Plans are ready to restore fire-damaged Satchel Paige home. But it will cost millions

One sweltering morning two summers ago, news reporters gathered on Kansas City’s East Side for an announcement outside the sprawling house at 2626 E. 28th St. where baseball legend Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige resided with his family during the final 32 years of his storied life and career.

The house was a mess inside and out, due to years of neglect and a 2018 fire that had destroyed the roof and rendered much of the interior charred and filled with rubble. Yet that was all about to change, city officials and a group of local do-gooder developers declared that day.

“This is kind of one of those magical moments,” project leader Vincent Gauthier said at the time.

Magical because he and his partners at a then newly formed company, Pitch Perfect LLC, had unveiled a concept, with the blessing of City Hall , for bringing the Paige house back to life.

For three decades it had stood vacant, once a point of pride for the Santa Fe Place neighborhood that had become an eyesore and embarrassment.

The city sought to preserve the house after that fire, blocking any attempt by the previous owner or the city’s own code inspectors to knock it down while work went on behind the scenes to bring the house back to life. Kansas City government took ownership and got a federal grant, which paid for replacing the roof, ensuring structural integrity and protecting the house from vandals and the weather.

And so the announcement that the city had chosen Pitch Perfect to carry forward a plan to turn the house into a museum and community gathering place was a point of celebration. They would restore the house to its past glory.

After two years, the plans are now ready. But not the funding.

Plans are drawn

From the curb, the 2 1/2-story house appears in no better shape than its derelict condition on that hot and humid morning in 2021. The Pitch Perfect team is still short on financial backing, but remains committed to seeing the project through..

“I’m a volunteer and not a developer or restoration expert,” says entrepreneur Gary Abram of PLX Corp, the Pitch Perfect partner who has taken a lead role since Gauthier stepped aside as front man in January. “But what I’ve learned is that these projects take more time than you think. There’s so many boxes to check.”

He and others involved in the project have checked many of those boxes in the past two years. Among the most important was transforming the concept into a detailed set of building plans so Pitch Perfect is ready to go when it gets the money it needs to make it happen.

The plans were drawn up by some big-name talent, including Robert Riccardi, a principal in the architectural design firm Multistudio, formerly Gould Evans, and a founding member of the Pitch Perfect team.

“Where we stand now is we have a set of documents. We’re construction ready,” he said one recent morning as he and others gave The Star a private tour of the building’s rough but solid innards.

“We had to do that in order to give our donor and philanthropic community some good faith that, you know, this thing can happen and will happen.”

It won’t be easy restoring the interior of the 3,700-square foot house to how it looked during the 1950s, when the Paige family entertained the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and the Harlem Globetrotters in the living room and front porch in the waning days of the Jim Crow era.

Many of the plaster walls on the first floor are now exposed to the lath. Some woodwork and doors survived, but much was destroyed. From those scraps, Riccardi believes that woodwork can be recreated.

“It’s almost like a forensic exercise,” he said.

A nearly $7 million project

It’s won’t be cheap.

“We believe that our number is somewhere around $7 million to do this project the right way,” says neighborhood leader Marquita Brockman Taylor, also on the Pitch Perfect team.

She figures $2 million to $3 million for the restoration of the house and the rest of that sum to build an adjacent conference center and gift shop, as well as to fund an endowment for future operations.

There will come a day not too long from now, she believes, when visitors to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum 10 blocks to the north will also take time to swing by the home of the Black pitcher who was one of the leagues’ greatest stars.

“People are just gonna love coming here, visiting here, thinking about Satchel Paige, seeing Satchel Paige memorabilia, which you don’t find all of the memorabilia in one place,” Taylor said.

Pitch Perfect leaders have the plans. They’ve got the vision for what the place can be. All they need now is the money to make it happen.

Abram said a big push for donations will begin this summer.

“As soon as we get the campaign rolling and some funding starts coming in, then I think we can start scheduling work,” he said. “I don’t think 2023 is likely. That would be great if something would accelerate that. But I would say that next year is probably when you will see trucks and workers over there.”

One of Ol’ Satch’s famous sayings was “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” But Pitch Perfect knows it’s worth looking back at times to recognize how we got where we are today. That’s the story the team aims to tell when the project is finished.

“It’s going to be a great story,” Taylor said. “We’re going to be so happy to tell it. We’re looking for those who would support our efforts right now. Absolutely. Right now.”