Breaking: Fresh bread and new ground

Photo by Janet Rogers, Strategic Marketing and Communications

51 Oak project featuring Whole Foods Market kicks off

Nothing brings a community together quite like breaking bread among friends and neighbors.

Doing so against a backdrop of locally grown heirloom tomatoes and other fresh produce does make things a tad more colorful, though.

Officials from Van Trust Real Estate, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Whole Foods Market, Kansas City Mayor Sly James and a host of neighborhood organizations came together June 30 to break bread in celebration of the start of construction of the 51 Oak Project, a new development on the UMKC campus that will include the new grocery market, as well as a new UMKC Student Health and Counseling Center, 170 market-rate apartments and a six-story parking garage with 445 spaces.

Officials concluded the “breadbreaking” event by literally pulling apart a six-foot-long loaf of freshly-baked ciabatta bread.

“Sharing food has been a way for people of all cultures to come together to form a unified bond,” said UMKC Chancellor Leo E. Morton. “May we continue to tie everything together, bringing all the diversity of our lives together in peace, harmony and unity.”

Speakers included Morton, James, Dave Harrison of Van Trust, Bonne Illig of the Kansas City Young Matrons and Red Elk Banks of Whole Foods. Several of the speakers lauded the spirit of cooperation among various stakeholders that led to a development agreement described as a “win-win-win” for all.

“The way this project came together is pure Kansas City,” said Mayor James. “There were a lot of landowners, public agencies and neighbors with an interest in what happens at this site, which is a key spot on an important boulevard. It’s great when we have a solution that works for everybody.”

“This is a neighborhood project and this is really going to be part of the fabric of this community,” Harrison added.

The project site, at 51st and Oak streets, is directly west of the UMKC Administrative Center building. It will replace a parking lot and an administrative annex building currently on the site; the historic clubhouse of the Kansas City Young Matrons, built in 1936, will be lifted and moved to a new site near 52nd and Cherry streets.

The ground floor of the three-acre project, south of E. 51st Street between Brookside Boulevard and Oak Street, will feature a 42,000-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market grocery store. An 11,000-sq.-ft. UMKC Student Health and Counseling Center will be located on the second level, with five stories of apartments and parking above that.

“This project gives us a bigger and more modern student health services center that is closer to the students who use it, while Whole Foods Market and the apartments provide a terrific new amenity not just for our university, but for our community,” Morton said. “We just love being Kansas City’s University and being here in the heart of the city.”

| John Martellaro, Strategic Marketing and Communications


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