Interpretive Signs

How do we get today’s neighborhood youth to respect important assets in this community and to this nation? I believe it starts with appropriate community stewardship that is led by our adult population. It is how the adults behave in treating, protecting, and honoring what are considered our most important assets. It’s how our generation of citizens chooses to honor the previous generations. It’s the respect we bestow on the materials, craftsmanship, and valuable resources that went into building this community. It’s the way we honor the ideals, values, and Christian principles of our forefathers. It’s in opening the doors of our homes to neighbors to celebrate milestones. It’s in opening our eyes to see how we can make a difference as opposed to waiting for someone else to clean up the mess. It’s in giving the next generation an inheritance of something more than debt and decay. It’s in projecting a sense of pride to our youth, to visitors who come to our community, and to the citizens of the United States who trusted us with these assets. There are interpretive signs out there that are telling us how well we are doing. We just need to open our eyes.

Neighborhood Open House

The house pictured above is vacant. The front door is actually wide open with just an unlatched storm door (with broken windows). Many of the other windows are also shattered with broken glass all over the place. Even the mail slot has been removed leaving yet another hole in the house. Inside there are signs of vagrant occupation. I’ve learned from a local gentleman that drug paraphernalia and used needles were found inside this house and that it has been vacant for about a year or more. There are no “Dangerous Building” tags on the property, but the building across the street (which appears to be in much better condition) has a pink tag in the window indicating city action for code violations. Yes, it is known fact that blight is contagious. No, this isn’t the intercity KCMO or KCK. It’s my neighborhood and it’s only a few blocks from a Presidential Neighborhood. The last time I drove down this block I saw lots of children playing. The address of the above property is 1306 West Maple. Welcome to the neighborhood “Open House.” And yes, it needs to be mentioned again, this block is in the heart of the award-winning Midtown / Truman Road Corridor Neighborhood Revitalization Plan. Whether this particular home is judged historic or not (you be the judge), this is no way to manage property and this is not what I would call being a good neighbor. If readers of this blog are also concerned, I would invite you to make an online Property Maintenance Code Complaint on the City’s website:

https://www.ci.independence.mo.us/Complaints/

and enter the street number “1306” and the street name “Maple” and proceed. You can register your name and contact info or remain anonymous. Please help us with this property. And if you know who owns the property, I believe a lecture and schooling on community stewardship is in order.

The Exodus

We’ve already brought up the departure of the School District’s administrative office from the Palmer Building. The biggest loss is the Independence Regional Health Center at Truman Road and Forrest Avenue. The hospital supported adjacent medical offices & clinics, restaurants, flower shops, housing, and good-paying jobs for this neighborhood for almost 100 years. And more recently it complimented the adjacent Nursing School at Graceland University’s Independence campus. Taxes generated by the hospital directly supported the Midtown / Truman Road Corridor (M/TRC) Neighborhood Revitalization Program. M/TRC is now essentially out-of-business (during a time when it is needed the most). Unfortunately, M/TRC has left 3 major projects unfinished, all of them at the corner of River Boulevard and Truman Road, which happens to be at the entrance into the Truman Neighborhood. The Sunshine Center, a care center for children with special needs, also departed the neighborhood while consolidating its services to another part of town leaving an empty building on Lexington Street. The Mid-Continent Public Library’s Genealogy & Local History Center also left the area choosing to invest $8 million in a beautiful new facility in a suburban location. The Library’s move was intended to make their facility more accessible to the public; however, they selected one of the most isolated areas in town with respect to public transportation. All of these losses have occurred just within the last few years and together represent a significant deficit to the historic community. What’s next?

There is some consolation for the loss of the hospital. There are exciting plans for an entrepreneurship center and business incubator at the old site. The project promises to be supported by the School District, Independence Council for Economic Development (ICED), a private developer, and TIF funding from the initial hospital relocation. This is likely a best-case-scenario for this site considering all the obstacles. I applaud the Independence School District in taking a leadership role in this project. Success will depend on public and private institutions working together, doing what they say they are going to do, guiding the project through completion, and sticking around, even when situations become difficult. Yes, that’s right; it sounds like a different approach than what we are used to.

