By Michael Bushnell

Northeast News

September 29, 2016

KANSAS CITY, Missouri – If you noticed a crowd of people going in and out of the old Rose Marie Flower shop and the vacated William Chick Post Office at Independence and Chestnut today, you weren’t seeing things. Roughly 30 volunteers from VML Advertising and Marketing gathered at the CID’s new properties at 2627 Independence Boulevard and began a daylong project of building, painting, cleaning and generally making the new CID space community ready.

The project was close to home for VML staffer Jerry Krall.

“I lived at 411 Gladstone and worked at Streetside Records on the Avenue when I was attending UMKC. That was a while ago,” he laughed. “I loved it here; one of the most beautiful areas of the city.”

Scott Gordon, also of VML, noted this was the second year the advertising firm had come to the area to do volunteer work.

“Last year when we came we cut almost a half mile of trial along the Cliff Drive Scenic Byway” he said. “This year, we’re both here and there,” he said, pointing north toward Cliff Drive where another group of roughly forty VML volunteers were working.

VML, which is a global agency headquartered in Kansas City, shutters their offices nationwide one day per year and all employees are assigned to various volunteer projects throughout their home cities. Here in Kansas City, four charter buses transported employees from the VML offices at the downtown airport to projects throughout the city’s urban core, two of them here in Historic Northeast.

Northeast Chamber of Commerce President Bobbi Baker-Hughes was ecstatic about the opportunity to get the new CID buildings prepped for their new use for the Historic Northeast community.

“These volunteers coming in helping us get these buildings ready for use is truly a gift,” Baker-Hughes said. “We’re looking at this as being an ongoing and and engaging piece of the Historic Northeast community.”

The CID recently acquired both the old post office and flower shop immediately to the east, so that the Northeast Chamber and the Independence Avenue CID would have a centrally located physical presence along the Independence Avenue corridor. According to Baker-Hughes, the old Rose Marie space will house area start-ups and act as a business incubator. The old post office will be more of a community space with a micro-gallery for area artists, a community information center and a large meeting space for Northeast area community groups.

Plans for the grand opening are currently being finalized. The CID is already using the space as a base for its Avenue Ambassadors.