KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Many business owners in the Location One building, located at 1734 E. 63rd Street in Kansas City, Missouri, are feeling disrespected.
Clarity Development Company, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, recently purchased the building.
The company is planning to demolish the current structure and construct a new affordable housing apartment complex.
The lack of information from current management and the development company has many feeling anxious and frustrated.
JoAnn Stovall is the CEO of Academy of Addiction Services and says the tenants in the building make up a family.
“It’s sent by God, it’s just the right thing for us,” Stovall said. "We’ve formed a bond, and it’s just wonderful.”
From doctors and lawyers, to various beauticians, it is home to about 150 Black-owned businesses in town. Many of the tenants have been running their companies in this space for decades.
Sheri Hall, with the Location One Tenant Association, says their way of life may soon be taken away.
Since the building was bought in December of 2020, the tenants have not heard any explanation from the project managers at Clarity Development Company.
“I feel like we’re missing it. We’re missing it if we don’t have this communication with one another,” Hall said.
The tenants received a three-page mass email from the developers this past Friday. It outlines the company’s goals and visions for the project.
The email started by apologizing to the tenants for the lack of communication and promises a more open conversation going forward. But Hall says it is a little too late.
“You knew at a certain point we were going to have to relocate, you knew at a certain point you were going to demolish this building, you also knew that you were going to put in a residential development,” Hall said.
She says losing the building would be losing a community resource.
“Access to your community resources is right here in this building, and when they tear down the building, where is all that going to go?" she said.
She calls the construction “improvement with displacement,” saying the company is using the tenant’s tax dollars to force them out of their own community.
“The public engagement hadn’t happened, they hadn’t met with the homeowners association, they hadn’t met with the tenants," Hall said. "None of this had happened, but now here we are on the docket for rezoning.”
The email also mentions a “Business Incubator” that will offer rent spaces for minority and women-owned businesses.
However, Hall says it's not what this neighborhood needs. She hopes the developers will make a trip out to the building and listen to the needs of those making a living there.
“The proper surveying, the proper assessments have not been done to ask, ‘Who was actually here?’ and ‘Who was actually in this community?,'" she said.
Semaj Hadley grew up going to the building for various appointments and says it's a plan she can't get behind.
Hadley now owns Sammy J Slay LLC on the fourth floor, and her business is the biggest source of income for her family.
“As an adult with me having a business here, and with them not really giving us clarification on what’s going on, it’s created a lot of anxiety for me," Hadley said. "I don’t know where my business is going to stand in the next three to six months if I don’t find somewhere else to go."
Like everyone else, Hadley says she just wants clear and open communication about what the actual objectives are of the company.
“I would hate to come here one day and the doors are all locked and I can’t get in,” Hadley said.
The email also says demolition will not come for another few months, and promises relocation assistance.
"What that assistance will be and how it is provided is still being evaluated," the email from Clarity Development Company read in part.
