Troost Revitalization

Press Coverage: Kansas City Business Journal, 2001; Ordinance by Nash, Williams-Neal Targets Troost Revitalization

Troost Avenue is the line that divides Kansas City. If you know anything about this city's history, you know that Troost separates the East Side from everything else. It is a physical street and a metaphor. East of Troost is where Black Kansas City lives. West of Troost is where investment flows.

I introduced legislation targeting Troost revitalization because I refused to accept that a street could permanently define which neighborhoods received investment and which did not.

Troost Avenue has been Kansas City's racial and economic dividing line for nearly a century. The legacy of redlining, restrictive covenants, and deliberate disinvestment created two cities within one: a west side with functioning infrastructure, thriving commercial corridors, and rising property values, and an east side with crumbling streets, vacant storefronts, and declining populations.

Working with Councilwoman Williams-Neal, I introduced an ordinance in 2001 targeting Troost Avenue for revitalization. The ordinance funded a neighborhood-driven planning study for the corridor.

The ordinance was not a cure-all. No single piece of legislation can undo a century of institutional racism. But it was a declaration of intent: the city would no longer treat Troost as an invisible wall. It would treat it as a corridor worthy of investment.

What made this effort significant was not the ordinance itself but what it represented. A sitting city council member was publicly naming the racial divide that shaped Kansas City's geography and introducing legislation to address it. That act of naming matters because you cannot fix a problem you refuse to acknowledge.

The Nash Group carries this work forward in our development practice. When we evaluate sites and corridors for development potential, we do not accept inherited dividing lines. We look at where need is greatest and where investment can produce the most impact.