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Trying To Write A Comeback Story In This Historic Kansas City Neighborhood, Despite Setbacks
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2025
Crime and drugs, fueled in no small part by despair, gave Independence Avenue a notorious reputation. People would go to “The Avenue” looking for trouble—and could be sure they’d find it.
Independence Avenue wasn’t always that way. The neighborhood the avenue transverses, Kansas City’s historic Northeast, became historic because it was once among the wealthiest neighborhoods in probably the entire nation. At the turn of the 20th Century, captains of industry like lumber baron Robert Long built what I call “castle houses.” Many of these stately mansions are still standing, like Long’s 72-room Corinthian Hall, now the Kansas City Museum.
'CASTLE HOUSES' — The Kansas City Museum (left) is just one of several historic mansions that makes the Northeast one of the region's most picturesque neighborhoods.
I grew up here—in the 1950s, in a much, much more modest house (probably no more than a half-dozen rooms), just a block north of Independence Avenue.
I left here—to serve in the Navy for six years, including one year (1966-67) aboard the U.S.S. Delta in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War.
I returned here—and spent far too much time in what were once the 22 bars along St. John and Independence Avenues.
I lost everything here—and was homeless.
I began my addiction recovery here—nearly 45 years ago.
And I might now live in eastern Jackson County, but I want the thousands still living along the avenue to have what I had growing up in the Northeast—a safe place to call home.
I might now live in eastern Jackson County, but I want the thousands still living along the avenue to have what I had growing up in the Northeast—a safe place to call home.
Work Runs Out & Neighborhood Starts To Break Down
During its peak production years in the 1950s, ARMCO was the fifth largest steel producer in America. At what we locals continued to call the “Sheffield Steel” plant, ARMCO’s 4,500 employees kept he furnaces at the 52-acre complex near the Blue River running around the clock to produce nuts, bolts, railroad spikes and a whole lot more. The Northeast had been transformed into a working-class neighborhood. Mine was one of many blue-collar families living a nice, stable (and secure) life.
Independence Avenue’s downward spiral began with ARMCO’s gradual decline, as downsizing led to the plant employing fewer and fewer people—then no one after it was shuttered for good as the 1990s were ending.
What happens to a working-class neighborhood when a whole lot of the work runs out? Instability. Things start to break down and shut down, like the two Safeways that used to be in the Northeast and the four movie theaters and the bowling alleys.
And most of those bars I used to frequent.
COMBAT Helping Write Comeback Story
I do believe the worst days on “The Avenue” are behind us, however. I know there are a lot of people dedicated to writing a comeback story in this neighborhood, but crime and drugs—not to mention homelessness—remain a persistent problem, hindering these efforts. The comeback often faces setbacks.
I’ve always insisted no community can fully thrive, if it isn’t, first and foremost, safe.
With COMBAT’s mission of “promoting and providing public safety within Jackson County,” (Jackson County Code • Chapter 93), it’s only right that we have a large investment of Community Backed Anti-crime Tax resources in the Northeast. Glancing at our map of COMBAT-supported programs, I count more than 25 locations where services are being provided along the roughly 4½-mile Independence Avenue corridor (north to Gladstone Boulevard and south to 17th Street) between The Paseo and I-435.
HELPING HEAL A NEIGHBORHOOD — The Healing House headquarters has played a key role in transforming the area around the intersection of St. John and Elmwood Avenues.
Those locations include the various recovery homes being operated by Healing House. The Mattie Rhodes Center serves as the hub for COMBAT’s innovative Striving To Reduce Violence In Neighborhoods (STRiVIN’) initiative. In this role, Mattie Rhodes coordinates with other agencies, as well as police and school officials, in an attempt to identify problems in the Northeast—and together seek solutions.
Mattie Rhodes operates this hub out of its location at Topping and Scarritt Avenues, right across from James Elementary School and only about a mile from Northeast High School. Mattie Rhodes also recently opened a satellite office, focused on violence prevention, right on Independence Avenue.
Mattie Rhodes staff are putting COMBAT dollars to work. They are right in the thick of it, canvassing the neighborhood, often responding to crime scenes before the police to offer survivors support services. When necessary, they’ll even relocate the survivors through the AdHoc Group Against Crime, another recipient of COMBAT funding, to assure their safety.
As COMBAT Commission chairman, I know the agencies we support in the Northeast are making a difference.
Making A Big Difference
I recently took a trolley bus tour down Independence Avenue that the Northeast Kansas City (NEKC) Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Bobbi Baker asked me to participate in, along with several Jackson County Legislators and Kansas City Councilmen. Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson got aboard, too. It wasn’t so much a trip down memory lane for me as it was a glimpse at 1) the progress made to stop the decay in the Northeast and 2) the efforts ongoing to breathe new life into my old neighborhood.
