This Week in Kansas City: the block beat its number, Merriam gets a grocery store back, and a park that passed 8–4

Welcome back to This Week in KC, The Stare’s weekly recap of the stuff that actually makes this a city worth living in.

A note on the date: this edition is retropublished. It covers August 29 through September 4 and was assembled and published on September 7. The block still hit its number, the doors still opened, and a week gets its page in the record whether or not we were at our desk for it.

Each section carries a counter: how many stories fell into that corner of local life this week, across the KC newsrooms we read. The bar shows how it stacks against the others. It’s not a ranking by volume. It’s a ranking by new to you.

Last week this column printed an ask: a free concert in the Wilson’s Pizza parking lot at 18th and Quindaro in northeast Kansas City, Kansas, three DJs, a goal of $1,500 for storm victims, and our line that it was “a modest number on purpose. It is the kind a block can actually hit.”

They hit it. $1,740, per KSHB 41.

The organizer, James Donnelson Jr., who goes by J.R. Hoodstar, put on live music, a taco truck, produce, and the supplies nobody thinks to donate, like bleach and brooms. Both mayors came. He took down the names of residents still in need so the money could be pointed at them directly instead of into a general fund. His own family was still dealing with damage from the August 18 storm; Unified Government crews and National Guard members were still hauling debris off the curbs that Monday. As for the corner it happened on: Gary Wilson’s father opened the restaurant there in 1989, Gary took it over in 1990, lost his own power for five days in the storm, and handed over the lot anyway. He is also the author of the neighborhood’s plainest ad campaign: “At one period, Pizza Hut would not deliver in our community. So I had a slogan, ‘If they won’t, Wilson’s will.’”

North of the river, nearly 100 volunteers spent a weekend at Good Shepherd’s Gladstone campus building 80 beds for Northland kids who have been sleeping on the floor, per KCTV5, with lumber funded by a special Easter offering, built with Sleep in Heavenly Peace, whose local chapter delivers seven to ten beds in an ordinary week and forty to fifty a month once winter lands. Campus pastor Cathy McIntire, on what she wants riding along with each one: “There are people who care about you, and that you’re not alone.” Request one, or build one, at shpbeds.org.

Two asks with dates on them, because September is when this runs thin: Shelter KC says its hygiene stock is “critically low” (KCTV5), and The Pitch has published the Hunger Action Month list of where to actually show up.

Thursday the Kansas City Council passed Ordinance No. 260718, 8–4, authorizing Phase 1 construction on Roy Blunt Luminary Park, the deck park that will cap the south loop of Interstate 670 and stitch the Crossroads to the Central Business District. The phase buys more than half the tunnel work and one finished block on the western edge by the Convention Center: walking paths, woodland, adventure play areas, art, and space for food trucks (KCTV5). Five acres eventually, nearly $200 million in total funding, shovels by the end of 2026.

Now the part this column owes you, because two members put it on the record and the Martin City Telegraph printed it. The ordinance authorizes more than $51 million, and two south Kansas City officials voted no and said exactly why. Sixth District Councilman Johnathan Duncan called it a “fiscal blunder” (a “want,” not a “need”) and pointed at Blue River Road, a route through the Fifth and Sixth Districts closed by flood damage and unfunded for fourteen years. “I keep telling my constituents we don’t have the money to fix it, but we’re going to vote for this?” He warned the general fund could carry close to $5 million a year in park maintenance, $1.2 million of it for the tunnel alone. Fifth District At-Large Councilman Darrell Curls, whose district holds Hickman Mills, Swope Park, Little Blue Trace, and a Swope Park Pool that is closed, put it plainest: “I’m not opposed to this project. I’m just opposed to the funding of it. … When is it our turn? When is it their turn, colleagues?”

Both things are true at once, so we print both. A lid over a highway trench is a genuinely good thing to build, and Dean Ohmart, who lives right on top of where it will go, told KCTV5 he mostly wants the evening traffic noise gone: “It’s just so much prettier than looking at traffic rolling by.” Mayor Quinton Lucas, in the same session: “We recognize while these things are great, we want to make sure we still have money to take care of basics.” The number to watch is not the $51 million. It is whether the next capital ordinance out of City Hall carries a Fifth or Sixth District line item, and how big it is.

