The ongoing effort to improve Independence Avenue in Historic Northeast has included considering façade improvements, abating abandoned houses and rebranding the corridor as the city’s International Marketplace.
It hadn’t included closing schools.
However, this school year, Thatcher Eighth-grade Center on the avenue closed, and this coming year, Northeast Elementary (formerly Northeast Middle) School could close. The building is one of 29 in the Kansas City, Mo., School District currently listed in the “Right-Sizing the District” closure proposal, which the school board will vote on tonight (Wednesday).
Bobbi Baker-Hughes, Northeast Chamber of Commerce president, said closing Northeast Elementary, which sits adjacent to the high school at 4909 Independence Ave., would have a huge effect on the avenue corridor.
“We’re going to have a grand old building sitting vacant that will quickly become — without proper planning — an eyesore and a magnet for the bad element to congregate at,” she said. “I think it’s a terrible thing.”
Baker-Hughes added there would inevitably be some economic impact to businesses around the area of Independence Avenue and Van Brunt Boulevard if the school closes.
“[Those students] are not going to slip over to Walgreens to get the milk and butter mom wants them to bring home after school,” she said. “So it’s going to have an impact on our business community.”
Superintendent John Covington has stated the district will make efforts to sell, reuse or demolish shuttered buildings.
If the School Board members vote to close Northeast Elementary, it could become one of several centers “mothballed” — kept within the district to be used in the future if and when the district grows again. District leaders plan to form a committee to work on these issues related to empty buildings.
John Wood, senior program officer for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, has been at the center of Independence Avenue development efforts. Wood said if Northeast Elementary closes, he prefers to view the situation as an opportunity for the community.
Perhaps, he said, there would be a chance to attract a business to the large building that would employ Northeast people, or it could house some consolidation of programming in the neighborhoods — a rallying point on Independence Avenue.
“I think the preference is that the school would remain open and remain a viable educational institution for young people in that area,” Wood said. “If it does close, [we should be saying], ‘What are the options here? What can we put here?’”
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