The Unified Government Board of Commissioners voted unanimously on Thursday to allow the demolition of the main public library at 625 Minnesota Avenue, clearing the final local approval the project needed.
The board approved two related measures, each on a 9 to 0 vote, with Commissioner Evelyn Hill (District 4) absent.
Both votes ran against the recommendations of the Landmarks Commission and planning staff. The commission had split 4 to 2 for denial. However, both recommendations rested on narrow state-mandated criteria, not on an objection to a new library.
The decision lets the school district proceed with replacing the existing library, which dates from 1966, with a more modern library on the same site. The he school board approved the plan last October.
Historic district rules compel denial recommendations
The two denials were not verdicts that a new library was a bad idea, but were the result of a narrow test laid out in state statutes. The Landmarks Commission and planning staff administer a preservation ordinance that clears a demolition only in limited cases, roughly when the work is hidden from public view or when it rehabilitates a building rather than removes it. Because a full teardown didn’t meet those criteria, under that ordinance the recommendations were close to automatic. Legal staff noted that the commission “has to deny” when those conditions are not met, and planning staffer Alyssa Marcy said the code is clear that “historic structures cannot be demolished or destroyed.”
The board’s decision posed a different question. It could clear a demolition only if it decided there was no realistic alternative to tearing the building down, what the law calls a “feasible and prudent alternative,” with mitigations for any harm. That is a more comprehensive weighing of cost and public need than the preservation bodies were allowed to make. Aaron Morris of the legal department told the board it “does have authority beyond that of the Landmarks Commission.”
The UG staff and Landmarks Commission members repeatedly made that point to the commissioners. “Staff has to follow the code,” Marcy said, while the board “has a broader scope for what you oversee.” She had also checked with the State Historic Preservation Office, which confirmed that this one demolition would not cost the district its historic listing, removing a strong reason to refuse. When Mayor Christal Watson asked staff for a recommendation on how the board should vote, Marcy declined to offer one.
The project needed two approvals at once. One, called a certificate of appropriateness, was required because the library sits next to the Scottish Rite Temple and the Huron Cemetery. The other, a review under state historic-preservation law, was required because the building helps qualify the downtown district for its historic status. The UG holds a state designation that lets it perform both reviews itself. Chief legal counsel Angela Lawson put the stakes simply. Asked what a failed vote would mean, she said, “Then they are not allowed to demolish the building.”
The case for a new library
Brad McKenzie, a partner with Sapp Design Architects, presented for the project. He traced library service on the site to a Carnegie library built in 1902 and replaced in 1966 by the current building. That building put a library on the lower floor and school administration above. Administration moved out in the 2010s, and the library spread into upper floors never meant for it.
McKenzie argued the building cannot work as a modern library. He pointed to its lack of natural light, its divided floors, and restrooms that cannot be made accessible without disturbing protected features. He cited a line from Stevie Reynolds, a library foundation officer: “The very features that define the building as mid-century are also what prevent it from being a welcoming 21st century library.”
The architect said his team studied dozens of ideas that narrowed to four approaches: rehabilitation, alteration, demolition and rebuilding, and repurposing the building while placing a library elsewhere. The school board chose to demolish and rebuild. McKenzie put the total cost near $46 million, with $32 million for the new library and $5.5 million to convert the former Parker Elementary School into a permanent administration site and a new branch in an underserved area. He said the district already had the funds needed, and no bond was required. If demolition proceeds, he estimated the new library would open by the end of 2028.
Miguel Martin, recently appointed as chief operating officer of KCK public schools, said the district had looked at several alternative sites but that residents wanted the library kept within walking distance. He said that when the district brought other locations to the school board, the board was “not interested in any of those locations because we want that location to remain where it is.” Commissioner Chuck Stites (District 7), who had pressed on whether every option was truly exhausted, said that sounded like a choice to keep the library “here and only here.”
Commissioner Melissa Bynum (At-Large 1), who said she has spent more than six years on a downtown library advisory committee alongside Watson, framed the building’s value as a matter of select features, not the whole. “I don’t think it’s a historic building, but I’ll listen to the expert,” she said.
Wyandotte Nation concerns
Commissioner Andrew Davis (District 8) raised a letter from Billy Friend, chief of the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, which operates the 7th Street Casino in the venerable Scottish Rite Temple building in the same historic district. Friend’s letter warned that demolition could harm the adjacent Huron Indian Cemetery and Huron Park.
McKenzie told the board that Friend attended the Landmarks meeting and changed his view once he understood the plan. “Once he learned what the plan was, he said he was actually in full support of the library,” McKenzie said. He added that Friend’s worry had been that something other than a library might take the building’s place.
McKenzie said the design would salvage and reuse elements of the current building. The design would combine features from current building as well as the Carnegie library that preceded it on the site. The new structure could also integrate more closely to Huron Park. He stressed that the project would not take parking from the park.
The historic district’s future
Marcy said the State Historic Preservation Office confirmed that tearing down one qualifying building would not end the district, but that repeated losses would. “If we continue down the path of recommending structures in this district to be demolished, at some point it will become null and void,” she said. “We will no longer have a historic district. We will no longer have access to historic tax credits.”
The district gives nearby projects access to state historic tax credits, which Marcy called among the highest in the country, and a neighboring redevelopment already relies on them. Marcy said a decision on federal recognition for the district was expected by the end of July.
In 2021, the UG voted to approve demolition of the 1880s-era Seventh Street Methodist Episcopal Church to make way for the KCKCC downtown campus.
Property tax concerns
Stites questioned why taxpayers should keep funding a levy now that the money for the library has been collected. Reynolds, who has worked on the project since 2011, said the school district raised the levy in 2015 to build a downtown library.
Stites urged the school board to lower the levy once the work is paid for. “I would like to see those taxes backed off because we’ve accomplished our goal,” he said. Commissioners, facing their own questions about property tax rates, noted that the library levy is the school board’s call, not the UG’s.
Short-term rental sent back
In the evening’s other contested item, the board declined to approve a non-owner occupied short-term rental in the 1700 block of North 90th Street. A motion to approve failed on a 4 to 5 vote. Commissioners then returned the application to the planning commission on a 6 to 3 vote, seeking a closer look at conditions that Bynum said appeared to be boilerplate. Earlier in the meeting, the board adopted its planning and zoning consent agenda on a 9 to 0 vote.