Elsewhere in the green: at 1201 Ewing Avenue, the old Jackson Schoolhouse above Sheffield Park, Whatsoever Community Center is enrolling for its free after-school program — ages 7 to 17, weekdays 3 to 6 p.m. Bryan Stalder’s history of the place for Northeast News is the week’s best read. It began in 1915 as a soup kitchen in a Winner Road basement, opened by a group of women who called themselves the Whatsoever Circle, and moved into the schoolhouse in 1941. In the early 1950s a 112-pound amateur boxer named Jerry Morales, training out of Whatsoever’s boxing club, stepped onto the back steps after a bout and proposed to Virginia. She said yes; they bought a house blocks away and raised eleven children. Jerry still lives in Sheffield. His son Mark Morales, who runs the Sheffield Neighborhood Association, calls the building “almost sacred ground.”

The honest one, kept on purpose: Outdoor Education Laboratory is closed after 48 summers. The southern Johnson County day camp told families by email on August 15, called the decision “difficult,” and gave no reason, per the Johnson County Post. “It was confusion, and honestly, grief,” said former camper Nancy Holcroft Benson, who spent 1980s summers there catching crawdads. “It just felt like you lost a friend.”

Two seasonal notes: heat and drought may shorten the run at Grinter Farms near Lawrence, with peak bloom on the holiday weekend, so go early (KCTV5, KSHB 41). Out at Powell Gardens Colonial Farms in Blue Springs, this fall’s program is farm-to-table boxed brunches eaten in the company of four alpacas, per FOX4, which is either the most Kansas City sentence of the week or the second-most.

Trader Joe’s opened Wednesday morning at 8700 Shawnee Mission Parkway in Merriam, and hundreds lined up out front and around the corner starting after 7 a.m., per the Johnson County Post. The headline number is not the crowd. It is this: Merriam has had no grocery store inside its city limits since Hen House left Merriam Town Center in 2018. Eight years.

The store runs about 9,500 square feet and anchors Merriam Grand Station Marketplace, a $102 million redevelopment of the old Antioch Library site that also carries more than 200 apartments. Inside, prints of local school mascots hang from the pillars (the bison of Shawnee Mission North among them), and murals of barbecue sauce bottles and Union Station run near the ceiling. Mayor Bob Pape, who has been hearing about this since 2018: “I am ecstatic. … Not just that it’s a grocery store, but it’s a destination grocery store such as Trader Joe’s.”

The best quote came from someone who does not live in Merriam. Pam Zabielski drove over from the Turner area of Kansas City, Kansas, and got in line after 7. “Before, the only one they have, the nearest one is way out in Johnson County. We just don’t hardly ever get there.” Five minutes from her house now. That is what a grocery gap actually is: a driving time, not a missing building.

Also open, opening, or on the way:

• Jade Market opened this summer at 913 E. 5th St. in Columbus Park, across from Café Cà Phé. It is the nonprofit Hella Good Deeds’ headquarters, a community resource hub, and a retail incubator for AANHPI makers, built out with a Rooted Change Grant from the Community Capital Fund, per Northeast News. Co-founder and executive director Béty Lê Shackelford on the point of it: “There’s no cultural anchor in Kansas City similar to how other big cities have Chinatown, Koreatown. And so that’s what we want to build here.”
• Pizza Tascio is open daily on Johnson Drive in Mission, weeks after its Olathe debut, and per the Johnson County Post it will deliver a pie straight to the bar next door.
• Toys “R” Us is opening a Northland storefront within the month (FOX4), and Donutology leaves its longtime Westport location for Crown Center this fall.
• Flight Crew Coffee is prepping in the former Unique Finds antique shop off Santa Fe Drive in downtown Overland Park, and Jala Indian Cuisine is coming to Overland Park in a former breakfast spot, with gold on the menu (Johnson County Post).

The counter-note, because a ribbon column that only prints ribbons is lying: Unforked closed its Crown Center location on September 1, with Westport and Overland Park still open. Per The Pitch, citing FOX4, the decision not to renew came down to uncertainty about foot traffic during a construction phase of the new Royals stadium.

Kansas City, Kansas, is holding its first-ever Black Restaurant Week, September 7 through 13, with 11 Black-owned restaurants across Wyandotte County (barbecue, soul food, pizza, coffee), ending on 913 Day, the September 13 celebration named for the area code. Several are running $9.13 specials. Mayor/CEO Christal Watson issued a proclamation; merchandise is at Visit KCK’s office, 727 Minnesota Ave., or online.

