Adopt A Neighborhood Project (Law firms make great neighbors!)

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

Back in February, the Kansas City Business Journal ran a cover story about the work that the Stinson Leonard Street law firm is doing in the Marlborough Neighborhood.

About five years ago, Stinson adopted the low-income neighborhood in southeastern Kansas City, which is part of the Center School District. By working together, neighborhood leaders, local non-for-profits, the City and Stinson attorneys, with the support of Legal Aid, have achieved many remarkable successes in the neighborhood. Abandoned houses have been repaired and are now high quality housing. There is now a medical clinic in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is the home of a new grocery store (for many years the neighborhood had been a food desert. The only places people living in the neighborhood could buy “groceries” were gas stations and convenience stores).

The project has not only been a success for the community, it’s had great benefits for the firm as well. It has allowed new attorneys excellent training opportunities and created a signature project for the firm’s Kansas City office that everyone can be proud of.

The Bryan Cave firm for years has done a similar project addressing abandoned properties in the Ivanhoe neighborhood. Husch Blackwell has also recently adopted the Mannheim neighborhood.

There are, however, scores of other neighborhoods that need similar help and attorneys have the power to make a tremendous difference in these neighborhoods.  If your firm is interested in finding out how to get involved, please give me a call at (816)474-1413 x5224.

A New Player Joins the Fight to Save KC's Urban Core

Gregg Lombardi-Executive Director

Odds are that you saw last week that the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce has announced a major urban core initiative to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods along the Troost Street Corridor from 21^st Street to 51^st Street.

The Chamber’s focus on this work is fantastic news. The Chamber and its members have access to tremendous resources and the ability to influence major decision-makers in a way that can help transform these neighborhoods. 

Legal Aid has been doing community development work to improve these neighborhoods for more than 25 years. Every year we work with neighborhood associations, the City, individual homeowners and other not-for-profits to transform 80-100 blighted and abandoned properties in the urban core of Kansas City into high quality, occupied, tax-paying housing. That work has been critical in helping neighborhoods like the Ivanhoe neighborhood greatly improve themselves and in keeping other neighborhoods that will be a part of the Chamber initiative from falling into irreversible disrepair.

Because of limits on our resources, however, the work that we do leaves thousands of blighted and abandoned properties untouched.  According to the most conservative estimates, there are now approximately 7,000 abandoned properties in the City’s urban core. 

So, having the Chamber join the fight is a breath of fresh air.  We will collaborate with the Chamber and its partners in every way that we can to make sure that the new urban core initiative is a success.  As part of this, among other things, we will assist in acquiring blighted properties for rehab for Chamber projects. We will also recruit for-profit law firms to work on the project on a pro bono basis. 

We welcome the Chamber to the battle against urban core blight in Kansas City and look forward to working with them on their wonderful, new initiative.