Abby Hoover
Managing Editor

Northeast residents will soon see colorful improvements to a well-traveled neighborhood intersection at 12th Street and Benton Boulevard.

The City of Kansas City, Mo., has received a $25,000 grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to carry out an asphalt art project, designed in collaboration with Kansas City Artists Coalition and street safety experts.

Street Smarts Design + Build’s DuRon Netsell, project manager for the 12th and Benton road safety and asphalt art project, said the project will be completed later this summer.

Kansas City Artists Coalition launched an RFP to the public to find four artists to carry out the asphalt art aspect of the project. All materials needed to paint the intersection will be provided, and artists will be compensated an additional $1,250.

Artists will be selected by a community selection panel that is being formed right now.

Neighbors from Independence Plaza and Lykins, as well as the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, have been involved in the planning.

Cynthia Herrington, president of the Independence Plaza Neighborhood Association, has requested that planters, purchased with a grant IPNA supported, be used in the project.

“The planters would act as a traffic calming measure in addition to the asphalt art,” Herrington said.

“In 2020 Kansas City, in partnership with my firm, Street Smarts Design + Build and Midtown KC Now received the round one funding of the Asphalt Art Initiative,” Netsell said. “So we know the purpose of that is to find creative ways to bring art to the streets. We kind of take it a step further and say, ‘How can art make our streets much safer?’ And so that’s what we set out to do in 2020 in Westport, and we’ve been pretty successful.”

At the painted intersection, they successfully reduced traffic speeds by 45%. They shortened the pedestrian crossing distance in half, and reduced the noise volume level by 11 decibels.

“So by having cars stop at the intersection, it calms things and makes it much quieter, and then we reclaimed 4,500 square feet for asphalt art,” Netsell said. “We had done such a nice job in the views of the grantor that we were selected for round two of funding, and I think we’re the only city in the nation to receive both rounds.”

The 12th and Benton location was chosen largely by the City of Kansas City.
“They have a lot of data through their Vision Zero Initiative, which is to bring traffic deaths to zero by 2030,” Netsell said. “They gave me a list of intersections and most of them were super crazy busy arterials.”

With a budget of $25,000, he wanted to choose something that would make a real difference.

“The data that they have says this is a very dangerous intersection, it’s on a high priority injury network,” Netsell said. “On average, there’s about one pedestrian hit here a year and about eight crashes each year, which is not like the highest rates for intersections you can see, but given the low volume of traffic and a low volume of pedestrians, it’s the ratios. It’s really kind of staggering.”

Talking to business owners at the intersection, Netsell realized there are many more crashes and injuries that are not reported, therefore not represented in the data.

“When we got to talking with the two neighborhoods, Independence Plaza and Lykins, we found out that this is really a place that really warranted these improvements,” Netsell said. “We’re kind of in the midst of everything right now, we issued an RFP… fortunately, we did get a lot of great submissions from artists from all over, specifically a handful from the neighborhood, which was important to us.”

The theme for the artwork will be community, an intentionally broad topic so artists could run wild with their creativity, Netsell said.

“The submissions definitely reflect that there’s a lot of working together and cohesiveness and diversity, coming together as one, so community is the theme,” Netsell said. “Again, intentionally broad, but something that I think is really important to all of us, especially as things just get a little crazier, it just becomes more and more important every day.”

Partners in the project hope the City will do minor street repairs before the artists get started next month.

“What we have found is that when asphalt is in pretty bad shape like this, paint comes out much, much quicker,” Netsell said. “So we’ll ask Public Works if they can patch and resurface this area. We’re told that it’s not on the resurfacing schedule so won’t be all new, but especially on that corner and this corner, there’s some serious cracking so I’m hoping that we can do it in time because it will allow the art to last a lot longer and just creates a much smoother walking surface.”

The group will paint new crosswalks, extend the corners to shorten pedestrian areas, create pedestrian median refuge islands, create left turn lanes, and narrow the lanes. It will also force drivers to make slower turns.
They’ll include the neighborhoods’ logos in the designs, and rather than having artists work in the middle of the intersection, they’ll each paint a corner of the intersection.

For this project, some of the grant funds will be set aside for the neighborhoods to use for future maintenance, a plan Netsell hopes will extend the life of the artwork.

Netsell also plans to reach out to RideKC and ask them to install benches at the two 12th Street bus stops at the intersection.

Any infrastructure that’s added during the project, like pedestrian safety barriers, will be temporary and movable, but could someday be implemented as permanent if they’re successful.

“Once it’s in, it can be adjusted and tweaked or taken away or whatever, but it allows us kind of a working experiment to see how things are, and then once it’s right, then we can hopefully get the funding to build it up,” Netsell said.

The Bloomberg project recently expanded to Europe, so Netsell is unsure if there will be more grant funding available to Kansas City. He said it’s also difficult to do these projects in large quantities because there are so many federal regulations around street design that make improving pedestrian and traffic safety difficult.

“The hope is that some of these, actual hard data, will help the federal government take another look at the rules,” Netsell said. “So I’m hoping that Bloomberg Philanthropies is continuing on that path and I hope there will be further grant rounds of this.”

Standing on the corner of 12th and Benton, Netsell noted the box trucks utilizing the boulevard, which is prohibited. He pointed out bent light poles, deteriorating curbs, and a missing bus stop sign.

While he knows it will take a while for drivers to get used to, he sees the potential benefits for the intersection. The artists will have a week to 10 days to complete their projects after the initial hardscape improvements are done.

With 19 total applications, four artists will soon be selected to work on the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Art project at 12th and Benton. Check back at northeastnews.net to find future opportunities for public input on the project.