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BCCP
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THE BRUSH CREEK BULLETIN Volume
13, Issue 2
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BCCP
4743 Troost
Suite 200
Kansas City, MO
64110-1727
Ph: 816-523-2991
Fax: 816-523-2281
THE BRUSH CREEK BULLETIN
Volume 13, Issue 2
April / May / June 2011
BLUE HILLS CENTER TO OFFER JOB TRAINING/CREATION
IN SUSTAINABLE NEIGHBORHOODBlue Hills Community Services (BHCS) will break ground this fall on a community services center between Prospect Avenue and Wabash Avenue at 50th Street just south of Brush Creek that will anchor a redeveloped neighborhood.
The $3.13 million redevelopment of 5008 Prospect incorporates a concentration of community services to centralize information and assistance for residents and contractors. The renovated structure on an environmentally-remediated Brownfields site will have over 14,000 square feet on two levels, with the main floor offering:
The Blue Hills Community Services Center will front the Wabash Village development, encompassing more than 20 square blocks between Prospect and Euclid Avenues and 49th to 53rd Streets. Plans for Wabash Village include: multi-family redevelopment, single family renovations and new construction and public space improvements of sustainable design and building.
In addition to the creative building reuse and the cleanup of the four-acre Brownfield site, other sustainable features of the redevelopment include ground source heat pumps, day light harvesting, native landscaping and water conservation and retention.
The Blue Hills Community Services Center is expected to be completed by September 2012.
SAINT LUKE'S HEALTH SYSTEM APPOINTS NEW CEO
Melinda Estes, M.D., has been named chief executive officer of Saint Luke's Health System. Dr. Estes, a neurologist and neuropathologist, will join Saint Luke's in September. She comes to Kansas City from Burlington, Vermont where she has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Fletcher Allen Health Care since 2003.
Melinda EstesFletcher Allen Health Care is a $900 million academic medical center serving Vermont and northern New York, where Dr. Estes guided the health care system back to financial health while expanding services, forging alliances and implementing an extensive strategic planning process. Her experience encompasses nearly two decades at The Cleveland Clinic health care system. She served as Chief Executive Officer at Cleveland Clinic Florida from 2001 to 2003. Her career also includes serving as Senior Vice President of medical affairs and Executive Vice President of the MetroHealth System in Cleveland.
Dr. Estes replaces Saint Luke's Health System President and Chief Executive Officer G. Richard Hastings, who will retire July 31 after more than 35 years with Saint Luke's. Hastings is a founder of Brush Creek Partners. Chuck Robb, Saint Luke's chief operating officer and chief financial officer, will serve as the interim chief executive officer until Dr. Estes starts this fall.
KCP&L MAKES GOOGLE DEAL POSSIBLE
Ultra high-speed Internet service will be made available to Kansas City, Missouri thanks to an agreement with Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L), which is making its electrical infrastructure accessible to Google for its Google Fiber Initiative.
KCP&L is the first investor-owned utility in the world to partner with Google, which will allow Google to offer broadband Internet service at speeds up to 100 times faster than what most people have today. The agreement provides for the service to be developed in Kansas City at reduced costs and time. Google plans to begin offering this service in early 2012.
Kansas City, Missouri is the second city to be selected for this initiative joining Kansas City, Kansas. Brush Creek Community Partners participated in the GoogleKC coalition, contributing to the city's application to be part of the initiative.
PARTNER UPDATES
Rockhurst University has named Sharon M. Homan, Ph.D., vice president for academic affairs effective July 1. Homan comes to the university from the Kansas Health Institute, an independent, nonprofit health policy and research organization, where she served as vice president for public health. Previously, she worked at Saint Louis University from 1982 to 2008 in various administrative and faculty roles. Homan replaces William Haefele, Ph.D., who returns to teaching after ten years as Rockhurst's vice president for academic affairs.
