become a guiding force of downtown's makeover. "A lot of the projects we're working on are meant to bring more pedestrians downtown, more street retail, making it more lively for people - for our residents, our office workers and for the visitors."
Jay Tomlinson, a founding member of the Urban Society, is a principal in Helix Architecture and Design, whose office on Walnut Street faces a possible Crossroads stadium site. Yet he has taken a more optimistic view of the situation.
"I'm not going to fall into the NIMBY trap and be overly concerned about a ballpark," Tomlinson says, using the acronym for "not in my back yard." "The project will go where it should go. There's too much NIMBY going on that limits the greater good."
Tomlinson says he is genuinely excited about what's happening in and around the downtown loop.
"I think this is the brightest time the city has seen since I've been here working the last 25 years," he says. "So I think it's full of hope and excitement ... I'd rather focus on the good things that are going to happen.
"Yeah, we'll make some mistakes," Tomlinson says, "but that's how cities are made. You know, Paris didn't get made into the city it is today by doing it right the first time. An urban design process is a messy, long-lasting, happy-accident type of process."
To reach Steve Paul,
call (816) 234-4762 or send e-mail to paul@kcstar.com.
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The details
Smaller-scale design, the kind of planning and amenities that make the space between buildings comfortable and lively, is being addressed in the Crossroads and the Central Business District on several fronts:
· A new downtown planning study under way by Sasaki Associates is expected to look at how revitalized districts connect with one another and preserve a sense of neighborhood at street level. And the Chicago architectural firm of Skidmore Owings & Merrill has been hired to upgrade streetscape designs along 12th Street and elsewhere in the revitalized loop.
· A new organization called the Urban Society is studying the plausibility and impact of five possible downtown stadium sites, as well as other neighborhood-scale issues such as angle parking on some wider streets.
· A major city study of a new 22nd-23rd Street corridor addresses the need for pedestrian-scale design and streetscape improvements throughout the Crossroads. Expect more vest-pocket parks, for instance, and creative approaches to paving and signs.
Posted by Admin at February 14, 2005 01:56 PM