With passage of KCMO Ordinance 140138 Frank Vaydik (Line Creek) Park has grown with the addition of a gorgeous 20 acres to the south. This tract for years had been planned for development but never was able to be financed as KCMO had a street plan that would have required the developer to build 56th Street over to Waukomis Drive. That would have been an expensive road as it would have required up to 20' high cuts in solid rock and a 400+ foot long bridge over Line Creek.
The partnership that owned it finally decided to give it up and donated it to KCMO Parks. I don't know if he is still alive but years ago I need a trail easement to build the Line Creek Trail. I mailed a nicely worded letter to Sig Leftkovitz asking for the easement and included a $1 to try and entice him to return it back. After a couple of phone calls I got a hold of Mr. Leftkovitz one night right around 5:30. He asked me some questions about the easement and how it impacted the property. I explained that it was in the floodplain and way far away from any future development. He shared some stories about how he developed the Sunpointe Village neighborhood in the mid-90's and then finally said he'd send the easement back signed because I seemed like a nice guy. When I got the easement back, he even returned my dollar!
Anyways, I thank the ownership group for donating a nice tract for the park system. Here is what the tract looked like in 1964. There were two houses and I found traces of one. In the picture NW 56th Street is the left to right road at the top. North Byfield is the up and down street in the middle of the picture. I-635 and hadn't been built yet and it was still US 71 as the interchanges for I-29 were not done.
Here is the map a little more zoomed in. Waukomis is the green line, Englewood is the blue, and NW 56th Street is red. If you look close enough, you can see the old NW 56th Street bridge.
The amazing thing is how much Line Creek has moved over 50 years if you look at a recent aerial map.
I had the luck of exploring the tract a couple of weeks ago and it is a gorgeous tract. This is looking north on the old Byfield road bed.
The views of the valley are amazing (if you can get through the %^$&& honeysuckle).
I uploaded some pictures mapped with GPS coordinates to Panoramio which you can check out here.
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