From one end of the avenue to the other, I saw how much Kansas City University—at Independence Boulevard and The Paseo—and Custom Truck One Source—at Independence Avenue and I-435—were thriving. KCU is a world-class medical school with a growing, beautiful campus. The Rosses, a family with deep Northeast roots, launched Custom Truck in 1996 with 15 employees and have since seen their business boom, with sales topping $2 billion annually and a workforce that has grown to more than 2,000 employees.
A GROWING CAMPUS — Kansas City University is the oldest medical school in the metropolitan area and the largest medical school in Missouri.
I love that Custom Truck One Source’s headquarters is on the grounds of the old ARMCO/Sheffield Steel site. That is a great comeback story. And Custom Truck One Source is offering to train those willing to learn and work hard for what is a good wage.
In between, I learned about the remarkably ambitious plan to turn the long decaying facility at Independence Avenue and Hardesty into what will be an almost self-contained community. The old “Records Center”—once a garment factory (nearly 100 years ago) and then a World War II records facility—is a multi-building complex that has fallen into, to put it mildly, disrepair. Relatively soon it will be getting a complete makeover. The 23-acre site’s being renovated into affordable/livable apartments, with not quite 400 residential units to be surrounded by a full complement of amenities that’ll include a community center, daycare and food market.
BRIGHTENING THE FUTURE FOR A LONG-NEGLECTED HISTORIC LOCATION — Plans for redeveloping the old records center at Independence and Hardesty include affordable residential units and an on-site daycare and public market.
This development, the growing Ross family business and the medical school are all big difference makers along Independence Avenue. They represent a commitment—literally multiple multi-million dollar investments—to improving life in the Northeast.
Patches Of Blight All Along The Avenue
You’ve got to admire the people committed to staying and making things better here. They’re staying put, despite so many persistent problems, because this neighborhood is their home—a place worth saving.
The third generation of the Passantino family continues to operate the Passantino Bros. Funeral Home at its original location on Independence Boulevard—established 95 years ago in what was once a mansion built in the early 1900s. Charles Passantino often lives at the Funeral Home to keep would-be thieves away. He boarded our trolley bus and shared a story about a man who often sits or just lies down on the stone wall lining the sidewalk outside the funeral home. The man likes “The Avenue” because he doesn’t have to move since, he says, “drugs and sex will come to me.”
Only a block east of Passantino Bros. is the Independence Plaza Park. Bobbi Baker proudly points out it’s been cleaned—and kept clean—and is a place people feel safe to visit. A success story.
A few more blocks to the east, a sad story: persistent theft forced the CVS at Independence and Prospect to close—permanently. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage was then inflicted on the boarded-up vacant building.
CLOSED DOWN — Persistent theft forced the CVS at Independence and Prospect to close its doors.
A little further down the road, what I found most depressing were the empty store fronts where the Pierce Drug Store, an attorney’s office and barber shop, among other businesses, once prospered—right around the corner from my childhood home. The Kansas City Police officers who participated in the tour said this location is now one of the hottest hot spots for illicit drug use and other crimes in the metropolitan area. (They also pointed out just crossing Independence Avenue can be unsafe, with vehicles frequently zooming by at interstate speeds.)
There are well-meaning people providing those with substance use disorders clean needles to help prevent the spread of disease. Unfortunately, these needles often litter the neighborhood, with one day care provider saying she must keep the kids inside to avoid the hazard from all the needles being tossed over a fence and into her yard.
TOO COMMON A SITE — The Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce frequently cleans up sites where syringes litter the ground in the neighborhood.
Another issue in the Northeast: The NEKC Chamber confirmed my assumption that most homes in this area are now rental properties, and I suspect the rents are a whole higher than the $35 a month mortgage payment my dad made. (That’s about $830 in today’s dollars, which is not that high by 2025 standards.) The people living here are struggling—struggling to keep a roof over their heads and put food on their tables. The chamber staff told me there were more than a hundred house fires in the neighborhood within the last year.
Transportation’s another issue in the Northeast. Limited transit means getting to where there are more jobs can be an hours-long odyssey requiring multiple bus transfers.
There Is Hope
'FLAME' STILL FLICKERS — I remember when the memorial to John F. Kennedy was dedicated May 29,1965—on what would have been the slain president's 48th birthday. Although vandals and scrap-metal thieves caused the original natural-gas flame atop the JFK Memorial to be removed, an electric torch, installed in 2021, keeps the eternal "flame"—and the hope it represents—aglow. Where there's a will, there is a way.