Bryan Stalder
Contributor

Long before it became a vacant lot, a public housing complex, or the proposed site of a state-run mental health facility, the land at Independence Avenue and The Paseo was home to one of Kansas City’s earliest Black neighborhoods.

Known as Belvidere Hollow, this low-lying area east of downtown developed in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries as an enclave for African American settlement. Black families built homes there, near industrial jobs and transportation corridors at a time when segregation, restrictive covenants, and discriminatory housing practices excluded them from much of the city.

During Black History Month, local preservation advocates with Historic Kansas City shared renewed attention to Belvidere Hollow’s story — a reminder that the site now at the center of yet another redevelopment effort carries a deeper, largely erased history.

According to historian Sherry Lamb Schirmer’s A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900–1960, living conditions in Belvidere Hollow reflected decades of municipal neglect. Only about one-fifth of properties were connected to city water mains, with many residents relying on cisterns and wells in an area marked by poor sanitation and unpaved streets.

Housing consisted largely of modest dwellings built to meet immediate need rather than long-term investment. While its location made jobs accessible, it also left the neighborhood vulnerable. Over time, industrial expansion, public disinvestment, and large-scale infrastructure projects steadily erased Belvidere Hollow from the map.

By the Mid-Twentieth century, much of the neighborhood had been cleared — first for Belvidere Park, and later for Chouteau Court, a public housing complex. Construction of the I-35 downtown loop eliminated the largest portion of the neighborhood’s footprint. Today, few physical traces remain.

Belvidere Hollow is listed on the African American Heritage Trail, but for many Kansas Citians, its story is unfamiliar — even as the land itself continues to be reshaped.

In the late 1950s, the Housing Authority of Kansas City acquired the site to build Chouteau Courts, one of the city’s earliest public housing developments. Completed in 1958, the complex eventually became home to generations of residents, including Cuban refugees in its early years and later Vietnamese families.

Over time, Chouteau Courts came to be viewed as outdated and physically isolated. Beginning in 2010, Northeast News closely followed efforts by the Housing Authority to secure federal funding to redevelop the site as part of the Paseo Gateway initiative.

The goals were ambitious: replace aging public housing with mixed-income developments, reconnect neighborhoods severed by infrastructure, and leverage the site’s proximity to downtown as a catalyst for investment.

In 2015, the Housing Authority secured a $30 million HUD Choice Neighborhoods grant. By January 2018, the final tenants had moved out, with former residents relocated to developments such as Rose Hill Townhomes and Pendleton Flats. Chouteau Courts was demolished in 2020.

What remained was a 15-acre site — including former parkland — that has sat largely vacant ever since.

Even as Chouteau Courts stood, Belvidere Park functioned as an important recreational space for Northeast families. For years, Northeast News reported on efforts to improve the park’s soccer fields, which served hundreds of youth through the Northeast Soccer League.

Community groups, volunteers, Sporting Kansas City, and city agencies periodically invested in upgrades, but the park’s isolated location — hemmed in by highways and traffic ramps — made access difficult.

In November 2019, voters approved decommissioning Belvidere Park as parkland, clearing the way for future development of the broader site.

After demolition, the site became the subject of multiple studies, including a 2020 Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel, which emphasized connectivity, phased development, and community-centered uses. But progress stalled, and many of the panel’s ideas remained aspirational.

In 2024, the City of Kansas City approved the sale of the former Chouteau Courts site to the State of Missouri for construction of a new state behavioral health facility, to be operated in conjunction with University Health.

This proposed facility would house up to 200 patients, create an estimated 600 jobs, and represent a $300 million investment. State and city officials argue the location is suitable due to its size, ownership history, and isolation from residential neighborhoods.

Reaction from surrounding Northeast residents has been mixed.

At public meetings, some voiced support for expanding access to mental health care. Others raised concerns about the continued concentration of social service facilities in Historic Northeast, the loss of redevelopment opportunities, and the long-term impact on neighborhood cohesion.

Despite opposition, City Council unanimously approved the land sale in August 2024. In January 2025, HUD and the Housing Authority finalized approval of the transaction.

The land at Independence Avenue and The Paseo has been reshaped repeatedly — each time with the promise of progress, and each time at the cost of what came before.

Belvidere Hollow was erased by infrastructure and redevelopment. Chouteau Courts was demolished in the name of revitalization. Belvidere Park was decommissioned to make way for new uses.

As Kansas City moves forward with yet another transformation of the site, Historic Kansas City’s reminder arrives at a pointed moment: this is not just vacant land awaiting purpose, but ground layered with stories of displacement, resilience, and unkept promises.

Whether the new facility becomes a long-term asset or another chapter in a cycle of erasure remains to be seen. What is certain is that understanding the site’s past — from Belvidere Hollow to Paseo Gateway — adds necessary context to the decisions being made today.

For more than a century, this corner of the city has reflected Kansas City’s evolving values around race, housing, public investment, and care. As development once again reshapes the landscape, the history beneath it deserves to be part of the conversation.

University Health will be at the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, 2657 Independence Boulevard, on March 18, from 6:00 – 7:30. Northeast residents who want to learn more about the proposed state behavioral health facility, or who want to ask questions, are encouraged to attend.