Manheim Park is a residential neighborhood in south midtown Kansas City, Missouri, occupying the band between Troost Avenue and The Paseo south of 39th Street. It was built out as a streetcar suburb between about 1900 and 1925, lost population and investment after World War II as Troost hardened into the city’s racial dividing line, and has been the site since 2013 of one of Kansas City’s most-cited adaptive-reuse projects — the conversion of the vacant Bancroft School into LEED Platinum affordable housing. The reinvestment that followed has also made Manheim Park a test case in the argument over whether investment along Troost displaces the residents who stayed.

Boundaries

Manheim Park lies between Troost Avenue on the west and The Paseo on the east, running south from 39th Street to roughly 47th Street.1 The neighborhood is therefore east of Troost, not west of it — a point commonly garbled, including in some published accounts (see A note on a common error below).

The neighborhood adjoins Squier Park on the north, shares the same Troost-to-Paseo band, and sits a short distance north of UMKC and Rockhurst University; the Country Club Plaza and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art are less than two miles west.23 Manheim Green Park, a 0.99-acre city park with a playground at 3930 Manheim Road, was acquired by the city in 1983.4

Development as a streetcar suburb

Manheim was developed as a streetcar suburb around the turn of the twentieth century and grew quickly from 1900 through 1925.2 Troost carried a streetcar line and The Paseo a bus line, which made the neighborhood accessible and walkable; because few residents owned cars, the houses were built without driveways or garages.2 The lots are narrow and long, the houses have large front porches, and the transit lines put small stores and neighborhood markets within walking distance — the standard streetcar-suburb pattern.21

Early advertisements from the first decade of the 1900s offered “modern cottages” finished in oak, with china closets, oak mantels and nickel plumbing.1 The neighborhood drew middle-class Kansas Citians moving south from downtown and a substantial immigrant population: the 1920 census recorded Manheim residents born in Scotland, England, Germany, Sweden and Italy.1 The surviving stock also includes large two- and three-story houses.2

Segregation, white flight and disinvestment

From 1934 the Federal Housing Administration’s underwriting practices entrenched racially restrictive covenants and white-only subdivisions, and Troost Avenue became the operative boundary between white and Black Kansas City — white to the west, Black to the east.1 Manheim Park stands directly on the east side of that line, and the neighborhood turned over accordingly: from the 1950s through the 1970s white residents left for newer suburbs, drawn both by houses with driveways and garages and by the arrival of Black neighbors.21 Troost itself was reconfigured as a through-traffic corridor lined with auto-related businesses.2 The full corridor history is at troost-corridor.

A note on a common error

The widely mirrored Clio encyclopedia entry for Manheim Park states that Troost became “a border between Black and White neighborhoods, with Whites living east and Blacks west,” and that “the Manheim neighborhood stood just west of Troost.”1 Both statements are inverted: the historically white side of Troost was the west, and Manheim Park is on the east side, since the entry’s own boundary description places Troost on the neighborhood’s western edge. The corrected geography is documented on troost-corridor and restrictive-covenants-kc.

The Bancroft School redevelopment

The catalyst for the neighborhood’s contemporary revival was the Bancroft School, a public elementary school that sat abandoned from 1999 and was described in 2013 as 103 years old.5 (The Urban Neighborhood Initiative gives its construction date as 1904; the sources disagree and the exact date is unresolved here.)2

Make It Right — the foundation started by Brad Pitt and William McDonough after Hurricane Katrina — partnered with BNIM Architects and Dalmark Development Group to convert the building, running community meetings that produced a program of daycare, greenhouses, job training, cultural arts, exercise space and affordable housing.56 The finished project opened in November 2013, provides fifty rental units plus new townhomes built around the school’s perimeter, and includes job-training facilities, a medical center, an auditorium and a gym.5 A 75-kilowatt rooftop solar array, occupancy sensors, Cradle-to-Cradle flooring and high-performance windows earned the building LEED Platinum certification, with the energy savings passed through to residents.5 Classroom windows, original trim and oak floors were retained.5 It was fully occupied before the end of 2013.2 Make It Right’s Tim Duggan described the approach as “urban acupuncture.”5

BNIM also produced a Manheim Park Strategic Development Plan in 2013, framed as a tool for the neighborhood, the City and developers to agree on what kind of development would serve the neighborhood’s vision; the plan was prompted by developer interest that followed Green Impact Zone infrastructure investment and the Bancroft project.7

Neighborhood organizations

The Historic Manheim Park Association is the neighborhood’s association and is listed among the organizations whose volunteer leaders have completed the UMKC Center for Neighborhoods leadership training program.8 Saundra A. Hayes served as its president from 2011 to 2013, during the Bancroft redevelopment.6 The association’s stated mission is to represent residents’ interests by promoting community engagement, preserving neighborhood character, and honoring the history and identity of Historic Manheim Park.

The Urban Neighborhood Initiative (UNI), a nonprofit at 2300 Main Street, works across Manheim Park and neighboring areas with a stated mission of breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty and the racial inequities produced by decades of neglect and systemic racism.21 Manheim Gardens, a two-acre urban farm and community garden offering free growing space to residents, is among the neighborhood’s ongoing projects.1

Development pressure and displacement

Reinvestment brought market-rate development. In spring 2020 the builder Elevate Design + Build launched a project on sixteen vacant lots along Tracy Avenue between 41st and 44th Streets, marketing new modern houses with luxury finishes as “the Plaza without the price tag.”3 The company said it had met with residents, neighborhood leaders and the Manheim Park association before proceeding, and noted that the City had recently installed new curbs and street trees in the area.3 Because the lots sit in a federal opportunity zone, buyers were offered a 10-year tax abatement and forgivable down-payment assistance.3

That abatement structure is the crux of the corridor-wide displacement argument. Along Troost generally, longtime residents have described watching property values and assessments rise while new construction receives abatements; Hakima Tafunzi Payne, executive director of Uzazi Village, told IN Kansas City in 2018, “Don’t call it revitalization. It’s gentrification, plain and simple,” and described tax breaks flowing to out-of-state companies while low-income Black residents were priced out.9 These accounts are corridor-level rather than specific to Manheim Park; no Manheim Park-specific displacement study was located for this page.

