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THE BRUSH CREEK BULLETIN Volume 6, Issue 4 April 2004   HALL FAMILY FOUNDATION HAS HAND IN BRUSH CREEK CORRIDOR PROGRESS Innovative Financing Plan Helps Nelson-Atkins Showcase World-Class Masterpieces The Hall Family Foundation is employing an innovative and collaborative arrangement with the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to complete the initial phases of the museum’s campus enhancement project now in progress. Under the arrangement, the foundation will provide funding to pay principal and interest on $60 million of tax-exempt bonds on behalf of the Nelson Gallery Foundation, a charitable trust that is the Museum’s legal entity. This novel financing arrangement is structured to allow the Hall Family Foundation to continue its significant support of a wide range of charitable institutions throughout the Kansas City community. The Missouri Development Finance Board will issue the tax-exempt bonds at the request of the museum, and the Hall Family Foundation will secure the repayment of the bonds through a long-term donation agreement. In this way, the Hall Family Foundation is able to help the Nelson-Atkins complete the first two phases of its campus enhancement program already under way, while not impairing the Foundation’s ability to continue to meet other community needs. The Hall Family Foundation's $60 million financing arrangement allows the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to complete its 156,000 square foot expansion by 2007. The $60 million in Nelson Gallery Foundation Bonds will help complete Phases I and II of the Museum’s $200 million campus enhancement project, composed of: a 165,000-square-foot expansion designed by internationally acclaimed architect Steven Holl; a two-level, underground parking garage, also designed by Holl; a spacious entry plaza graced by a reflecting pool above the garage; upgrades to the central (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) plant; renovation of a significant portion of the ground floor of the current Nelson-Atkins building for the Ford Learning Center; design and construction of a connection between the new Bloch Building and the current building; provision of a new kitchen, non-art loading dock, objects conservation laboratory, curatorial offices and administrative offices; and refurbishment of Kirkwood Hall, the great central space in the current building. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art broke ground on its campus enhancement and refurbishment project April 2, 2001. Its crowning achievement, the Holl-designed Bloch Building, is projected to open to the public in 2007. “By stepping forward with this creative approach, the Hall Family Foundation is helping the community by helping the Museum,” said Marc F. Wilson, director and chief executive officer of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. “It provides the means for every individual to interact with, and draw inspiration from, the achievements of thousands of years of creative genius from virtually every culture on earth.”   Pledge of $9 Million to Advance UMKC's Efforts In the Life Sciences and Performing Arts The University of Missouri-Kansas City announced this month it will receive a $9 million investment in the future of the university and Kansas City from the Hall Family Foundation. The gift supports program excellence in two key areas for UMKC: life sciences and the performing arts. Five million dollars is earmarked for capital projects to enhance UMKC’s collaborative research and educational efforts in the life sciences. Other funds will endow two key positions within the Department of Theatre and the Missouri Repertory Theatre at UMKC and enhance theatrical productions for both entities. “The Hall Family Foundation has a long-standing commitment to Kansas City that includes support of outstanding programs in higher education,” said UMKC Chancellor Martha W. Gilliland. “We are deeply grateful for the foundation’s decision to serve as a major stakeholder in UMKC. This grant will help us advance our efforts in the life sciences and performing arts to the next level of excellence – and to strengthen our position as an essential community resource.” This significant commitment, in addition to the foundation’s previous gifts, positions UMKC as one of the major recipients of support from the Hall Family Foundation. “We are pleased to be able to continue our support of UMKC and the students they serve,” said Donald J. Hall, chairman of Hallmark Cards, Inc. and the Hall Family Foundation. “The university’s leadership, faculty and students are critical to our community’s future.”   