Northeast Kansas City Thacher Blight Fight

KCUR Reminds listeners that re-purposing is mostly an urban legend: School Slated For Demolition In The Historic Northeast Gets Community Support

Comments

  1. Real Northeast6/27/14, 12:53 PM

    There is no real community support for saving this old building. Most people say, "Tear it down."

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  2. Derelict buildings like this don't need more "community support". They need someone with a few million dollars to step up and invest in them. And if that's not possible, the taxpayers shouldn't have to have their money thrown into the black hole of someone else's dreams.
    Any community needs only so many "community centers", meeting places, computer labs, reading rooms, and all the rest so that an endless parade of little groups can each run their own tiny empires.
    If there's no real use for a deserted building that can't generate at least enough revenue to operate and maintain it, the owners should at least make it safe for its neighbors or have it torn down.

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  3. Boy, 12:57 has hit the nail on the head.

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  4. The building has outlived its usefulness. Sad, but that's the way it goes.

    There is no money to fix up this burned out school. And if there was, what would be housed in it?

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  5. 99% of Northeast KC should be dozed. Maybe we could grow corn there or pasture some cows.

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  6. The point of showing community support is to attract developers to invest their own money. There are plenty of reuses for this building and Northeast has many needs; it just takes a little bit of creativity.

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  7. Jesus Bryan. You need to learn a bit about "sources and uses". You can't attract developers to a project that will cost 200 times more to renovate than the revenue it could ever generate. Period. No tax breaks would make this deal work. There is a point when a building, no matter how lovely or historic, can not be saved.

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  8. ...fortunately that's not the case here. We've had multiple interested developers. The district's hesitation to sell Westport is what has investors stand offish. Only one of the developers that has toured the building has said it's undoable. The most recent company was expecting pure garbage from what they'd heard and were amazed at the good condition of the school. It's easy to say it's too expensive when you don't have the facts.

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