Saint Luke's Mid-America Heart Institute has become one of 27 hospitals nationwide to record 500 adult heart transplants when a 50-year-old father of four received his new heart in June. The institute celebrated its 25th anniversary of cardiac transplantation last year, and offers the only transplant program in Kansas City and the surrounding area between Denver and St. Louis. The program ranks among the top ten for the number of adult transplants nationwide.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has selected the former headquarters of the Church of the Nazarene at 63rd Street and The Paseo as the permanent location for the Ewing Marion Kauffman School. The 13-acre campus includes four existing buildings, providing the opportunity to create a campus environment for the charter school, as this location will enable the Kauffman School to educate more than 1,000 middle and high school students at a single location. The Kauffman School will open this August at its temporary site at 4251 Bridger Road in the Westport area with its first class of 100 fifth graders. The school will add a new class each year as it builds to serve fifth through twelfth graders. The Kauffman School, which is being designed to prepare students to excel academically, will move into its permanent home in the 2013-14 school year.
The University of Missouri-Kansas City has been named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for the fifth consecutive year. The distinction is awarded by the Corporation for National and Community Service and is the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service learning and civic engagement. Among the programs and community service initiatives cited in UMKC's Presidential Honor Roll recognition are the School of Education's Institute for Urban Education; the Henry W. Bloch School of Management's Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership; the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy's UMKC Health Sciences Wellness Fair; and the School of Medicine's Sojourner Clinic providing free health care to Kansas City's homeless and underprivileged population.
Eight students of Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts participated in the National SkillsUSA Championships held in Kansas City in June. The three teams from the academy competed in broadcast news production, video production development and television/video production, joining 5,600 other state champions competing in 94 hands-on skill and leadership contests conducted at Bartle Hall and several other downtown venues. SkillsUSA is a national-level competition for public high school and postsecondary, college and technical students in competitions as diverse as culinary art to robotics and automation technology.
H & R Block awarded more than $50,000 in college scholarship funds to high school students from across the United States and Canada who excelled in the H & R Block Dollars & Cents National Challenge finals in May. Sixteen teams in the finals navigated an avatar through multiple financial situations to demonstrate their financial acumen and accumulate virtual wealth in a program to increase teens' personal financial skills. Members of a team from Naperville, Illinois received $10,000 each, ultimately beating more than 3,500 student teams that competed in the on-line challenges that started the competition. Through Dollars & Sense, H&R Block has awarded more than $2 million in personal finance curriculum and scholarships to high schools and students since 2009. For more information about the program, visit www.hrblockdollarsandsense.com/viewourvision.
MRIGlobal, celebrated the Grand Opening of the Solar Technology Acceleration Center (SolarTAC), in June. MRIGlobal is the operator and manager of SolarTAC, a world-class facility in Aurora, Colorado, where the solar industry can test, validate and demonstrate solar technologies in preparing them for the commercial market. The center was launched in October 2009 and is nearly full with new solar technology and research from its members. SolarTAC is also open to research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and national labs like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) located in Golden, Colorado. MRIGlobal has operated and managed NREL since its inception in 1977.
COLLINS NAMED KCAI PRESIDENT EMERITUS
Kathleen Collins, president of the Kansas City Art Institute since 1996, becomes president emeritus of the college upon her June 30 retirement. She is the first person in the school's 125-year history to receive the President Emeritus title. Collins received the honor from Bill Zahner, chair of KCAI's Board of Trusteesat a farewell reception.
Collins, a founding member of Brush Creek Community Partners' Board of Directors, was also recognized at the BCCP's June board meeting by being named BCCP’s first board member emeritus.
ALTERNATIVES EXAMINED FOR BRUSH CREEK REACH
When the Brush Creek Flood Control and Beautification Project was initiated in the 1980s, the decision was made for what is also known as the Federal Project to be constructed between Tracy Avenue and Roanoke Parkway.
Since the completion of this phase in 1996, concern about the reach from Roanoke west into Kansas have intensified. The concrete that lines the channel has broken up, the banks are eroding and trees have fallen into the creek. Residents in houses adjacent to the creek complain about flooding and the bridges over the creek are overtopped in a heavy rain.
Brush Creek looking east from the Rockwell Bridge as it is today.
Rendering of Brush Creek looking east from the Rockwell Bridge with
Alternative 1. This option provides more terrestrial/habitat viewsheds with
lower floodplain benches on both sides of a narrower waterway.