Nine new two-bedroom apartments at 5037 Troost Avenue are primed to open in May. The $800,000 investment in the Troostwood Pointe Apartments by the Fairbrook Company represents completion of the row of apartments between 49th and 51st Streets along Troost, the first 22 units of which were built by the Blue Hills Homes Corporation in 1996. The apartments were designed in concert with the Troostwood Neighborhood Association (TNA). “We settled on nine units through our conversations with the Troostwood neighbors, who have been great to work with and very supportive, especially (TNA Development Committee Chairperson) Roger Hoyt and the folks whose homes back up to our site.” said Fairbrook Managing Partner Tom Conwell. As part of the project, the Fairbrook Company will erect a Troostwood monument on the corner of 51st & Troost, as the gateway into the neighborhood. Rental rates are $895 and $945. For more information call 816-309-3963. CENTER FOR HEALTH OPENS Several members of Brush Creek Community Partners collaborated in the development of The Center for Healthy Living, which opened this month. The new center will provide health education, tutoring and athletic training to the more than 500 urban families who interact daily with programs at the Boys and Girls Clubs’ John Thornberry Center at 3831 E. 43rd Street. It will serve the area surrounded by the Oak Park and Vineyard neighborhoods. BCCP members The University of Missouri-Kansas City and its Center for the City, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City, and Genesis School worked with the Healthy Homes Network and Children's Mercy Hospital for more than a year and a half to create the center. PARTNER UPDATES William Osborne has been named the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s interim provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs effective May 1. Osborne, the dean of UMKC’s School of Computing and Engineering, since 2002, is filling the vacancy left with Provost and Vice Chancellor Steve Ballard’s move to become chancellor at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. UMKC Chancellor Martha Gilliland has announced an Interim Dean for the School and Engineering will be appointed. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has uploaded the website for the recently launched Angel Capital Association (ACA). The ACA, developed by the foundation and a set of leading angel groups around the country, was created to be a formal association of peer angel capital investing groups, including the nationally known Tech Coast Angels and Prairie Angels. The website is a comprehensive on-line resource for all things related to early-stage equity investing in entrepreneurial growth companies. For more information, visit http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/. HOW PEOPLE, INSTITUTIONS AND FLOODS SHAPED THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRUSH CREEK CORRIDOR -- A History -- From the beginning of Kansas City history, Brush Creek has represented both a challenge and an opportunity. The efforts and ideas of many Kansas Citians have gone into shaping the Brush Creek Corridor as it is now, a flood control and beautification project surrounded by healthy institutions, residential areas and economic development. In this first of a two-part series, The Brush Creek Bulletin looks at the relationship between Brush Creek and Kansas City’s cultural institutions, and the role the creek has played in economic development of the metro area. Brush Creek Attracts Economic Development Brush Creek fascinated Doug Faulker when he taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He spent several years studying its history and hydrology. “To some, Brush Creek was a problem to be dealt with,” he says. “Some people thought of it as a big sewer. But others saw it as a tremendous amenity.” Faulker believes Brush Creek has come to enhance the built environment in Kansas City by creating an open space that added “aesthetic diversity” to the city. In the beginning, Brush Creek represented nothing but open space. In his book Missouri Remembered, Dr. John Neidhardt recalls a time before the turn of the 20th century when he often went to the “country” at 30th and Prospect. “That was where our gang stripped naked, walking unimpeded the remainder of the way to our Brush Creek swimming hole.” Farmers also took their horses and cows to cool off in the brushy creek. A "brushy" Brush Creek, looking southwardly from Brush Creek at a point a little east of Agness Avenue, c. 1916. Photo courtesy of Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners The creek drew commerce from an early stage. There is mention of a water mill in 1843, and a coal mine at 43rd and Brighton employed 100 men in 1880. Historian William Worley, who has written about the development of the Plaza, says when J.C. Nichols began to develop that area, he had to get a brick company to move off the current Board of Trade site. Attracting residents to the area took longer. When Kansas City Star editor, and real estate developer William Rockhill Nelson began buying land there in 1886, “he took 20 acres south of the city to build a massive stone house, called Oak Hall, on a wooded hill above Brush Creek, in a region that was supposed to have no future except for pig farming,” William Reddig wrote in Tom’s Town. Nelson, however, had a vision of a new type of neighborhood, part urban and part rural, and began clearing land, buildings roads and bridges, and putting up houses in the Rockhill area. In 1908, real estate developer J.C. Nichols announced plans to start a 1,000-acre development south of Brush Creek. One of the first things he did was move the creek to reclaim 30 acres of land that flooded in the spring. Cultural Institutions Follow the Creek Part of the reason the Brush Creek area attracted so many cultural institutions to its banks was, simply, timing. In 1897, when Westport was