Brush Creek Community Partners-Monthly Newsletter

LIGHT RAIL PROPOSAL INVOLVES BRUSH CREEK CORRIDOR
Voters to Act on 3/8-cent sales tax November 4

The proposed 14-mile light rail route from Kansas City's city's Northland through downtown and midtown to 63rd Street includes an east-west stretch through the Brush Creek Corridor. The route starts in the vicinity of Vivion Road and north Oak Trafficway and travels north to the just east of the Country Club Plaza, where the route travels east to Prospect Avenue and the Bruce R. Watkins Parkway where it ends at 63rd Street.

Kansas City voters are being asked if they will approve a 25-year, 3/8-cent sales tax to build the light rail line on November 4. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) says federal funds may provide 50 percent of the cost to build the line.

The proposal has involved a number of community meetings over the last year and a half, along with the technical analysis of potential routes in Kansas City. It has been designed to work as part of a larger regional transit system, and to connect with current and future bus rapid transit (BRT), such as the BRT line being introduced along Troost Avenue in the next two years.

Preliminary costs to build the whole route are between $815 million to $835 million. Annual operating costs are estimated at $13.2 million; Fares are expected to recover one fourth of the operating costs.

The process to request federal funds requires completion of an Alternatives Analysis/Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which, if the proposal is approved in November, is expected to be completed next spring. The process provides that the locally preferred light rail line will be determined based on community input, engineering, costs, traffic analysis and other
technical evaluation.

As the sun sets on Saturday, October 25, WaterFire will be rekindled on Brush Creek.

More than 50 braziers in the middle of Brush Creek adjacent to the Plaza will be lit from boats as evening falls. As music and dancing are occurring on the bridges and the banks of the creek, the fires will be continually lit until midnight.

Two presentations of WaterFire were scheduled last fall attracting thousands of spectators. However, the second event was cancelled when very heavy rain earlier in the day dislodged most of the braziers, washing them down the creek. Organizers plan to wait until the last possible moment before installing the braziers in the creek prior to the October 25 event.

The Toy & Miniature Museum of Kansas City succeeded in conducting the world's largest marble tournament in August, which should earn it the distinction of a Guinness World Record.

Approximately 677 people of all ages gathered at the Swinney Recreation Center on the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Volker Campus. Playing a modified game of Ringer, everyone "knuckled down" at the same time to qualify for the Guinness designation.

This year's participation exceeded by more than 100, the number of players required to set the new record.

Lisa Browar is the new president of the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology. Browar comes to Kansas City from New York City where she was university librarian for The New School, a position she had held since 2002. Browar succeeds C. Lee Jones who stepped down as president at the end of 2006 after 13 years as president.

Guy Bailey, chancellor of the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 2006, is now the president of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Leo Morton, former chief operating officer of Aquila, Inc. has been serving as the campus' interim chancellor since August 1. Morton had been chair of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Board of Trustees. A search committee has been formed to seek a permanent replacement for Bailey.

H&R Block Inc. has named Russ Smyth president and chief executive officer. He worked 21 years for McDonald's Corp, most recently as President of McDonald's Europe. Prior to coming to Kansas City in July, Smyth worked three years in private equity.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has been selected as one of 66 winners of the American Architecture Awards, another tribute to the museum's recent expansion. The award, co-sponsored by the Chicago Athenaeum and a European design center based in Dublin, Ireland, credits project architects Steven Holl and Kansas City's BNIM Architects. The museum's expansion is also one of five Development of Distinction awards being presented next month by the Urban Land Institute's Kansas City chapter.

Mazuma Credit Union is celebrating its 60th anniversary this fall. The Kansas City National Federation of Federal Employees Credit Union received its state charter signed November 8, 1948. The first charter member deposited five dollars in a share deposit. The former Federal Employees Credit Union changed its name to Mazuma Credit Union in 1998, its 50th anniversary. It opened a midtown branch along Brush Creek in March 2002. Mazuma President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Givens is president of Brush Creek Community Partners.

Great Plains Energy has completed its acquisition of Aquila, Inc. As of July 14, Aquila's Missouri electric utility business began operating under the brand name of Great Plains' subsidiary, KCP&L. With the addition of Aquila's 300,000 Missouri electric utility customers Great Plain Energy and KCP&L will serve 800,000 residential and business customers in Missouri and Kansas. KCP&L hired nearly 900 Aquila employees, raising the number of its employees to 3,100. Integration of the utilities' operations are expected to generate approximately $198 million in customer savings by 2013 and $547 million 2017.

Pam Pearson has been named executive director of Genesis School. Pearson has been with Genesis for over ten years, most recently as chief of Operations and principal after having served as a teacher, instructional coach, and the director of education at the alternative middle school. She succeeds Alan DuBois who retired this summer after serving 31 years as executive director.

For the second consecutive year, Saint Luke's Hospital of Kansas City has been ranked in U.S. News and World Report's 2008 publication of America's Best Hospitals. Saint Luke's Hospital ranks among the 50 best in two separate specialty categories - Heart and Heart Surgery (ranked 37), and Gynecology (ranked 44). It is the only Kansas City area hospital recognized in more than one category.

Midwest Research Institute is in the partnership selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to manage and operate the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. MRI has managed NREL since the laboratory's inception in 1977. With Battelle Memorial Institute, it formed the Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC which was selected to manage NREL for the next five years.

