Paved with Good Intentions!

The road to the Temple and the Truman National Historic Landmark District is paved with brick and good intentions but it looks like h**l.  The present design was thoughtfully developed by the best professional landscape architects in Kansas City that public money could buy.  Yes, our Midtown / Truman Road Corridor (M/TRC) Neighborhood Revitalization Corporation hired those consultants and the City of Independence spent the money to give us these brick pavers.  Someone should have suggested to M/TRC way back then that having this type of landscape feature requires a little maintenance, not to mention some pride of ownership.  Ironically, this picture was taken on property owned and maintained by, you guessed it, M/TRC.  We've stated the obvious before but it deserves to be repeated again and again and again..........  The organization that is now getting public money to promote neighborhood revitalization has to lead the community and set high standards for neighborhood stewardship (their own standards), especially when making official judgments of other property owners on whether they've maintained their property good enough to keep their tax abatement.  The picture was taken the day after the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at the Harry S Truman Sports Complex when tens of thousands of visitors were in the KC area visiting tourist sites and spending money.  It is also adjacent to a triangular piece of ground that was supposed to be a beautiful landscaped park to be turned over the City.  Currently, Independence Parks & Rec does not have the budget to maintain additioinal parks due to, in part, added Parks & Rec responsibility at the Falls at Crackerneck Creek, not to mention overall city budget shortfalls for debt payments for the same development.  Under the guidance of the award-winning M/TRC Neighborhood Revitalization Plan, this block and the adjacent block bounded by Lexington, River, Maple, and Union Streets had to be clear cut of buildings to create a better view and path towards the Temple from Truman Road (not sure that goal was achieved).  It is interesting that out of all the structures (primarily historic) that were bulldozed on these two blocks, the one structure M/TRC chooses to remain is the architecturally-unappealing and marginally-maintained Convenience Store who's more recent goal was to introduce cash-and-carry hard liquor into the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, the operators of the store are not the only ones out of touch.  Good folks with good intentions are represented on the M/TRC board and staff, but it should be no surprise that they do not live near this area, and in some cases, do not even live in Independence.  The current leadership like to blame the economy and lack of money for the current state of affairs here and in many other areas of town.  From my observation, there are some very basic principles of civic pride and responsibility and, in the spirit of Harry Truman, just plain common sense that we seem to miss.  Maybe we should work on those while we sit back doing nothing hoping for the local economy to turn around.

Virtual Tour - Circa 2006 Pleasant Street

Technology is great!  We now have the power to virtually travel through any neighborhood in any city from our laptop computers or even our smart phones.  And from the bird's-eye-view mode, we can view an entire neighborhood block to study the historic and architectural setting of our important landmarks.  One of those powerful virtual tools is Bing Maps.  From Bing Maps, you can view the 300 block of North Pleasant Street in the Truman National Historic Landmark District and you get quite a shock.  You see a pile of burned rubble where the Victoria home used to sit at 306 North Pleasant Street.  The arson fire occurred there back in 2006, but the image of its aftermath has continued to be burned in our memory in cyberspace for over 5 years and potentially many more years to come.  This image actually gives you a very interesting perspective of the view shed surrounding the Truman Home National Historic Site and the Truman Neighborhood.  You can most definitely see the results of our poor planning and our obsession for convenient parking.  Each of the buildings in the Truman Neighborhood is not so valuable by themselves but, as a whole, represent a priceless collection and setting for the one of the most important landmarks in the country.  And with President Truman's leadership in the world regarding the rebuilding of post-war Europe, the establishment of the United Nations, the early recognition and support of the State of Israel, and his containment of Communism, one could argue that the Truman National Heritage sites & districts deserve to be listed as a "World Heritage Site" (another US presidential site already is).  Unfortunately, local folks tend to have difficulty thinking beyond our city limits or past the next debt payment from our retail investments.  And folks at the national level do not always look beyond our national borders.  Because we as a community forget about this important history, we, at best, take it for granted and, at worst, disrespect it, and even worst, hand out awards to folks who disrespect it.  As our nation tries to carefully and meticulously reconstruct the vintage buildings and neighborhood surrounding Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield, Illinois, we carelessly bulldoze homes, wait for a neglected church structure to collapse under its own weight, and say "good riddance" to an abandon Victorian structure on Pleasant Street that disappeared overnight because of a criminal arson.  Even in the small rural community of Lamar, the State of Missouri has been acquiring property around the Truman birthplace home to protect its setting, even though he had lived there only 11 months as an infant.  Will future generations try to put back the missing pieces of the Truman Neighborhood?  And if they do, will they speak kindly of our efforts in community stewardship?  A generation from now, will City Hall still be pumping water down the fake waterfall at Crackerneck Creek?