Business View Civil & Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 8

29 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 8 This is a place where people are more than fans. Louder than supporters. Bigger than themselves. A place where people come together. A place where people say, “We.” We raise our voices in unison. We wear our colors with pride. We sway when we win. We hug total strangers. We come together for our city and for our club. We are proud to call Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas home. Welcome to the Club. CHILDREN’S MERCY PARK • HOME OF SPORTING KANSAS CITY • ONE SPORTING WAY • KANSAS CITY, KANSAS KANSAS C I TY , KANSAS built over 100 years ago as a railroad bridge to carry livestock. We’re going to redevelop that and cantilever off the bridge to provide entertainment space and a trail across to connect the trails on both sides of the river. It will be an entertainment district in and of itself.” The city is also seeing new developments happen on the other side of the county with a new multi-family development at the former site of the Schlitterbahn water park. The development will include plenty of retail and a softball-baseball complex. They also have a high-end multi-family development going into the Village West area, called Legends 267. Despite the pandemic, all of these developments are moving forward. Even in areas where housing stock is low, the city is making a big push to change that. Older neighborhoods on the east side of I-635 and downtown have been in decline for years as a result of the city’s redlining legacy. Alvey admits, “Those neighbourhoods that were redlined had a harder time accessing capital either to build new or to renovate, and so the housing and commercial stock declined and became blight.” Many of those structures have since been demolished, with land sitting empty. The Kansas City, Kansas-Wyandotte County unified government currently owns more than 4000 properties in its land bank, with 10,000 vacant properties owned privately. The city has begun an initiative that they are hoping will spur new development in the area, while making use of the existing infrastructure. “We have to close the delta between what it might cost you to build and what it might appraise for,” says Alvey, “and we are gradually doing that.” To do so, the unified government has worked with the municipally-owned Board of Public Utilities to eliminate the charge for new