annexed into Kansas City, Brush Creek was the southern boundary of the city. The school board needed to expand, and chose the land at 50th and Oak (now under construction for the new Plaza Library) for its E. C. White Elementary School. Students crossed a footbridge over the creek to reach the school, where they studied the frogs, crawdads, tadpoles and snakes that the stream attracted. Other institutions also moved to the area because of the available land. “Rockhurst was the pioneer,” local historian William Worley says. “They bought land out there before 1910. It wasn’t in the city limits; there was nothing out there. You had to cross the bridge at Rockhill to get to it. They probably saw it as a country campus.” Rockhurst opened its high school in 1914 and its college in 1917. An unidentified man stands in front of Brush Creek. At one point in Kansas City history, the stage was set for a cultural mall far from Brush Creek. In 1925, the city spelled out plans to build a combined civic and cultural mall just south of the new Union Station (the site of the present Liberty Memorial). City fathers hoped to attract the city’s first art museum and the Kansas City Art Institute, as well as other cultural and civic buildings. Eventually, however, the trustees of the Mary Atkins estate combined her money with that left by the William Rockhill Nelson family, and the two launched the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum (now the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) on the site of Nelson’s Oak Hall. The Brush Creek location won out, in the end, because it was centrally located, cheaper to develop, and the land was already beautified with room for expansion. The central location also guided the decision to place the University of Kansas City (now the University of Missouri-Kansas City) near Brush Creek. It had looked as if Kansas City’s first university would be a religious school to be built on donated land near 77th and State Line. When William Volker donated 40 acres of land near Brush Creek, the area was established as a cultural corridor. (In the next issue, the fight to preserve green space around Brush Creek, and the 1977 flood that lead to the flood control project). PARTNER PROFILE Sandra Lawrence Embraces Change And Kansas City Sandra Lawrence could probably be anywhere in the world right now. With an M.B.A. from Harvard, a master's in architecture from M.I.T. and a B.A. in psychology from Vassar, her credentials are impressive. But her optimism and enthusiasm for change and growth brought Lawrence back to Midwest Research Institute (MRI). The opportunity to connect different parts of the city together has led her to the Brush Creek Community Partners Board of Directors. And her family – three kids and a husband – helped her decide to stay in this city. Lawrence rejoined MRI as senior vice president of administration and treasurer in January after working in other positions loaded with responsibility — interim chief executive officer of Frontier Medical Research, president and CEO of Global Packaging Solutions, vice president at Gateway, and president of an investment bank. Eight years ago, she was Director of MRI’s Center for Regional Development. But now, she says, the scope and quality of the work, the leadership and opportunities, made her want to be a part of what was happening at MRI and in this area. Sandra Lawrence “The institute is experiencing phenomenal growth now because of the extent to which we’re involved in important national efforts,” Lawrence said. “I like change and I like growth. MRI represents some of the best of both and I want to be a part of it. I came back knowing that with (MRI President and Chief Executive Officer) Jim Spigarelli as the leader, the vision for the institute would be a good one and we’d be able to execute it.” As a BCCP board member, Lawrence notes the Brush Creek Corridor, also, is in the middle of tremendous change. “Life sciences is an initiative that seven to ten years ago wasn’t on anyone’s radar. To put it there, you needed people around who didn’t mind putting it on the table and figuring out how to accomplish it.” Lawrence believes the businesses should help connect this energy to different parts of the community. ““If you drive down this Corridor, you see this energy,” she said. “Brush Creek cuts across so much of the diversity of the community. I think we have a responsibility to keep the whole Corridor alive and vibrant.” She notes that growing businesses can employ people, encourage “cross-fertilization” and bridge that traditional dividing line in Kansas City. Through many Kansas City-area boards, Lawrence can share her optimism and skills in managing the change process in many areas of the city. After moving to town for her husband’s job twelve years ago, she’s been named one of Kansas City’s Women Who Mean Business and one of the community’s 100 Most Influential African-Americans. Although she’s not looking for honors, she is looking to “stay and develop what I can here with what already exists.” “This is a good city for families – including my own,” said Lawrence. “It is also good for businesses and it’s good for me personally. Now this is home for me – I had an opportunity to leave, but my future is to continue to be a part of the Kansas City community.”