The Kauffman Foundation is a leader in the observance of Global Entrepreneurship Week November 17-23. The foundation is partnering with Make Your Mark of the United Kingdom to create a global celebration linking all those willing to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. While focusing on aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages, Kansas City events particularly target young people, especially students aged 14 to 25. For more information about Global Entrepreneurship Week, visit www.unleashingideas.org or the Kauffman Foundation website www.kauffman.org.

Hogan Preparatory Academy received a College Board 2008 Honorable Mention, one of a small number of high schools recognized for their innovation and creativity in developing programs and partnerships to help students pursue a college education. Hogan Prep has also been ranked 37 in Newsweek's annual "1,300 Top U.S. High Schools."

Many hands made for lighter work as volunteers turned up to clean up the grounds of the Southwest Early College Campus at 6512 Wornall for its August 25 opening. SWECC enrolled a capacity 120 students in each of the sixth and ninth grades with dozens more on waiting lists. Successive grades will be added each year until it fills out as a math and science school for grades six through twelve. The University of Missouri-Kansas City is one of the school's sponsors. Through UMKC, the program will offer up to 60 hours college credit for high school graduates.

October 1, 1938 - 75 years ago - the University of Kansas City opened its doors to 264 students. This photograph includes the entire student body, faculty and staff on that day.

Today the University of Missouri-Kansas City serves over 14,400 undergraduate, graduate and professional students through its twelve schools and colleges. The year-long anniversary celebration culminates with Homecoming activities, including a campus-wide celebration on October 1. (www.umkc.edu/homecoming)

UMKC will break ground on a 108,300 gross square foot New Student Union during Homecoming weekend. Construction will begin next March. Scheduled for opening in August 2011, the $38.3 million facility will house food service, meeting and conference rooms, a bookstore, recreation and entertainment space, a computer lab and room for student organizations. UMKC had announced $350 million in campus improvements last year, of which $175 million of those projects are complete or under way.

Based on addressing four critical issues in the university's strategic plan, Rockhurst has commenced planning for the 55-acre campus' physical needs. Representatives of the master planning team and Rockhurst staff have begun meeting with stakeholders, including the surrounding community, to get input before plans are developed for campus improvements.

The critical issues, or internal and external matters of significant importance to the university, center around Rockhurst's ability to:

Additional goals of the master plan include incorporating sustainable design, retaining the history of the university while modernizing the campus, and reinforcing the campus' relationship with the surrounding community.

Rockhurst University has 3,000 students from 26 states and 20 countries served by 495 full-time and part-time faculty and staff. The strategic plan does not advocate growing the campus enrollment but to work to achieve national recognition as both a learning-centered institution known for excellence and for leader formation of its students.

During the next phase of the plan, the consulting firms will meet again with faculty, staff, students and the community to report their findings and show preliminary drawings. The plan will be presented to Rockhurst's Board of Trustees in December.

PARTNERS MAKE NEIGHBORHOOD LEADERSHIP
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM POSSIBLE

Brush Creek Community Partners and Blue Hills Community Services were able to revive a popular neighborhood
leadership development program fall. This is a team from among 20 participants in LeadOUT, a ten-session series offered by BCCP and BHCS with generous support from DST Systems and Saint Luke's Health System. Formerly known as Building 21st Century Leaders, a vast majority of its 550 graduates have said they have gotten more involved in the community since participating in the program. The organizations are seeking funding to again offer the program and an advanced curriculum for its graduates in 2009.

LIZ LEVIN SEES A HEALTHY COMMUNITY RISING ABOVE BRUSH CREEK
Board member works for community health on many levels

For Brush Creek Community Partners board member Liz Levin, working with BCCP is just another facet of a commitment to excellent health care for everyone in Kansas City.

Levin joined the Saint Luke's Health System in 1998 and is currently vice president for charity management. Levin also serves as the executive director of the Cabot Westside Health Center. Levin grew up in Kansas City and sees the redevelopment of Brush Creek as helping to bring back an area of the city that has been ignored for too long.

"What Brush Creek Community Partners is doing is revitalizing the area that will become attractive to people to come back to," she said. Levin is proud of the involvement of two health institutions in that effort, her own and Swope Health Services.

Liz Levin

As people come back, Levin said, they will once again see a healthy, revitalized Brush Creek and Troost Avenue - not the run-down area they may remember from 20 years ago.

Even better for Levin, the return of the Brush Creek Corridor coincides with her own institution's reinvestment into the midtown area. Saint Luke's is investing $330 million in improvements to its campus at 4401 Wornall, just north of Brush Creek. The project currently under construction includes a new Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute patient care tower, a new women's' and infants' service facility and the new women's heart center.

"I am proud to be with an organization that is investing over $330 million into the core area of the city, ensuring our community will have a state of the art Heart Institute, Brain and Stroke Center as well as the Cancer Institute Levin said. And she's proud that, as the revitalized Saint Luke's draws people in for specialty care throughout the entire city, they'll see a revitalized community surrounding it.

Levin's commitment to a health community doesn't end with her job or her service to BCCP. She also volunteers for the Task Force for the Homeless, helping provide food on Sunday evenings in Mill Creek Park.

"I am able to get to personally know this population and help guide them to services and opportunities to rise above and become a productive part of our community," Levin said.