Legal Aid's Fight to Re-purpose West High School

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

31 years ago this month, the Kansas City Missouri School District closed West High School.  Ever since the District closed West, Michael Duffy, who leads Legal Aid’s Economic Development team, has been fighting to either get it re-opened or repurposed.

Thanks in good part to Michael’s work and the work of the many other people and organizations that Michael has partnered with, Kansas City’s West Side has been revitalized and is now a wonderfully vibrant community. Through all this time, however, West High has been a decaying eye sore in the middle of the neighborhood.  Still, Michael has never given up the fight to get West High redeveloped.

Five years ago, Michael and Westside Housing Organization (WHO) approached the District with an acquisition and financing proposal that would have redeveloped the building as a mixed use apartment complex with low-income and market rate apartments.  A similar project that Michael helped create nine years ago at Villa Del Sol on the West Side is a national model for urban core redevelopment.  The District, however, turned down the Michael’s West High School redevelopment proposal three times.

Finally, last night, with the building in much worse condition than it was five years ago, the District preliminarily accepted a new, similar plan that Michael and WHO put together.  Again, the project would be mixed use revitalization of the buildings and will require Michael and WHO to assemble roughly $40 million in funding to make it work.

I am confident, that they are up to the task.  The result will be one of the biggest improvements in the urban core of Kansas City in a long time.  Congratulations to Michael, his partners at WHO and to everyone else who has worked on this project.