Parking Regulations Threaten to Demolish Coffee Shop
In Kansas City, Kansas, parking regulations have threatened to demolish a local coffee shop for a parking lot. An out-of-state developer is trying to meet the city’s strict parking requirements for a new apartment complex across the intersection, and the coffee shop owner, T.J. Roberts, is trying to save what’s become a special community hub.
On this Upzoned episode, host Abby Kinney talks with Roberts about his inspiration for building community, and his struggle to keep his coffee shop, Kinship Cafe, from getting torn down. Also on the show is Dennis Strait, a principal at architect firm Multistudio, to talk about why city builders should care about a coffee shop over convenient parking spaces.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
“‘It’s heartbreaking.’ Why parking rules threaten one of KC area’s few Black coffee shops,” by Kevin Hardy, The Kansas City Star (May 2023).
Cover image source: Kinship Cafe.
IT’S TIME TO MEET YOUR MOVEMENT.
Hear more from Abby Kinney (along with a whole host of other great speakers) in her talk, “Take Back Your Streets: Tactical Urbanism in Kansas City, MO,” at the 2023 National Gathering!
What a million-person festival and an experiment in pop-up entrepreneurship teach us about the incoherence of parking policy.