U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver shows up to back a bold taxpayer ask: $18 million for 18th & Vine.

Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II stands in an elevator on the first floor of Kansas City, Missouri’s City Hall on a dreary Wednesday afternoon. Cleaver, flanked by a security guard, is heading to the 26th floor, where the City Council is about to meet and discuss the prospect of an $18 million infusion to the historic 18th & Vine Jazz District.

The Jazz District, which Cleaver started more than two decades ago, has prompted him to fly from Washington, D.C., for this visit. His presence gives some weight to a plea from community leaders for more city money for the struggling district. The meeting was advertised publicly as an ask for $7 million to accomplish a hodgepodge of projects: $1 million to complete the Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center in the old Paseo YMCA, $750,000 to the American Jazz Museum, and so on.

The $7 million was enough money for The Kansas City Star‘s editorial board to urge caution and scrutiny in spending more money on an underperforming entertainment district that has sopped up city money over the years.

Halfway through a three-hour joint meeting of the Finance & Governance and the Planning, Zoning & Economic Development committees, the request grows to $18 million.

This includes $3.9 million for new retail shops, more than $5 million to knock down dilapidated buildings and replace them with new development and parking, another $1.1 million for a surface parking lot, and nearly $3 million for a new headquarters for Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey and a Boone Theater courtyard.

At a time when Kansas City has difficulty finding money for other priorities, such as demolishing the vacant, ramshackle houses that pockmark Kansas City’s East Side, $18 million is an extraordinary request. And it leads to some extraordinary claims from Cleaver, such as 18th & Vine being one of the three most recognizable corridors in the United States, along with Broadway in New York City and Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Fans of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, New Orleans’ Bourbon Street and Memphis’ Beale Street might take exception to that assertion.

In fact, 18th & Vine has trouble gaining traction as a destination for its hometown’s citizens, struggling to compete with downtown, the Crossroads Arts District and the Country Club Plaza.

Cleaver, who got 18th & Vine’s renovation started in 1989, when he was a City Council member, with a $20 million earmark that came from a larger $114 million package for capital improvements, makes another extraordinary claim: 18th & Vine hasn’t held out its hat to the city since ’89.

“We never came back,” Cleaver says. “This is the first time since the ribbon cutting. I don’t think very many projects can say that.”

Not true. A list of the city’s investments over time at 18th & Vine contradicts Cleaver’s statement. Kansas City’s Finance Department sent The Pitch a list showing where the city has spent money at 18th & Vine, and the items exceed $100 million. More than a quarter of that amount is $26 million spent over time to service debt on bonds issued for the district.

Cleaver disputes some of the projects on that list, including a $7 million line item for the Gregg/Klice Community Center, which he insists isn’t part of 18th & Vine. (It’s situated in Parade Park, immediately north of where Vine Street intersects with 17th Terrace on a narrow road called John “Buck” O’Neil Way.) Cleaver also disputes that the Black Economic Union, which has received more than $3 million from the city, according to its records, was part of 18th & Vine, even though its address is at that exact intersection.

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It’s tough to argue that 18th & Vine has been divorced from public subsidies since that $20 million expenditure in 1989 (worth nearly twice that in today’s dollars, when adjusted for inflation). That sum, many then claimed, as they do now, was the original sin of the district: It was never enough to get 18th & Vine started in a meaningful way.

The American Jazz Museum commands a direct city subsidy each year worth roughly $600,000, or a third of the museum’s budget. (City officials tried to reduce that amount a year ago, leading to howls from museum supporters until it was restored.)

More recently, the city chipped in more than $2 million for the first phase of an Urban Youth Academy, an attraction meant to spruce up Parade Park and the 18th & Vine area.

Still, Cleaver, sitting alongside 3rd District Councilman Jermaine Reed, seemed to dazzle committee members with visions of what 18th & Vine could become with more cash.

For the most part, committee members praised the possibilities and voted unanimously to direct City Manager Troy Schulte to find a way to fund the projects and bring them back to the council for approval within 60 days.wScott Wagner, a 1st District councilman and mayor pro tem, asked almost apologetically for Reed and Cleaver to describe what private investment would greet any money that the city decided to fork over. After all, if the city agrees to expend $3 million for a Friends of Alvin Ailey headquarters, what resources will that group bring to the table?

Reed’s response was hostile. He accused Wagner of not visiting the district more than once if he was unaware of the ongoing private investment that already exists there.

But Wagner’s question was reasonable, and it has an answer: There’s no direct private investment in addition to the city dollars requested.

After the meeting, The Pitch asked Cleaver whether the $18 million, if provided by the city, would fully pay for the projects on the wish list. Cleaver claimed that it would.

So there’s no private investment? Cleaver answered that federal money has been contributed to the project (that’s public money) and that Missouri has made investments to the Urban Youth Academy (also public money). He added that the Kansas City Royals are investing money into the Urban Youth Academy. And barbecue mogul Ollie Gates has his own investments in 18th & Vine.

But for the most part, the latest ideas for 18th & Vine are led by politicians with access to taxpayer money.

Anita Dixon is the executive director of the Mutual Musicians Foundation, an organization that has its roots in Kansas City’s jazz heyday of the 1920s, when 18th & Vine was about as far south and as far west as blacks were allowed to travel in the city. She told The Pitch that MMF and other 18th & Vine interests hawd been discussing ideas for the district over the last three months. They were surprised to learn that the city had other thoughts.

“I thought yesterday [last Wednesday] was our opportunity, until I got talked out of it by my 3rd District councilman,” Dixon said. “Our discussions were shaping up to turn the area into a couple of heritage districts to be recognized internationally, to preserve what was left.”

Preservation is another issue that may complicate future plans for 18th & Vine. Reed and Cleaver’s $18 million request contemplates the demolition of four buildings, along with the Armory Building at 18th Street and Highland.

Among those structures are the old Black Chamber of Commerce headquarters and remnants of buildings once housing the old Eblon Theater and the Cherry Blossom jazz club. City officials say they want to preserve the façades of those buildings, if possible.

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But preservationists are wary of the city’s promises. In 2006, the city reached an agreement with the Jazz District Redevelopment Corporation and the state of Missouri, and pledged to save and restore many historic buildings at 18th & Vine.

“I would say it has been observed more in breach than in its compliance,” says Greg Allen, president of the Historic Kansas City Foundation. He cites the demolition of the Leona Pouncey Thurman Law Office Building at 1505 East 18th Street, named after Kansas City’s first black female lawyer, as an example.

Preservationists may have found a friend in Katheryn Shields, the newly elected 4th District council member. Shields told Reed and Cleaver that she expects future 18th & Vine plans to preserve historic buildings.

“I will expect that which can be saved will be saved,” she said at the January 6 meeting.

Quinton Lucas, a 3rd District council member who lives near 18th & Vine, predicted that critics of the plan might ask if this latest $18 million proposal is “just throwing more money after bad.” That’s likely to be the debate going forward as city officials figure out which projects to pursue and how to fund them.

Lucas, who campaigned last year on a plank that called for more investment on the East Side, says more city money could jump-start greater private investment down the road.

Council member Alissia Canady has called for context on 18th & Vine’s request, pointing out how much taxpayers throw at the Power & Light District — between $12 million and $15 million — each year.

So has Reed, who wonders if $18 million is enough.

For Cleaver, that question seems secondary. When he urged the council last week to pass a resolution seeking more money for 18th & Vine, he suggested that doing so would make the city “proud” of 18th & Vine, as though the city wasn’t already.

“I am very hopeful,” Cleaver said, “that this resolution can be approved so we can be proud of an area of our city that nobody can ever, ever duplicate anywhere else in the country.”