Introduction

OVERVIEW

KCDC’s 2021-2022 academic project focusing on the Kessler Park reservoir, located in Kansas City Missouri, seeks to reintegrate a lost public relic – the Kessler Park water reservoir – as a public space for both the surrounding neighborhoods and the city at large. This project, spanning the full academic year, encouraged Kansas City Design Center students to work closely with the neighborhood and city communities surrounding Kessler park to develop design options that reintegrated the previously functional reservoir as a newly repurposed community space. Through research, analysis, and community discussion, the KCDC studio seeks to establish an inclusive design vision that helps provide a new public realm for Kansas City residents in a post-Covid world hungry for new, open, outdoor gathering spaces.

The primary purpose of this project is to create a comprehensive and inclusive design that better utilizes the space left behind by the now abandoned, but still loved, Kessler park water reservoir. In 2014, previous KCDC students developed a similar project focused on the same program and site. We are now building off of their framework to deliver an updated version of the vision study that takes into account the neighborhood changes and the lessons we have learned from the pandemic and cultural developments over the past few years. The neighborhood that Kessler Park Reservoir is located in, Pendleton Heights, has reached out to us to look into potential developments for this park. Due to overgrowth and lack of surveillance, some neighborhood residents have become concerned about the reservoir’s continued neglect due to increasing crime.. However, it has also become a haven for nearby graffiti artists and is well loved by the community at large. Therefore, this design will seek to integrate the reservoir without destroying it. As a community of people who have now learned to adapt and survive in a post-pandemic world, we have learned a few lessons. Our homes have now become more important than ever, online and remote presence is a rapidly growing concern, and the importance of open air, outdoor community space has made itself glaringly obvious. When outdoor space is the only place we have to commune with others, the presence of parks becomes integral to a healthy social life. For Kansas City residents, this need is controlled, almost exclusively, by the parks and boulevard system. This system of green space weaves through the entire city and residents would be hard pressed to drive anywhere outside of the highways without interacting with one of the nearly 220 parks or 135 miles of maintained boulevards. Kessler park is one of these 220 parks. In fact,

PURPOSE AND INTENT

it is one of the largest parks in the system and is also home to Cliff Drive, which is one of 5 State Scenic Byways within the State of Missouri. Nearby the east entrance to Cliff Drive, atop a hill that overlooks the Missouri River, sits the now abandoned Water Reservoir. This water reservoir was originally designed to provide water to the industrial factories below, however, shortly after its construction, it cracked and has remained empty ever since. Abandoned, and secluded by overgrowth, the reservoir has been left to decay and now fills neighborhood residents with a sense of uneasiness. This uneasiness extends, not only to the concrete shell of the water reservoir itself, but also the green space immediately surrounding it that serves as an open park space and disc golf course. In response to this, the KCDC students have spent the past year researching the park, meeting with community members, and designing a new vision for this park that reintegrates the reservoir and provides a new community space for residents to meet safely. This was done in a series of phases. First, research and analysis of not only the park, but the whole city surrounding it. This allowed students to better understand the importance of Kessler Park within the Parks system and, by extension, the importance of the reservoir. While looking at the history of the park, they also took into account the topography, amenities, and surrounding demographics that could inform how the park would best serve the community around it. The next phase was discussion with the community. After completing technical research, the students met with the community to discuss their personal stories and ideas as well as affirm or disprove the students’ research. The last phase was design. Taking into account the ideas and thoughts of the community, the technical, and cultural needs of the site, and the societal importance of outdoor space in today’s world, the students came up with 3 visions. Each design featured varying levels of integration of the reservoir into the surrounding park; the least invasive proposed no change to the shell at all, while the most invasive proposed opening the shell with the least invasive not damaging the shell at all, to the most invasive, opening the shell of the reservoir up entirely to integrate it into the park. These designs which took place primarily over the course of the second semester of the year, were presented to the community and professionals and refined throughout the second half of the academic year to create the vision studies you will be presented in this book.