Rendering of Brush Creek looking east from the Rockwell Bridge with
Alternative 2. This option provides more aquatic/habitat viewsheds with
narrower floodplain benches on both sides of a deeper and wider waterway.The City of Kansas City, Johnson County, Kansas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have collaborated to examine conditions in the entire 29 square mile watershed in order develop a comprehensive plan to improve flood risk management and water quality while balancing economic, environmental and social benefits. The Bi-State Reach between Roanoke and just into Johnson County is the first of a few specific areas being examined in the study.
The community has been invited to weigh in on the Bi-State Reach at workshops that have helped shape and fine tune possible alternatives for improvement of this part of the creek. Both alternatives presented at an April workshop propose a more natural setting, which have been well accepted by the public participating in the event, although concern about either concept's ability to mitigate flooding was frequently expressed. The alternatives, their technical differences and comments made by the public at the workshop can be found at www.brushcreekwatershed.com, click on "Workshops." A comparison of the two alternatives is also on display at the Plaza Branch Library, 4801 Main Street, through July.
This input is being used in the development of a third concept that will be tested for ecological and hydraulic impacts.
UMKC STUDENT UNION LEED GOLD
The University of Missouri-Kansas City's new Student Union has officially been certified as a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold project. The building, which opened last August, has received several architectural and environmental awards, featuring public transportation access, storm water control, natural lighting, skylights, high ceilings, a central stairway and a 6,300-square-foot multi-purpose area that is divisible into four rooms.
Other features of the Student Union include:
TOY AND MINIATURE MUSEUM REACHING OUT TO KANSAS CITY
For years, fans of the Toy and Miniature Museum of Kansas City have been touting the fact that it is better known nationally than it is within Kansas City. The museum's Executive Director Jamie Berry has certainly heard this often enough. But Berry is out to change that - her goal is to put the museum on the radar of more people in the Kansas City area and to get them in the doors for the first time. One of the ways she hopes to raise the museum's profile is through the museum's membership in Brush Creek Community Partners.
Miss Mary is an oil painted cloth doll made by doll artist Izannah Walker in 1861. She was
purchased for a little girl named Mary Estelle Newell. Miss Mary actually had an entire wardrobe in the 1860s.
Walker is one of America's earliest known female doll artists; she applied for a patent in doll
manufacturing in 1873.The museum at 5235 Oak really began as the private collections of two Kansas City friends. Mary Francis Harris collected antique dollhouses, while Barbara Marshall collected fine-scale miniatures. In 1982, they opened a museum filled with their personal collections in a facility maintained by the University of Missouri-Kansas City. With major renovations in 1989 and 2003, the Toy and Miniature Museum of Kansas City grew into the largest collection of nostalgic toys, fine-scale miniatures and marbles in the Midwest.
Jamie Berry was hired in 2005 as the museum's first professional director. Instead of a background in collecting or museum
management, Berry brought skills from a career in finance, sales and small business management; a love of arts and American history; and a connection to the Brookside community. She saw her mission as "moving the museum from a founder-based organization to one that can be more community embraced." In other words, while the founders started the museum by following their personal passions, its sustainability will depend upon asking the public, especially the Kansas City public, what it wants from the museum.
This samovar, made in 1/12th scale, was made by silversmith and miniature artist Pete Acquisto.
Acquisto will be visiting the Toy and Miniature Museum for a reception and talk on Tuesday, July 12,
beginning at 5:30 p.m., along with additional talks on Wednesday, July 13th at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 2 p.m.Berry says after market research and internal self-study, she knows what will draw local residents: better signage, updated exhibits and new technology to make the museum more interactive. By focusing on what the community said it wanted, she's been able to
double attendance in the last five years, with a steady increase in local visitors.In fact, when the Brush Creek Community Partners Board of Directors met recently at the museum, several board members admitted they had never been to the facility before. To Berry, that kind of exposure to the community makes BCCP a valuable networking tool for a small arts organization like hers. She also likes the collaborative environment BCCP fosters among organizations in the Brush Creek Corridor. "Having supportive partners will make our future plans more successful," she said.
For more information about the museum, visit www.toyandminiaturemuseum.org.