The Checkered History of Bruce R. Watkins Drive

Bruce R. Watkins was a Kansas City trailblazer.

His list of accomplishments included serving as chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Committee, becoming Kansas City’s first Black councilman, and founding the influential political organization Freedom Inc.

But the South Midtown Freeway was one idea he would have liked to stop dead in its tracks. The north-south thoroughfare was meant to connect the fast-growing suburbs to downtown.

Watkins warned that this 10.2-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 71 would wall off a large swath of the Black community from the Prospect Avenue commercial corridor and other parts of the city.

Though renamed Bruce R. Watkins Drive to honor his public service, Watkins’ worries proved to be well-founded. Watkins died in 1980.

Today, however, the city is working to undo the harm caused by the highway, which workers completed in 2001.

The proposed remedies are coming through the Reconnecting the East Side project, financed with a $5 million federal grant secured by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, who is currently in his tenth term representing Missouri’s 5th Congressional District.

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Kansas City is leading the effort in partnership with the Missouri Department of Transportation and the Mid-America Regional Council. Kansas City planner Selina Zapata Bur is the project manager.

The project is in phase one right now.  

“In the last year and a few months or so, we’ve been going through the planning and environmental linkages study process, which includes substantial community engagement, trying to figure out what folks want to see along U.S. 71 and in their communities,” Bur said.

Planners have held four summits, and Bur estimated they have had approximately 150 other community engagements.

Options under consideration are alternatives that could place the thoroughfare below current street level or revert it to the pre-highway street.

Another option would convert the freeway to a parkway with landscaping and narrower travel lanes. Traffic signals at 55th Street, 59th Street, and Gregory Boulevard would be replaced with overpasses or underpasses for safer east–west travel.

Bur said the parkway alternative is “more of an integrated approach” that has proved overwhelmingly popular with community members. 

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Residents have prioritized the environment, safety, and economic development.

Bur said the main environmental issues relate to noise and air quality. Several travel lanes run near homes from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to 85th Street. One solution is to move the lanes closer to the middle of the right-of-way. 

Replacing cross-street intersections and traffic signals with things like overpasses or interchanges would improve air quality by eliminating stop-and-go traffic.

Overpasses can also improve safety. Watkins freeway is among the most dangerous roadways in Kansas City in terms of fatal and injury crashes.

There has been a 37% increase in crashes in Kansas City since 2010. The project focus area has the city’s highest rate of pedestrian and cycling crashes.  

The project will prioritize building more economic opportunities on the East Side, especially on Prospect.  

“Prospect has been a really big consideration for this project because initially when U.S. 71 was built and they designed these stoplights, they assumed that folks would stop and shop along Prospect,” Bur said.

“That didn’t end up happening, and so we want to make sure that whatever design improvements are made along … this stretch don’t make that worse. And in fact, we want to choose some design alternatives that are going to help Prospect.”  

All the plans leave space for businesses, housing and other community spaces. The plans are also considering adding public transportation in the middle of the roadway in the future.  

Bur said that city residents and suburbanites have similar concerns.  

“I think everyone pretty much realizes that the current design doesn’t work. If you’re commuting and you’re stopping and going and stopping and going and in traffic along this stretch, it’s not a pleasant driving experience,” she said. 

“There’s a lot of synergy in the things that we’re hearing from different communities, so all of those ideas have helped inform the design of the parkway alternative.”

Origin Story

The idea of 71 Highway in Kansas City was controversial from the start. 

The original proposal in the 1950s had the roadway running through the Country Club Plaza.

“It was sort of universally despised from the get-go,” said Michael Wells, the senior librarian at the Kansas City Public Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections.

“Residents, of course, were not happy with it, but also the highway planners didn’t want to build it. They wanted to build a highway and warned local officials that this highway parkway hybrid was not going to work, but I think at the local level there was a feeling that they just had to do something.” 

The project shifted to the South Midtown Route, cutting through the predominantly Black neighborhoods of the East Side. 

Critics have contended that the shift east represented a victory of affluent, politically connected white residents over poorer, disenfranchised Black neighborhoods.

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East Side residents lived with uncertainty for decades, not knowing what would happen to their property or communities. Some homes were already being demolished in the 70s.  

“All the while, people’s property value is decreasing because they’ve bulldozed this massive trench right through the East Side neighborhoods and just basically left it while the federal court decision was pending, and so that I think instantly bred a lot of animosity for the road,” Wells said. 

The NAACP filed a federal discrimination lawsuit in 1973, calling for housing assistance, more environmental regulation, and community feedback. A 1985 consent decree ended the battle and called for the freeway to be a highway/parkway hybrid. 

Construction on Bruce R. Watkins Drive began in 1987. Although the lawsuit forced design changes, the roadway’s division of the East Side was already significant.

The impact on Prospect Avenue was predictable, Wells said, by creating a barrier that is “fairly hostile to pedestrians.