Kansas City to preserve Parade Park, historic Black-owned housing co-op
Kansas City has approved a plan to acquire one of the nation’s oldest Black-owned housing cooperatives, now in foreclosure proceedings, and transfer it to an Indianapolis developer in an effort to shore up the affordable community’s future.
The City Council on Thursday unanimously approved a measure that would authorize the city’s acquisition of Parade Park Homes, a 510-unit housing co-op near the historic 18th & Vine Jazz District, from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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Kansas City would buy the 26.6-acre community from HUD for $10, contingent on HUD’s own acquisition at a March foreclosure sale, and immediately transfer it to Flaherty & Collins Properties for redevelopment.
“Parade Park has been a special place for me, my family, and thousands of Black families in Kansas City for generations. I am proud of our work with @HUDgov to preserve affordability and bring hundreds more to a vital part of Kansas City and 18th and Vine,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said Friday on social media.
The proposed sequence of transfers, sponsored by Lucas, would ensure Parade Park’s long-term preservation while keeping Kansas City from assuming responsibility for the community’s $10 million HUD-guaranteed loan, plus millions of additional dollars in repair costs, city officials said.
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“It’s the first Black co-op in the country, and we want to make sure we’re thinking of that, we’re keeping our history in front of us and we’re making sure that … we keep the significance of the community at the forefront,” Councilwoman Melissa Robinson said during a Tuesday meeting of the Special Committee for Legal Review, where officials advanced the proposed transfers for the full council’s consideration.
Incorporated in 1963, Parade Park Homes consists of 46 row buildings in an area bounded north to south by Truman Road and 18th Street, and west to east by Woodland and Brooklyn avenues.
Residents historically held shares of the nonprofit that owns the community, though its co-op status lapsed last December because of the nonprofit’s dissolution for failure to timely file a state registration report.
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