n AROUND THE BLOCH
NEW GIFTS SUPPORT UPDATE TO HERITAGE HALL Planned updates include centralized offices and remote classroom options By John Martellaro
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ince its christening in 1986, Bloch Heritage Hall has anchored Kansas CIty’s business school. Now, it’s time for an upgrade. The historic building will be expanded and refurbished in a $15.2 million project. The effort has already received five gifts totaling $13.625 million. When completed, Bloch Heritage Hall will combine its original historic charm with 21st-century capabilities. “We are aiming for an environment that creates energy for students and signals that this is a place where important things happen,” said Brian Klaas, Bloch School dean. In part, the project is designed to address the need for additional classroom space, needs highlighted by the university’s strategic enrollment goals. But there is much more to the project than providing needed classrooms. Klaas sees the project as one that will reconfigure and enhance the building to provide more flexibility and support for students, offer a better student experience and improve student outcomes. Similar to Bloch Executive Hall, the redesigned Heritage Hall will employ a “hub concept” to create a stronger sense of community and make student support services more accessible and familiar. Programs such as academic advising, career services, supplemental instruction and support services and student organizations, plus individual and group study areas, would be located in the same central space. The goal is to create a purposeful traffic flow to promote collaborative learning.
“It will create an obvious hub for student engagement,” Klaas said. “This hub is designed to encourage students to connect with each other and with Bloch faculty and staff. It is designed to create a sense of community, a supportive community where students are encouraged to access all of the resources needed to be successful in their college career. This investment is designed to make a very real difference in outcomes for our students. And it is designed to help potential students visualize all of the opportunities available at UMKC and the Bloch School.” Another important goal is to upgrade technology, furnishings and room designs, to provide more flexibility for the multiple ways that students now access classroom instruction. Klaas said audio-visual links will allow students to attend class remotely, a feature that will appeal to students ranging from executives balancing travel
THE HISTORY OF THE HALL The core of Bloch Heritage Hall is the historic Tudor-style Shields Mansion, built in 1909. The Shields family called their new home Oaklands because of the many native oak trees that grew on the undeveloped part of the property. In 1954, it became the home of the Barstow School and later housed St. Paul’s Methodist Seminary. UMKC purchased the building in 1965 and completed a significant building addition in 1987.
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schedules to undergraduates with child care obligations. Construction is anticipated to begin in January 2021 and be completed by July 2022. Planning for the project has already begun, with architectural reviews and assessments underway along with focus group sessions designed to understand the needs of key stakeholders. Announced in August 2019, the largest single gift to support the expansion, $8 million, is part of a gift totaling $21 million from the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation. Another $5 million is part of an overall $15 million gift to the UMKC Foundation from the Sunderland Foundation. Three additional gifts supporting the project include $250,000 from the William T. Kemper Foundation, $250,000 from Bloch alumnus Mike Plunkett and $125,000 from the Capital Federal Foundation. When the Bloch Family Foundation gift was announced, UMKC Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal said the gift “honors the memory of Marion and Henry Bloch by building upon the legacy they created with the Henry W. Bloch School of Management as the provider of premier business education that Kansas City needs and deserves.”
