Outstanding Public Outreach, Program, Project, Tool, Community Initiative

Southwest Boulevard Transportation Plan - Planning Sustainable Places

The Southwest Boulevard Transportation Plan exemplifies innovative public outreach and community-driven planning, meeting the criteria for Outstanding Public Outreach, Program, Project, Tool, Community Initiative. Developed through the Planning Sustainable Places initiative for Kansas City, Missouri, in collaboration with the Mid-America Regional Council, this plan demonstrates how state-of-the-art planning methods can create lasting community value through inclusive engagement, innovative tools, and a focus on equity, safety, and sustainability. Wilson & Company partnered with HOXIE Collective, SWT Design, and SingleWing Creative to bring this vision to life.

A cornerstone of the Southwest Boulevard Transportation Plan is its extensive public engagement process, designed to be fully bilingual, ensuring equitable participation from the predominantly Hispanic and historically disadvantaged Westside community. The outreach strategy employed diverse methods, including stakeholder meetings, walking tours, focus groups, surveys, and a community charrette. These methods gathered input from a wide spectrum of community members, ensuring their voices shaped the plan.

This approach was particularly noteworthy for its inclusivity and cultural sensitivity. Materials were provided in English and Spanish, and events reflected the community’s needs and preferences. High participation and thoughtful feedback demonstrate the community's commitment to the plan’s recommendations.

The Southwest Boulevard Transportation Plan focuses on creating a safer, more accessible, and culturally vibrant corridor. It addresses traffic safety, pedestrian accessibility, stormwater management, and placemaking, with a clear emphasis on improving quality of life. Each recommendation directly ties back to the project's overarching goals and the community's vision, ensuring that the plan not only meets immediate needs but also aligns with long-term aspirations for the neighborhood.

A key achievement of the plan is its emphasis on safety, particularly for vulnerable road users. By proposing a road diet with a shared-use path, median pedestrian refuge islands, and improved crosswalks, the plan prioritizes safer trips for all modes. These recommendations are deeply rooted in the community's love for ‘The Boulevard’ and vision of Southwest Boulevard as a safe, inclusive, and vibrant public space.

The Westside neighborhood's selection for a Reconnecting Communities grant underscores the importance of this plan. This grant will allow the community to evaluate the viaduct and I-35, which have split the neighborhood for nearly a century. The plan’s improvements are designed to mitigate some of the safety risks created by this divide, particularly for vulnerable road users. The plan's comprehensive focus on safety included a deep dive into data analysis, community feedback, and best practices to develop lasting solutions that reflect the community's vision.

The plan integrates data-driven analysis with community input to develop feasible and impactful recommendations. The proposed shared-use path along Southwest Boulevard, for example, is supported by comprehensive data on traffic patterns, safety concerns, and community preferences, ensuring that the recommendations are grounded and not only address current challenges but also advance the community’s long-term vision of a connected and equitable neighborhood.

The incorporation of tactical urbanism, such as temporary curb delineations and mobility lanes, will act as testbed catalyst projects while the full build funds and design can progress. These improvements, combined with insights gained from the charrette, facilitated the iterative refinement of the final design, ensuring that the completed project aligns with the community's goals and vision.

The Southwest Boulevard Transportation Plan is a model of how innovative public outreach, state-of-the-art planning methods, and a focus on equity and safety can create lasting value. Its emphasis on inclusive engagement, thoughtful design, and sustainable development makes it an exemplary candidate for this Award. This plan is poised to significantly improve mobility, safety, and quality of life in Kansas City's Westside community, driven by a process that truly put the community at the center.

Kessler Park Improvement Plan

The Kessler Park Improvement Plan process was community driven. The outcome of the deep community engagement married with responsive design and analysis is a community-owned, creative plan that prioritizes safety and care of existing resources and builds momentum for the capital improvements and amenities that celebrate the unique natural resources and culturally rich neighborhoods of the park. The planning, design, and engagement process has resulted in a team of community partners who are now supporting the implementation of the plan through the formation of a Park Conservancy group to support the KCMO Parks Department in key aspects of maintenance, programming, and fundraising for the park.

The planning process for the 303-acre historic Kessler Park was designed to provide public-facing tools that document the rich community conversations and the resulting community-guided designs and priorities for connectivity and park amenities. The process also developed Parks Department-facing conservation, operation and maintenance tools and documentation for their internal teams to use. (See links for Appendices A-D for the Conservation Plan, Operation and Maintenance Plan, Engagement Details, and Cost Estimate).

The Kessler Park Improvement Plan process employed a multi-layered community engagement approach that included establishing a diverse Advisory Committee representative of the communities and organizations connected to Kessler Park; a High School Mentorship initiative; Stakeholder Interviews; multi-lingual public outreach and Focus Group meetings; Online Surveys; a Project Website, and Public Meetings advertised city-wide.

Throughout the planning process dozens of small group interviews with Stakeholder user groups and City Department staff were held. These conversations helped to identify ongoing community projects and opportunities to support and grow these projects through documenting them in the concept design, connecting partners for increased capacity, and liaising relationships with the KCMO Parks Department.

All public events were advertised with multi-lingual flyers, at neighborhood meetings, through social media, the KCMO Parks newsletter, and through podcasts and advertisements in the NE News. The first public event was an outdoor summertime Community Gathering at the central and most formal gathering area of Kessler Park - Concourse Park. This event was organized to include activation of the park as well as community feedback on priorities, assets, and challenges. The activation included food trucks, guided walking tours, guided bike rides, a pickup futsal game with Sporting KC players, a disc golf game, and the KC Symphony brought their Mobile Music Box to play two concerts during the event.

The second public event was an Open House held at the KC Museum to provide feedback to the Consultant Team about Design Concepts for each area of the park as well as connectivity strategies for the full park. After the second public event, the team held four multi-lingual focus group meetings at the Northeast Chamber, St. Anthony’s Church, the Northeast Branch of the KC Public Library, and Riverview Gardens Apartments Community Room to reach a wider audience. Interpreters for Spanish, Swahili, Somali, and Arabic languages were present to liaise conversations between the Consultant Team and community members about the Design Concepts for each area of the park.

The third public event was an Open House held at the NE Chamber of Commerce. The Advisory Committee shifted into their role as the Implementation Committee at this Open House and were in attendance to field questions, advocate for the plan, and liaise feedback on the final concepts and phasing to the consultant team.

The Kessler Park Improvement Plan is uniquely owned by the many communities and organizations who love and use this park. Thank you for considering this plan as a candidate for Outstanding Public Outreach and Community Initiative.