By-Rob Roberts Reporter Kansas City Business Journal
The public will get a chance to weigh in on the proposed 3.5-mile extension of Kansas City’s streetcar line during a hearing scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Thursday in the sixth-floor circuit courtroom at the Jackson County Courthouse, 415 E. 12th St.
Those who would like to speak may place their names on a sign-in sheet that will be placed outside the courtroom by 8:30 a.m. Thursday, according to hearing rules issued by the court. People will be called on to speak in the order they appear on the sign-in sheet and will be allowed to address the court for as long as five minutes.
A public hearing is set for Thursday on a plan to extend Kansas City’s streetcar to the Plaza area.
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A public hearing is set for Thursday on a plan to extend Kansas City’s streetcar to the… more
ANDREW GRUMKE | KCBJ
The hearing will end no later than 5 p.m. Thursday but will resume at 9 a.m. Friday if anyone who had signed up did not have an opportunity to speak.
Doug Stone, a Lewis Rice LLC attorney representing the group that petitioned for the streetcar extension, said plans had called for the public hearing to be followed on Friday by a judicial hearing, “which is like a trial.” The judicial hearing was canceled because no one filed any opposing pleadings before a court-established deadline.
The grassroots effort to extend Kansas City’s streetcar starter line advanced on June 9, when a group of more than 50 residents organized by the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance submitted the petition asking a Jackson County Circuit Court judge to allow a public vote on creation of a new transportation development district to help finance the $227 million project.
The proposed extension route — south on Main Street from Pershing Road to the Country Club Plaza, then south to 51st Street and Brookside Boulevard — was selected partly due to the receptivity of voters residing in that corridor. In August 2014, voters rejected by an 8,706-5,757 margin a broader proposal calling for extension of the streetcar line along the currently proposed route plus two lines heading east of Main Street along Independence Avenue and Linwood Boulevard. That measure failed in 11 of 14 voting wards included, at least partly, in the larger TDD proposed at that time. But it passed by a combined total of 2,754-2,081 in the three wards (1, 4 and 5) that encompass almost all of the newly proposed TDD.