From The Pitch’s KC Sipps, the deals worth planning around: five drumsticks and fries from Neighborhood Eats at McNewton’s Community Outreach Center, a large two-topping pizza at Wilson’s Pizza and Grill (the same corner, at the top of this page, that raised the $1,740), plus Holy Smoke BBQ, Turkey Legg Man, and Jones Bar-B-Q. Ritz Dasgupta of Visit KCK: “We are known for our cultural diversity and our long history, so I think this is another beautiful way of people to experience that cultural diversity and support our Black-owned businesses.”

Read the line KSHB 41 put near the bottom of its story, though, because it is this whole edition in one sentence: a handful of the participating businesses are in KCK’s northeast area, which is still recovering from the storm. Same blocks that fed people out of a parking lot two weeks ago. Same blocks that beat their fundraising goal on Sunday. This week they would like you to come buy dinner.

Around the rest of the table: Jason Provo, who opened Blackhole Bakery on Troost in 2020 and got a line out the door for it, is IN Kansas City’s Reservation for One at West Plaza Bodega; The Pitch’s Mise en Place has Chef Laura Favela of Silo Modern Farmhouse, who went from 22-hour days cooking at The K to running a farmhouse menu; the Good Karma Coffee team has opened Social House at Martini Corner; and Sway Coffee Roasters in Rosedale turned four, with a fall menu landing September 9. September 1 was National Burnt Ends Day, a holiday Zarda Bar-B-Q and the American Royal simply invented in 2021, the most Kansas City move imaginable, and The Stare keeps a standing record of KC barbecue if you want to plan a longer campaign.

Two we are not going to pretend away. Thelma’s Kitchen, the pay-what-you-can café run by Reconciliation Services, suspended café and catering service on September 2 while the organization considers changes; it says it will keep providing meals to clients through the transition, and it has a survey open for neighbors about what the place should become. In the Crossroads, the owner of Madrina Vegana is publicly looking for a way to stay as nearby rooms close, and the city is standing up new efforts to help small businesses hold on (KCTV5). Both are addresses you can still spend money at today.

At Cordill-Mason Elementary in the Blue Springs School District (650 students, the district’s largest), the PTA keeps a book vending machine. On your birthday you get a coin. A member of the Pride Pack, a selected group of older students, walks you down the hall, helps you choose, and the book is yours to take home. Instead of a cupcake, a paperback (KSHB 41).

Principal Jaclyn Brunk: “Our number one goal at Cordill-Mason is that kids will leave our school and just love to read, have a passion for reading, and that it’s something they find joy in.” A fifth grader described the mechanics better than any adult could: “I love that when the book drops, you grab it and then you can start getting it, finding a new world in your imagination.” Another fifth grader, on the Pride Pack, has already escorted two birthday kids this year; her own pick was an I Survived title, because, and she is very clear about this, she likes historical fiction. The PTA is looking for business sponsors to keep the machine stocked, which is roughly the cheapest naming-rights opportunity in the metro.

Two more worth the ink. Jeff Maher of Overland Park retired from marathons in 2019, then received a multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2020 and laced them back up. Now, nearly 60, he is training for the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days, roughly 180 miles, starting on Antarctica at Ultima Base and ending in Miami (Johnson County Post).

In south Kansas City, Veterans Community Project cut the ribbon Wednesday on a $2 million Welcome Center, phase two of a campus its leaders call the first of its kind, paid for entirely with private donations (KCTV5). VCP serves about 1,000 veterans a year here and expects the expansion to lift that by 20%. “This is meant to be a low-barrier front door for veterans that need help,” said CEO and co-founder Bryan Meyer. “So often, places like the VA, it’s not as easy to just walk in and raise your hand and say, hey, I need some assistance.” Executive director Chris Admire kept calling the new building the front door. That is the correct name for it.

A machine that hands children books, a man about to run seven marathons in seven days, and a front door anybody can walk through. See you next week.

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This Week in KC is assembled from coverage across the Kansas City newsrooms The Stare reads daily; each item is credited to the outlet that reported it. This edition was retropublished on September 7, 2026, covering August 29–September 4. Corrections: corrections@kcstare.com. Know something good happening in KC? tips.