Breaking Ground on the Northeast KCK Heritage Trail
If you have recently walked, biked, or driven past the Jersey Creek Trail between 11th and 13th Streets, you may have noticed bulldozers moving earth, masons building retaining walls, and Green Team members planting native grasses and perennials. This work is all part of Phase I of the Northeast KCK Heritage Trail project, which officially broke ground in April.
Groundwork NRG Green Team member Esmeralda Zapata prepares the ground for planting at one of the rain garden sites along the Jersey Creek Trail.
The initial phase of the project is focused on the Jersey Creek Trail, and includes an outdoor environmental education classroom, two large rain gardens, repairs to the pedestrian tunnel underneath 13th Street, tree planting, new outdoor seating, and signage memorializing important people, places, and events in Northeast KCK’s rich cultural history.
Eventually, the Jersey Creek Trail will connect to a system of three interlocking trails that span from Kaw Point to the Quindaro Townsite, highlighting NE KCK’s history while also adding green infrastructure and improving access to green space and youth employment and training.
Landscape architect Tim Duggan watches as Green Team members (left to right) Gerardo Zapata, Esmeralda Zapata, Olive Faulker, and Melissa Eakright plant a rain garden.
The Jersey Creek Trail improvements will provide recreational, educational, and environmental benefits, says project manager Tim Duggan, who is a landscape architect with Phronesis, a Kansas City design firm specializing in urban land revitalization.
“The rain gardens will address water quality and reduce water quantity and flooding impacts downstream,” Duggan explains, since the native plants and perennials being planted absorb stormwater in an area prone to flooding after heavy rainfall. In addition, rain gardens and tree planting helps mitigate the Urban Heat Island Effect, which causes the summer temperature in parts of Northeast KCK to rise up to 15 degrees hotter than in surrounding neighborhoods with more tree cover and less impervious surfaces like asphalt.
The outdoor classroom will offer community groups, like the adjacent Breidenthal Boys & Girls Club, with a shaded outdoor amphitheater area for programs and activities, as well as workforce development opportunities for members of Groundwork NRG’s Green Team, who have been involved in the planning, design, and construction of the Jersey Creek Trail project.
Green Team member Olive Faulkner plants native grasses in a rain garden.
Planning for the Northeast KCK Heritage Trail began in 2021 as Groundwork NRG and the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, KS facilitated a series of community workshops across Northeast KCK that led to the creation of the NE KCK Heritage Trail plan.
Stay tuned for more updates about the implementation of the subsequent phases of the Heritage Trail plan. For more information, contact Mata Townsend, Heritage Trail Projects Coordinator, at mtownsend@northeastkck.org, or take the online NE KCK Heritage Trail tour.