The Loretto: Another cool project stalled by neighborhood cranks
Everyone agrees that West 39th Street took a turn for the better on the day that John Bregin Jr. bought the former Loretto Academy.
Built in 1903, the Loretto Academy originally served as a boarding school for girls. A Bible college took it over in the 1960s. The property was tied up in bankruptcy court when, in 1996, Bregin came up with $795,000 and a plan.
Bregin, who had developed the KC Racquet Club in Merriam in the 1970s, felt that the chapel and gymnasium once used by schoolgirls would be ideal for weddings and receptions. He also created apartments inside the building.
He had to overcome a few obstacles in the course of getting City Hall to approve the project and cut him a tax break. A Loretto neighbor, Cynthia Riggins, objected to his idea to put up three apartment buildings along Mercier.
Fourteen years later, Riggins continues to object.
In her attempt to unmake decisions that previous and current city councils made, Riggins recently took the stand in a Jackson County courtroom. She filed a lawsuit in 2007 to stop Bregin from building along Mercier. Essentially, she is trying to litigate an outcome that she could not produce politically.
Depending on one’s view, she is either a determined crusader or a very bad sport.
Riggins has lived on Mercier since 1983. On the stand in Judge J. Dale Youngs’ courtroom, she described how the neighborhood improved when families began to reclaim homes that had been cut up into apartments. “Now we have kids,” Riggins testified. “We didn’t before.”
Her testimony was ironic. Riggins was a renter when she arrived in the neighborhood. Today she owns two homes on Mercier. The house next door to her personal residence contains three units that she leases to presumably childless tenants.
Riggins draws a thick line of distinction between her landholding (she also owns a building on 41st Street) and what Bregin hopes to accomplish. She complains that his apartment buildings will add too much density and ruin the character of the neighborhood.
On the stand, Riggins said “mondo” apartment complexes were not appropriate in the Volker neighborhood. But what Bregin has in mind seems a long way from “mondo.” The buildings are limited to 45 feet in height, and their designs take into account the surrounding architecture.
Riggins, who works at a travel agency, described herself as “livid” when a Kansas City Star writer asked her about Bregin’s proposal in 1996. Others in the neighborhood told the reporter they were concerned that the Loretto redevelopment would pack the streets with parked cars.
Since then, Bregin has won a lot of hearts and minds. Some of the same people who were nervous about his initial proposal say he has been a welcome addition to the neighborhood.
In 2007, Bregin went to the City Council for approval to turn part of the old academy into a boutique hotel. Kathleen Brock, a former president of the Volker Neighborhood Association, said the Loretto could have “no better caretaker” than Bregin.
Brock had expressed fears back in 1996 about too much density. She told the City Council that her opinion had changed. Kansas City, she said, needed more dense, walkable neighborhoods if it wanted to thrive.
Judy Widener, another past president of the Volker group, told the council that she had no doubt the Mercier apartments would be beautiful. Widener said she was thinking about selling her home. Speaking to Bregin, she said, “I would like to be the first person who signs a lease in one of your apartments.”
Even the holdouts respect what Bregin has done. Manuel Lopez, who lives on Mercier and shares Riggins’ objection, told the council that Bregin had done a “fantastic” job of repurposing the girls’ school.
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Bregin has taken his plans for the Loretto before the City Council on three occasions between 1996 and 2007. In each instance, the council members had a chance to tell him to scrap his apartment buildings. They did not.
Yet Riggins continues to obstruct. She filed her suit against the city and Bregin a few weeks after the City Council approved an amendment to the redevelopment plan that allowed Bregin to go forward with the boutique hotel.
Riggins wants Youngs to rule that that the city acted unlawfully. She makes a circular argument. Her attorney, Frederick Thompson, argued that there had been “a complete lack of performance” on Bregin’s part. Granted, Bregin has not been able to do everything he wanted as soon as he wanted. But Thompson’s argument seemed silly, given that “complete performance” would have resulted in the outcome that Riggins wants to stop: the apartments being built. (Riggins did not respond to messages that I left for her.)
Adam Walker, Bregin’s lawyer, told Youngs that Riggins was a “stranger” to Bregin’s deal with the city. The tax abatement, Walker noted, lasts 25 years, leaving Bregin plenty of time to complete the work. “It will get done,” Walker told Youngs. (The bench trial resumes at the end of the month. Youngs had hoped to hear all the evidence on February 25, but one witness did not get a chance to testify.)
Riggins stated her position succinctly at trial. “I don’t want to live with three apartments across the street,” she said.
I won’t tell her what to feel. But watching her testify made me think of other occasions when a vocal minority threw a crowbar into the gears of progress.
Around the time that Riggins filed her lawsuit, Brooke Salvaggio and her husband, Dan Heryer, began to convert the 2.5 acres surrounding her grandparents’ home on Bannister Road into an urban farm.
A complaint from a neighboring homeowner, Phyllis Forbes, brought out the codes inspectors, who wanted the farming to stop. With the pro bono help of a lawyer, Salvaggio and Heryer convinced the city to quit writing violation notices and allow the farm, which they called BadSeed, to operate with some restrictions.
Those restrictions are soul-killing. Volunteers can’t help with chores, and the farm’s subscribers can’t pick up their harvests on-site. “That’s kind of the point of urban farming, in general,” Salvaggio tells me. “You’re placing these farms in places where people interact with them.”
Urban agriculture is hardly a novel trend. The city should have been prepared for the day when young couples or retired autoworkers started looking at front lawns and vacant lots as potential food sources. But it wasn’t, in large part because so many elected officials and department heads can’t think for themselves. (Even people who were sad to see former City Manager Wayne Cauthen get kicked to the curb have to admit that he did a lousy job of recruiting top-line administrators.)
Salvaggio became disgusted at how complaint-driven the city’s machinations appeared. The fact that the complainant, Forbes, did not actually live in the house next to BadSeed added to her aggravation. “She never spoke to us,” Salvaggio says.
BadSeed will limp along under the current restrictions at the Bannister site for now. Last fall, Salvaggio and Heryer found a larger site near 55th Street and Blue Parkway that they hope to be able to farm without interference. Salvaggio says she is frustrated and hopeful at the same time. “The possibilities on the 13-acre site are huge!” she says.
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Bregin and Riggins, by contrast, are stuck together.
In addition to the usual challenges that a developer faces, such as finding financing, Bregin has had to contend with a lawsuit that’s nearly two and a half years old. “Who would start construction on something they don’t know they’re going to be allowed to finish?” Walker, his attorney, asks me.
That uncertainty is a bad reward for a guy who took a risk on a historic building that was in bankruptcy.
