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[SOCIAL ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT DESIGN: OCS]
You know--I think a lot of our neighborhoods is--is--are kind of dying,
because people are not meeting people in the neighborhood.
[Kenneth Smith: Manheim Park Resident]
People are just going to school and going to work--coming back home, and just staying in their houses
instead of knocking on their next door neighbor's house saying, "Hey, how you doing?"
or "Let's have a cup of coffee or a donut or somthing or talk about the soap operas or something."
You know--we don't have that now.
[Bob Berkebile: Principle, BNIM Architects]
The community came to us and to others asking if we could help them vision a new community.
They were very aware that they were surrounded by decline and that all the numbers were going in the wrong direction,
and they felt strongly that there could be something done about that.
I want to see all the board-up houses unboarded, refixed, people livin' in them. [Grace Price: Manheim Park Resident]
People need to stick together and--you know--try to keep their neighborhood or wherever you live at and all--
[Lester Jackson: Manheim Park Resident] you know--as peaceful and safe as they possibly can.
What emerged from that was a collaborative dialogue of discovery
among my colleagues, other volunteers, and the members of that community,
and it was in that dialogue that they first envisioned
reclaiming this abandoned school as a part of revitalizing the community.
When you drive by, it'll give you something to look at--to see that they redid it instead of tearing it down
or instead of leaving it boarded up.
We have a lot of dying neighborhoods going on around here, and to brighten up and spruce up the neighborhood
--I think it's going to bring a lot of excitement and joy to the neighborhood.
That's what's striking about Manheim Park and the Bancroft School, is they chose to define their own future
and not allow the community and fear to define it for them.
[Bancroft School Revitalization: Manheim Park neighborhood, Kansas City, Missouri]
The Bancroft School Apartments is the development in the Green Impact Zone of Kansas City,
[Jeremy Knoll: Bancroft School Project Manager, BNIM Architects]
which is an area that was blighted and that is receiving a lot of attention right now, in which we are
--we as a city--are investing a lot of money and time and effort
into the infrastructure and improvement of a neighborhood that really needs some help.
The school itself was last used in January of 1999 and is in the process right now of being re-purposed
as 29 apartments in the school with 21 new construction apartments on the same site.
So, 50 affordable apartments with a community center connected to it, neighborhood association, offices,
a police sub-station, computer labs, a gymnasium that will be used by Truman Medical Center
as a medical clinic open to the neighborhood, and many more features like that.
[chain clanking]
When the school goes dark, it kind of sucks the life out of a community.
By not only re-opening the school, but proving services that they now so desperately need,
I think will have a lasting effect on both that neighborhood, Manheim Park and the larger community.
There is a way to spend money that induces dependency,
[Saundra Hayes: President, Historic Manheim Park, Neighborhood Association]
especially for low-income folks, but there is also a way to spend money that creates empowerment.
This project has uplifted humanity by not inducing dependency but creating empowerment.
And that's powerful.
[Re-visioning Community]
The real challenge that comes with doing a renovation like this really comes with the fact that there's
a lot of asbestos and a lot of lead in the materials, and so remediating all of that contamination
of the existing building materials is a big challenge for this project.
We're being very careful also not to erase to much of that history--to be very mindful of the fact
that the coat closets are there for a reason, and that there are details and coat hooks
and little rods that control the transepts above the doors
that are part of the character of this place--that are a part of what makes this a place
and makes this a unique place.
[Making it Right]
I had the good fortune to meet Brad Pitt in New Orleans following Katrina.
He and I were both working on a project for Global Green,
and it was an international design competition to create new housing in the lower 9th ward.
Both he and Angelina have such big hearts, that they felt that
the project we were working on together was a good thing, but a whole lot more was needed,
and so he made the decision to launch Make it Right and to build the minimum of 150 houses that would be affordable,
would be durable, would stand another event like Katrina, and would be high-performance healthy housing,
and he has stayed the course.
We invited him to join us here in Kansas City at Bancroft, because we felt that same philanthropy, that same spirit
would be very beneficial to this neighborhood.
[Building Relationships]
It's one of the factors that I think that really facilitate the developing of these relationships is really building that trust.
[Sam De Jong: Bancroft School Project Designer, BNIM Architects]
With every community meeting we had, there was barbecue involved.
That's a Kansas City staple, and really gathering around the table together--sharing food together--
it just builds a relationship, it builds trust, it helps keep the dialogue open.
Building trust with diverse cultures involves listening, because the answer is in the room.
I believe that that process helped this community understand that
we can't have everything we want down here, but we're going to get the best for the community here.
And so, if our architects tell us structurally we can't do this, or from a design perspective this can't be done,
then we're going to trust that.
The one thing I've learned is that community engagement and--you know--working with people from the community
is always a messy process.
Absolutely. [laughs]
But it's a really good process, and no one knows as much as everyone,
and really, when everybody's ideas are taken into account and distilled into something that's meaningful,
the outcome is always better.
We've had the great good fortune to work in a lot of communities in extreme situations--
at this point a dozen communities in post-disaster environments.
So, we've seen a lot, and I have found in Bancroft and Manheim Park, the neighborhood around it,
really benefit from this unique collaboration among all of the stake holders in that community
and all the consultants and city officials who have come together to find a common solution.
In the end, it is all about the quality of those relationships.
Had they not been there, had they not been encouraged by their partners, we would have a different outcome,
and I think it shows us a way to deal with urban communities anywhere in America.
[Designing for the Future]
I love this work, and I love working on a project like this one where there are so many other people at the table
who care so deeply about making that love built into the walls of the place around them--
to make that compassion for a community just a part of--part of the background of where people are going to live.
It restores our faith in human nature, I think, to see this kind of a collaboration,
and certainly, it gives us, and it gives the people that have stayed in this community
reason to be hopeful about the future.
I'd like to see the housing in place.
I'd like to see the whole area in every direction of this building revitalized,
which I think can spur so much more development. [Augusta Wilbon: neighborhood Housing Services]
You know--it takes just a spark, and from that many other sparks will come along.
[SOCIAL ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN: OCS] [Produced by: The UpTake] [In Partnership with: Design Corps] [Funded by: The Fetzer Institute]
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