Vernon Howard recalls when the east side of Kansas City hummed with life. Shops dotted the intersections along Prospect Avenue, the multi-lane spine of the Missouri city’s core, from the Linwood Shopping Center in midtown on south to Gregory Boulevard and beyond.
The bustle of mid-century Prospect is gone now, replaced by the familiar trappings of urban decay: vacant lots, boarded-up turn-of-the-century homes, and shuttered businesses encased in chain-link fence. “It’s a community that has been starved of economic development for over half a century,” says Howard, who leads the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City. “To us, it’s reprehensible. There are no words to describe it.”
