I had lunch at You Say Tomato yesterday. It is a new combination coffee house, café, grocery, place to hangout, just south of the Hill on Holmes. It is a great concept and already has personality, and real potential. I hope it can survive long enough to realize that potential. Later that evening, I saw it mentioned on several blogs and in Pitch.
With the completion of the UMKC Nursing and Pharmacy school getting closer and all the new condos being built along Gillham Road the Hill neighborhood is beginning to undergo a transformation. Gentrification, happening in many urban cores is both praised and despised. I suppose it depends on your point of view. But it is nice to see some of the older brick homes and apartments that have stood in disrepair or empty for years now undergoing renovation. Time will tell if the developers overprice and kill the golden goose.
One thing does bother me though. I don’t need to tell anyone about the neighborhoods that surround Hospital Hill. There is a great amount of diversity. And the employees of the hospitals, medical and dental schools, and the research institutes all include many Asian, black, white, Hispanic, middle-eastern and other variations of racial and ethnic origins.
But the workers that are building the Nursing and Pharmacy School are very homogeneous. White, young to middle-aged male, drive mega pick-up trucks and commute from suburbs beyond Grain Valley. I walk this area every day of the work week. I have seen four blacks working on the construction of the School in the past year. The first was an iron worker, then a carpenter, a hod-carrier (brings the cement to the brick layers) and a night watchman. Something is very wrong here.Okay, if anyone is listening out there send your comments. Thanks
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