The local answer has been a land trust. The Manheim Community Land Trust (MCLT), founded by residents Scott Johnson and Doug Shafer, acquired sixteen vacant lots and leases them to Teachers Like Me — a nonprofit founded in June 2020 by Trinity Davis that recruits and houses Black teachers for Kansas City Public Schools — at $50 per month per lot, with a first option to build.10 MCLT’s IRS filings describe maintaining fourteen vacant lots in Manheim Park, a rehabilitated house at 4408 South Benton Avenue sold below market to an owner-occupant, and an energy-efficient duplex built by Teachers Like Me at 4127 Tracy Avenue; the organization reported roughly $270,000 in revenue in 2022 and no employees.11

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Clio — “Manheim Park Neighborhood of Kansas City” (entry 140981). Boundaries “between Troost and Paseo and 39th to 47th street”; 1900s advertisements for modern cottages; the 1920 census immigrant origins; the 1934 FHA covenant regime; postwar white flight; UNI’s mission statement; Bancroft School; Manheim Green Park; Manheim Gardens as a two-acre urban farm and community garden. Also the source of the inverted east/west statements corrected above. Retrieved by direct HTTP request; the page returns HTTP 403 to some automated fetchers and was read via a browser user-agent request ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  2. Urban Neighborhood Initiative — “Manheim Park.” Streetcar-suburb development around 1900 with rapid growth 1900-1925; Troost streetcar and Paseo bus lines; narrow lots, front porches, no driveways or garages; 1950s white flight and car culture; Troost as a through-traffic and auto-business corridor; Bancroft Elementary “built in 1904”; project completed October 2013 and fully occupied by year end; proximity to the Plaza, the Nelson-Atkins, UMKC and Rockhurst; large two- and three-story houses ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  3. Elevate Design + Build — “KC Urban Redevelopment Project.” Sixteen vacant lots on Tracy Avenue between 41st and 44th Streets; the neighborhood described as “nestled between Troost Avenue and The Paseo”; consultation with residents, neighborhood leaders and the Manheim Park Association; new City curbs and street trees; federal opportunity zone with 10-year tax abatement and up to 4 percent forgivable down-payment assistance; the “Plaza without the price tag” quotation from co-owner Angie Beerup ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Kansas City Parks and Recreation — Manheim Green Park, 3930 Manheim Road, 64110. Acquired 1983; 0.99 acres; Council District 3, Central park district; playground and reservable shelter ↩

  5. Architectural Record — Alison Zingaro, “Make It Right Turns an Abandoned School Into Affordable LEED Platinum Housing” (2013-12-20). Make It Right’s founding by Brad Pitt and William McDonough; partnership with BNIM; opening in November 2013; fifty rental units plus perimeter townhomes; job training, medical center, auditorium and gym; 75-kilowatt solar array, occupancy sensors, Cradle-to-Cradle flooring; LEED Platinum; retention of windows, trim and oak floors; “103-year-old” school abandoned since 1999; Bob Berkebile and Tim Duggan quotations including “urban acupuncture.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. BNIM — “Bancroft School Redevelopment” project page. 94,050 square feet, completion 2013; collaboration with Dalmark Development Group and Make It Right; community meetings and the program ideas that came out of them; awards list; quotation from Saundra A. Hayes, president of the Historic Manheim Park Association 2011-2013 ↩ ↩2

  7. BNIM — “Manheim Park Strategic Development Plan” (2013). Green Impact Zone infrastructure investment; Bancroft as a catalytic project; developer interest prompting the plan; the plan as a shared tool for neighborhood, City and developers ↩

  8. UMKC Center for Neighborhoods — “By Neighborhood.” Lists Historic Manheim Park among the neighborhood organizations whose volunteer leaders completed the center’s leadership training program ↩

  9. IN Kansas City — David Frese, “Troost Renaissance: Revitalization or Gentrification? Or Can It Be Both?” (2018-12-01). Corridor history and the “Troost Wall”; the 1954 school-district boundary drawn at Troost; Hakima Tafunzi Payne of Uzazi Village on gentrification, property values, tax breaks to out-of-state companies and demographic change ↩

  10. Next City — Cinnamon Janzer, “A Land Trust and a Nonprofit Team Up To Bring More Black Teachers to Kansas City.” Teachers Like Me founded June 2020 by Trinity Davis; Scott Johnson and Doug Shafer of the Manheim Community Land Trust; sixteen vacant lots leased at $50 per month with a first build option; the house bought into the trust for the first cohort; duplex construction ↩

  11. Cause IQ — Manheim Community Land Trust (EIN 84-2434826), Kansas City, Missouri. IRS 501(c)(3); year formed listed as 2021; zero employees; 2022 revenue $270,035 and expenses $268,165; program description covering fourteen vacant lots, 4408 South Benton Avenue, and the Teachers Like Me duplex at 4127 Tracy Avenue ↩

See also

Categories
  • Concept
  • Neighborhood
  • Segregation
  • Displacement

On the record — ks.city/wiki/neighborhoods/manheim-park · last revised 2026-08-13