Soccer Drive aka 76th or 80th Street Update

One of the great things about living in Kansas City is how one can drive somewhere and not make any intentional turns but drive on multiple streets.  For example, when I drive from my automotive repair shop, the awesome Chuck's Parkville Garage, at Route 9 and 45 and go east, I begin my trek on NW 64th Street.  Say I have to pick up the car on a Wednesday afternoon and go straight to Antioch Bible Baptist Church on 72nd Street in Gladstone for AWANA that night. 

I proceed east on NW 64th Street.  As I get east of I-29 and go past the fire station, the road magically turns into N Gower Drive which then magically turns into NW Waukomis Drive for 800 feet or so and then magically becomes NW 68th Street.  After I go under US 169, the road makes a sharp curve to the north and is now North Broadway where it continues and makes another hard curve and becomes NE 72nd Street.

Anyways, Soccer Drive is the name for the road that connects NE 80th Street behind the movie theaters at North Brighton over to NE 76th Street at Shoal Creek Parkway.  It has the name "Soccer Drive" because of the large Western Missouri Soccer League complex.

This road has a quirky history.  When I first moved to Kansas City, I worked for one of the home town engineering conglomerates.  They had a large aerial map from 1987.  I noticed that there was a bridge over I-435 between MO-152 and Shoal Creek Parkway.  The bridge had no streets connecting to it and was a bridge to nowhere.

Over time, I met George Satterlee who was the former MoDOT District Engineer for this part of the state and who later became the KCMO Public Works Director.  (small world tangent, George's family owned some vacation shantys on Lake Michigan just a few hundred feet away from my mom's folks retirement shack in Glenn, MI). 

I had lunch with George one time to ask him some stuff about the freeway development in the area and asked him about this bridge.  George told me that MoDOT built the bridge when I-435 was built in the mid-80's.  KCMO had a planned arterial that was going to cross the interstate so MoDOT and KCMO entered into a municipal agreement where MoDOT would build the bridge and KCMO would connect the bridge to NE 80th Street on the west and NE 76th Street on the east. 

Time went on on KCMO had not fulfilled their end of the bargain.  Since George was the district engineer for MoDOT, he sent a letter to KCMO asking why the streets weren't built as outlined in the agreement.  The letter sat and George retired from MoDOT to became the KCMO Public Works Director.  George had to respond to his own MoDOT letter to explain when KCMO would build the streets.  Under George's watch, KCMO put in a simple two lane road with a low-water crossing that fulfilled the agreement.

The image below is from a 1983 USGS topographic map of the area.  I wasn't able to locate an aerial from the late 1980's which showed the bridge standing alone.

In the past year, the Shoal Creek TIF used sales tax revenue from the MO-152/Flintlock commercial district to upgrade Soccer Drive to an arterial street with curbs, sidewalks, and streetlights and removing the low water crossing with a bridge that wouldn't flood.

The project is being done in 2 phases shown below.  Phase 1 east of the WMSL fields was completed last fall and Phase 2 will begin once property acquisition is complete.

The aerial picture from an airplane of Phase 1 below is looking west over the former bridge to nowhere.

Photo credits to Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development who is managing the construction of the project for the Shoal Creek TIF district.

By this fall, someone will get done using the Shoal Creek Trail at Agnes and will turn east on Maplewoods Parkway to head home to Pleasant Valley or Liberty.  The GPS lady will inform the driver that Maplewoods Parkway becomes NE 80th Street and then Soccer Drive and then NE 76th Street until the road ends at I-35.  While not as convoluded as the route in the first paragraph, it still will be another one of Kansas City's multiple name arterials.

Comments

[Neale Shour]

I've been wondering about the next phase of this project. I assumed they would start this spring, but didn't consider a ROW issue.

Oh, and technically that's a right turn on 72nd from Broadway. :) But I completely agree with the odd "drift" that occurs with the street naming. Another is in Gladstone (KCMO doesn't have the corner on this market) NW/NE 64th (@ Broadway) to Shady Lane (@ North Oak) to Brooktree Lane (@ Antioch).

[MrBillK]

Great update! Are they going to go ahead and connect it to the roundabout near the new Mormon temple or wait until a later date?

Now consider MO Hwy 1. Going north from 210, it's Prather. Just before I-35, it becomes N Antioch. Around 64th Street, it becomes N Prospect. Then somewhere around 152, it becomes N Indiana!