By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
May 20, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri – Like the one-time working water reservoir in the Northeast, the Kansas City Design Center students have been overflowing with ideas on how to use that space.

Earlier this month, the Kansas City Design Center held an open house to inform community stakeholders where they are in their project. The KCDC 2014-2015 studio, in collaboration with the Kansas City Department of Parks and Recreation, is developing a conceptual vision study for Kessler Park.

While the first semester was dedicated to a master plan for Kessler Park, the second semester has seen the students try to develop a plan for the abandoned Kessler Park water reservoir. Robyn Tank, a student from Kansas State involved in the study, said the students are tasked with re-energizing what’s already in the park for greater consumption and use.

“It’s sort of a lost gem of Kansas City,” Tank said. “It’s a beautiful place, but it has issues. It lacks amenities, there are dumping and safety issues with Cliff Drive and homeless camps. We looked and asked what we could do to alleviate the problems.”

For their final project, seven students with the KCDC are taking a closer look at Kessler Park and conducting a vision study. The students — all from Kansas State University — are focusing on repurposing the abandoned water reservoir. The boundaries defined for the project include Indiana Avenue on the east, Cliff Drive to the north, Paseo Boulevard on the west and Admiral Boulevard to the south. The reservoir was only used for about 10 years, before it was drained and became an abandoned destination for the past 80 years.

“Its sort of been reclaimed by the landscape and by the people in the community,” Tank said, adding what they’re trying to create is a safe and usable destination for not just the surrounding community, but for all of Kansas City.

So far with the project, there have been two schools of thought concerning what to do with the abandoned reservoir; build a skate park and a splash park. Other ideas include flexible spaces people could use with the idea that getting people into the space would cut back the safety issues. However, Tank admitted, the overall idea is to gather more interest in the area.

“We want people to realize it has a lot of potential,” Tank said. “There’s no reason to have this empty thing sitting in the park when we can do something that can help the community and maybe provide a good time.”

At the open house, reservoir plans were discussed with area stakeholders, but that evening wasn’t the first time plans were discussed. Tank said the students have been working with neighborhood associations, park stakeholders, and Kansas City Parks and Recreation while working on the project. There were also online surveys and past public engagement meetings with, “invaluable feedback.” With those meetings, the students reworked the schemes to either take away some of the aspects people were angry with or to emphasize the aspects people were happy with.

“It’s not always about taking exactly what they want and doing exactly what they want,” Tank said. “We’re creating something for people.”

The schemes are still under design. The students recently presented their work-in-progress plan to Parks and Recreation officials. Tank noted the students will take the feedback they received at last week’s open house and try to incorporate any possible changes into the final plan, however, with the students graduating soon, she said any changes would be minimal. All of this information will again be presented to Parks and Recreation either later this month or in June, with city officials then deciding whether or not to incorporate any ideas from the design center.

“People love the reservoir and its weirdness and they want to do something with it, they want Kessler Park to be a significant part of Kansas City despite the issues it has,” Tank said. “The community wants to change the perception of the neighborhood and they want people to know how awesome it is.”