KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The U.S. Department of Transportation is investing $1 million in a study focused on reconnecting Kansas City, Missouri's Westside neighborhood, which has been isolated from economic opportunities for decades, according to a DOT news release.
In order to reconnect the Westside neighborhood, the investment will plan the future of the Interstate 35 viaduct, design connections to the Central Business District and develop design solutions for Beardsley Road to facilitate the connection to economic and residential development in the West Bottoms.
The release states updates to I-35 are overdue and cites Beardsley as a “dark and hazardous two-lane road.”
“Improvements to mobility, safety, connectivity and equity are at the core of the planning effort,” per the release.
The Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program funds this investment, along with investing in 44 other communities across the country that have been “cut off from opportunity and burdened by past transportation infrastructure decisions."
KCMO is a recipient of the program’s first round of investments.
“Transportation should connect, not divide, people and communities,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a release. “We are proud to announce the first grantees of our Reconnecting Communities Program, which will unite neighborhoods, ensure the future is better than the past, and provide Americans with better access to jobs, health care, groceries and other essentials.”
The “first-of-its-kind initiative" will help the city address inequities and barriers that have affected the historically Hispanic Westside neighborhood since the late 1960s.
When I-35 was built in the late 1960s, it isolated the Westside community from economic opportunities in the Central Business District, and the construction of I-670 in 1990 worsened economic disparities and disinvestment, per DOT.
Community organizations, such as the Mattie Rhodes Center, the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation, the Sacred Heart Neighborhood Association and the Westside Neighborhood Association will play a role in the planning efforts.
