Valentine is lovely a neighborhood. It’s a charming historic neighborhood located in the middle of Midtown. The Broadway corridor lives to the east and Westport is just to the south. This area is seeing a lot of infrastructure improvements from the road diet on Broadway to the proximity to the Streetcar being a short walk away. It is one of the best walkable and historic neighborhoods in the city.
Valentine has an abundance, yet evaporating stock of single-family homes, with some missing middle housing. from magnificent 6-plexes to low-rise apartments such as the ones pictured below. These historic homes date back to the early 20th century and have the architectural integrity to match.
Disinvestment and past demolition become apparent nearing 35th and Jefferson. KC Life has been demolishing and hoarding the land in the Valentine area. Kansas City Life Insurance is a large, publicly traded company and an institutional investor that has purchased large swaths of the neighborhood’s land and homes. Being a publicly traded company its interests are difficult to see aligning with the interests of the Valentine neighbors, or to Kansas City neighbors at large. Kansas City Life Insurance interests lay in its legal responsibility to maximize shareholder profit.
This institution is resisting the Historic Preservation Designation that is being proposed by the neighborhood’s residents. It might be coincidental that the historic designation of the neighborhood would make future demolitions more difficult to pursue, but maybe KCLI has a less obvious explanation for its reluctance for the designation. The neighborhood still has rich assets that are worth defending from KC Life’s bulldozer. Including, but not limited to, 3300 Pennsylvania Ave. It’s an absolute beauty that houses Browne’s Irish Market. Another built asset that is a demonstration of the value of history in the neighborhood is the old Norman School that has been converted into lofts and has added more density to the neighborhood.
Now, addressing Southwest Trafficway. A six-lane death trap. The burly highway is doing a clumsy high wire act through neighborhoods. This residential highway is inappropriately placed and should be converted back into the residential street that it was in the 1940s. This one isn’t difficult to solve. But as with everything in Valentine there are battling interests. The thousands of drivers that take Southwest Trafficway obviously would be devastated to hear that they must drive 7 more minutes to get where they are going. However, the reprieve of abhorrent conditions that accompany the car-centric road would cease or at least be tempered and become more compatible for a residential neighborhood.
The Valentine neighborhood is and has been in an interesting period of change and consists of a politically active constituency along with a powerful moneyed institution. Many battling interests inside and outside of this neighborhood is creating tension for what the future holds in this neighborhood. It seems like an uphill battle for anyone who is not named Kansas City Life Insurance to influence what the future holds, simply based on the fact that KCLF owns at least a plurality of the land in the area and hold the most capital. Their influence and power, given the structure of how planning functions operate in this society, will certainly lend their power to being the most influential in the shaping of the future for this neighborhood.