2025 · Consulting
18th and Vine Streetcar Feasibility Study
The 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District in Kansas City carries cultural, historic, and economic significance. This is the 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District, home of the American Jazz Museum.
Where the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum stands on 18th Street. Where an entire cultural ecosystem thrived despite segregation, discrimination, and every institutional barrier America could construct.
Current project: 18th & Vine Streetcar Feasibility Study, 2025-2026
Today, the corridor sits at a crossroads. Kansas City is considering extending its streetcar system, and the 18th and Vine district is on the map. The question is not whether transit will transform the corridor. Transit always transforms corridors. The question is who that transformation will serve.
The Nash Group is part of the consultant team for the 18th & Vine Streetcar Feasibility Study, led by KCATA and KC Streetcar with the City of Kansas City, with a consultant team that includes HNTB, Taliaferro and Browne and Lathrop & Gage. Our job is to ensure that the answer to that question includes the people who are already there.
Why This Study Matters
Streetcar extensions are not neutral infrastructure investments. They are catalysts that reshape real estate markets, shift property values, and redirect capital flows. Federal transit guidance treats legally binding affordable housing near stations as one measure of whether a community is ready to accept a new transit investment and avoid the significant displacement and gentrification that can occur over time.
The 18th and Vine corridor cannot afford that outcome. The cultural assets that make this neighborhood significant are not replaceable. You cannot rebuild the jazz legacy. You cannot relocate the cultural institutions that anchor the community. If streetcar extension triggers gentrification and displacement, the neighborhood loses something that no amount of new construction can replace.
Since 2014, Greater Downtown along Kansas City's existing streetcar line has completed $4 billion in development, according to KC Streetcar. KC Streetcar reports that the downtown streetcar has fueled economic growth in Greater Downtown since 2014. In my view, the economic benefits were real, but they flowed primarily to property owners and new residents, not to the existing community.
Our feasibility study is designed to answer the hard questions that most transit studies avoid. What development should occur along this corridor? Who should benefit from it? How do you capture the economic value of transit investment without displacing the community that gives the corridor its identity?
Our Approach
The Nash Group's corridor assessment evaluates development potential at parcels along the proposed streetcar route. We analyze existing land use, zoning, property ownership, and market conditions. We identify sites that are suitable for transit oriented development. And we evaluate each site through the lens of equitable development: what can be built here that serves existing residents, preserves cultural assets, and captures the economic benefit of transit for the community?
Working with this team gives us access to the engineering and infrastructure analysis that informs the feasibility of the streetcar extension itself. Our role is to ensure that the development planning keeps pace with the engineering and that both are grounded in the community's priorities.
This is not a theoretical exercise. The feasibility study will inform real decisions about whether and how to extend the streetcar. Those decisions will shape the 18th and Vine corridor for decades. Getting the development framework right is not optional.
The Equity Imperative
I have spent my entire career arguing that transit investment should serve existing communities, not displace them. Promise Place, our 85 unit affordable housing development, demonstrated that equitable transit oriented development is possible. The 18th and Vine study extends that commitment to a corridor with even higher stakes.
The cultural significance of 18th and Vine creates both an opportunity and an obligation. The opportunity is to use transit investment as a catalyst for reinvestment in a neighborhood that has experienced decades of decline. The obligation is to ensure that reinvestment does not erase the very cultural identity that makes the neighborhood worth investing in.
Balancing those demands requires a development framework that is intentional about preserving affordability, protecting cultural institutions, and creating economic opportunities for existing residents. That framework is what our corridor assessment is designed to produce.
What This Demonstrates
The 18th and Vine study demonstrates that The Nash Group operates at the intersection of urban planning, real estate development, and social equity. We are not just builders. We are planners who think about what communities need and how development can deliver it without doing harm.
Working alongside engineers, planners and attorneys on this study demonstrates our ability to collaborate on complex infrastructure studies. The Nash Group brings local knowledge, community relationships, and development expertise that complement the team's engineering capabilities.
The study is now concluding; a preferred alignment was presented at the July 2026 public meeting. Once the study is complete, its recommendations will inform one of the most consequential development decisions in Kansas City's recent history. We intend to get it right.
This is what we mean by community engagement.
Not a meeting series. Presence, on their schedule, until something changes.