Reconnecting to the East Bottoms

For almost three months, the Kansas City Design Center studio has been tirelessly mapping, analyzing, and gathering quantitative and qualitative data in order to better understand the East Bottoms. As architects and urban planners, it is our responsibility to make rational decisions backed by research and analysis.

Over the last two weeks, the studio has had a couple of reviews of our progress by local design professionals and our advisory group.

At our studio review we welcomed Alex Ogata from Populous, Tim Duggan from Phronesis, James Pfeiffer and Alyssa Parsons from BNIM, Amanda Santoro from Hoerr Schaudt, Lauren Cano from Vireo, and Michael Frisch from the University of Missouri-Kansas.

Our second review was with our Project Advisory group— we had Joe Perry with PortKC, Jeff Williams, Gerald Shechter, and Lisa Treese with the City of KCMO, Kristin Riott from Bridging the Gap, and Christina Hoxie of Hoxie Collective at the KCDC to share their time and knowledge to help us move forward with the project.

There are a few key issues that we currently know about the site:

• Despite having a riverfront park that is bigger than Central Park in NY, the Riverfront Park — totaling 955.45 acres— is underutilized and unaccessible to the public

• While considered a historic area with the best physical connection to both the Missouri River and the Blue River, the East Bottoms is mostly disconnected from both of the rivers.

• The entire East Bottoms is a flood plain and even though it is mostly flat, the eastern section still floods due to it being slightly lower in elevation.

• The East Bottoms is not only in a state of blight, but it also has problems with water runoff not being managed, resulting in standing water throughout the site.

• The area is industry and traffic heavy which results in air, soil, and water pollution. The East Bottoms has a number of brownfield sites.

• The East Bottoms utilizes both a combined sewer and a separate sewer system. During rainfall, water fills up the combined sewer system causing overflow and sewage back ups into the Blue River.

• Despite being directly adjacent to the downtown area, intersected by major highways and in proximity to prime locations such as downtown, Cliff Drive, the Rivermarket, and Columbus Park, the East Bottoms is disconnected from the rest of the city.

• 15,000 people commute to work in the East Bottoms but are offered no amenities surrounding their work place, effectively turning the East Bottoms into a no man’s land.

The East Bottoms is very well connected regionally, making it a thriving industrial area. As a result, the area sees over 80,000 vehicles a day and there is a constant threat of getting stuck in the site due to the large amount of train traffic that blocks off streets.

After examining these issues, the studio came up with a vision:

We hope to strengthen the relationship between KC communities and the water by improving the public realm while taking advantage of the East Bottoms’ natural geographic roots.

From this vision, we formed our overarching project goal:

To create a historic linear park that not only connects you to both rivers and takes you on a journey through the city, but also builds resiliency for the East Bottoms.

The linear park would transform infrastructure into recreation, connecting the East Bottoms to the West Bottoms to create a natural green loop that acts as an alternative method of transportation— ultimately connecting to George Kessler’s Parks and Boulevard System. This green loop not only has societal benefits, but also serves as a line of defense against flooding and drought because of its design as a living machine that harvests, treats, and stores stormwater.

Over the next month we will be busy with studio work before leaving for the holidays, but tune back in after the new year to see more focused conceptual plans for the East Bottoms!

Problems to Possibilities

After our recent Project Advisory group meeting, we used the feedback to start brainstorming ways in which we can reach our next conceptual design phase of the project. As a class we’ve decided to focus on five main categories that will aid in our understanding of the problems of the East Bottoms and the possibilities that can grow from the findings.

Site Challenges:

1. Green Infrastructure and Resiliency
   Flooding has been the biggest problem in the East Bottoms in the last century and before, which resulted in almost no permanent residents living in the area. The lack of amenities means that even if people use the East Bottoms for a specific purpose, they have limited places to live and enjoy the area. Those that live and work in the area are not supported by the current amenities.

Above: precedent study— the Big U
We looked at the following projects as examples of successful Green Infrastructure and Resiliency projects. Both projects come from ONE Architecture.

Above: precedent study— Islais Hyper-Creek.

2. Transit and Connectivity
One of the other challenges in the East Bottoms is the lack of connections to Kansas City and the surrounding areas. There are many natural and built barriers that create congestion within the site such as railyards, the Missouri River, and the bluffs of Kessler park. There is also a lack of safe pedestrian and bike paths within the site, and those that do exist are in poor condition.

Above: precedent study— Loop City
The studio examined BIG’s Loop City and the Atlanta BeltLine as examples of incorporating trails and connectivity in an urban environment.

Above: precedent study- Atlanta BeltLine

3. Urban and Cultural Promotion
As an industrial area that is also located in a floodplain, the East Bottoms has many problems with blight and neglect. Silos and railways surround the existing residential community which results in its isolation from the rest of the city. The volume of rail to vehicular traffic on East Front Street and the regional interstate dictates the internal street system, making way-finding difficult. Homelessness has also visibly risen in the area, with a large homeless population that takes advantage of the neglected spaces of the East Bottoms. All of these factors have kept small businesses and retail from settling in the East Bottoms which means that the 15,000 commuters that travel to the East Bottoms for work do not use the area for any other activities.

Above: precedent study- Superkilen

Above: precedent study- North Wharf Promenade

4. Adaptive Reuse
The East Bottoms’ continual use as a heavy industrial area that is isolated from major amenities, the building stock is crumbing. There are many abandoned buildings, overgrown parcels, and underutilized public amenities. As a result, lack of safety becomes an issue for those that may want to visit the East Bottoms.

Above: precedent study- SteelStacks
The studio looked at examples of projects that reused abandoned or underutilized infrastructure for different kinds of amenities.

Above: precedent study- Japanese reuse of overpasses

1. Stormwater and Sewer Management
   The East Bottoms is a high risk area for water and sewer back ups during storms. Untreated sewage from overflows can cause serious water quality problems and health issues from pollutants. These overflow problems can also cause damage to the river, land, structures, and amenities within the site as well as the systems that are meant to take care of the runoff.

Above: precedent study- canal restoration projects

Above: precedent study-Vancouver green rainwater initiatives

Possibilities:

With the environmental challenges in the study area, we found it necessary to study other projects that had similar problems in order to brainstorm concepts. While looking for solutions, we wanted to make sure not to sacrifice the public right-of-way and the natural amenities that the site provides. With balance being a key factor, the solutions to the five focus areas revolve around sustainability and urban growth. We have also learned that design is not the only thing that revitalizes an area— other methods such as community engagement, tax incentives, and zoning will play a crucial role. We are now moving into the conceptual design phase of the project; we look forward to sharing our designs and findings in our next review!

KCDC Receives the AIA Design Excellence Award

We are thrilled to announce that the KCDC’s 2016-2018 project West Bottoms Reborn: A System of Public Spaces, has received another award. Last Friday, the project received a citation award at the AIA KC Design Excellence Awards. The jury’s comments were as follows:

This project was very interesting to us as the perfect example of a process for the community to look at revitalizing their downtown neighborhood and also for the way that the designers developed proof of concepts around the sites-- they used a very imaginative way of looking at a city, and it brought an interdisciplinary team together to look at the opportunities within the downtown area.

Congratulations to all of the students and team artists that worked on the project, your hard work made the project what it is. Lastly, thanks to all of the community members, stakeholders, and supporters that invested their time and interest in the project!