Working on the Sabbath

Doing the Lord’s work on the Lord’s Day! The above photo was actually taken during the Sunday morning worship services showing the demolition contractor getting started on this project for Messiah Lutheran Church. PrudentPreservaion, thought you would want to see the lastest. In this community, doing God’s work is never complete. Please try to Keep the Faith!!!

WWJP - Where Would Jesus Park?

Tuesday evening, the City’s Heritage Commission approved the demolition of one of the last remaining homes on the south side of the 100 block of East Pacific for the Messiah Lutheran Church on South Main. Here in Old Town Independence, this event is not newsworthy but just another day. Frankly, I don’t know how congregations can sustain ministries if they have to buy marketable housing, fund minimum levels of maintenance (usually no maintenance at all), taxes, then pay for a demolition contractor to tear them down and dump it into a landfill. This has to be a significant chunk of their budgets. And maintaining open space, whether green or paved, has a price also. Studies indicate that a single ground-level parking place in a central business district can cost an average of $86 per month considering its initial construction and its annual maintenance/expenses (snow removal, liability insurance, lighting, sealing/striping, etc.). Even selling parking spaces for $5 each during the annual Santa-Cali-Gon Festival doesn’t put a dent into the actual cost of maintaining parking lots. Those are just the financial implications. What about the environmental consequences? And, of course, what about neighborhood preservation and revitalization? On a much larger scale, churches in and around the Truman Neighborhood have been doing this for decades. This becomes a very expensive endeavor for these churches, many who have tight budgets. Was this a good investment for these churches? Are the neighborhoods surrounding these churches better off? How do these issues reflect on our entire community, especially when demolitions occurred in a National Historic Landmark District? I have my own opinions but I think it is important for this Christian community to openly, and without retribution, answer these questions honestly. I remember as a child regularly attending a church here in the neighborhood and routinely parking on a neighborhood street. And at that time, church attendances at all the downtown churches were several times what they are today and very few churches had significant off-street parking. Today we have huge parking lots with fewer attendees. What can we do better as a Christian community?

Presidential Boyhood Home gets Recognition

The boyhood home of Harry Truman in the photo above located at 619 S. Crysler was recognized this summer by officials from the City of Independence. Unfortunately, the officials were from the Health Department and the recognition was for problems with weeds and trash/rubbish/garbage in violation of Property Maintenance Codes. Truman spent his impressionable boyhood years from age 6 to age 12 at this home. From this family residence, he enters the Independence Public Schools, he attends First Presbyterian Church Sunday School where he meets Bess Wallace, and he recalls his father’s celebration after the 1892 election of Grover Cleveland. In this rare Democratic Party victory celebration, his father decorates the weathervane mounted on top of the cupola of the home (the cupola has since been removed), which undoubtedly left an impression on young Harry. Other Truman residences in the city and the state are National Historic Sites, State Parks, and/or are marked with interpretive signs. This one (on the other side of the railroad tracks and approxmiately 1/2 mile from the Truman NHL Distrct) is one city officials would prefer you drive by without noticing. At Truman’s birthplace home in Lamar, Missouri, he only spent 11 months there and today it is a State Historic Site and House Museum and represents a source of pride for this rural community. We do learn from the Crysler property how absentee landlords maximize rental income while minimizing investment. There are actually 7 mailboxes on this property. Independence has many stories to tell but with this property we get a bonus lesson plan in economics. Anywhere but Independence, this would be national shrine. Here it is considered just another local public nuisance.

Victorian Home Well Done

This evening is the 3-year anniversary of the fire 306 N. Pleasant Street in the heart of the Harry S. Truman National Historic Landmark District and within view of the Truman Home National Historic Site. The event was actually a non-event and received no coverage in the local media, even though it was considered to be a felony arson and actually came dangerously close to the home next door with human lives inside. “The Examiner” did print a few lines three days later on the inside pages of the newspaper. To put this news event in perspective, it was published next to a larger story about the local supper club hosting a singing group at the Community of Christ Auditorium. National historians back in 1971 thought this building was important enough to include in the original 22-page National Register form prepared for the district designation. Three of the 18 photographs in this document include images of this home. Two weeks after this fire, the community hosted Nobel Peace Prize recipient, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, for his farewell address to America at the Truman Library, only a few blocks down the street. It’s ironic that this part of the neighborhood looked like a war-zone while the Secretary-General was giving his speech on, yes, “World Peace.”