(Kansas City, MO) – The walls are coming down. After years of flooding, the shopping center at 103rd and Wornall is being demolished.
On Monday, September 30th city leaders celebrated the next step in the transformation of this south Kansas City neighborhood. After the historic floods of 2017, the City of Kansas City purchased the shopping center with GO KC Bonds.
“We’re here to today to celebrate another GO KC general obligation bond project related to flood control,” said KC City Manager Troy Schulte. “The voter approval in 2017 of those general obligation bonds made this possible. We’re going to tear all these buildings down, restore it to green space and hopefully provide a little bit of relief for floods along Indian Creek.”
This project will rip out buildings and pavement and revert the land to a natural greenspace along the flood-prone Indian Creek.
“Once we create a green space, the stormwater runoff will seep into the ground as opposed to running across this hard surface and going directly into the creek. With that green space you’re going to have less of the stormwater runoff going into the creek and that will help tremendously,” said KC Water Project Manager Diana Johnson.
Acquiring and demolishing property took time and neighbors were ready to see this project move forward.
“There have been a lot of concerns lately about the safety involved, homeless people sleeping inside, about wanting to see the buildings demolished so they were very concerned about seeing the progress that we are having today,” said 6th District At-Large Councilmember Andrea Bough. “They just want to see the buildings come down and the flood control project move forward.”
“What we’re doing today is turning a big community challenge and making it an opportunity for something that’s a new asset for the community. In 2017 we had 2 historic floods. Now we’re addressing not only that issue but also the blight that resulted but hopefully in the future we’re going to have a really nice trailhead and have it integrated into our park system and our trail system,” said KC Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McManus (6th District).
The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
For more information about the GO KC program, visit kcmo.gov/gokc
For more information, please contact Heather Frierson, Media Relations Coordinator, at heather.frierson@kcmo.org, 816-513-0280.
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KC Water maintains and operates water treatment and distribution systems, stormwater management systems, and wastewater collection and treatment systems for residential and business customers in Kansas City and for wholesale customers in the Kansas City area. KC Water is primarily funded by fees charged to customers based on their use or impacts on the three utility systems.
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