Taking Blight and Making It Bright

Vireo has designed and refreshed parks all over the region for 30 years. There’s a lot of work that goes into each one and it can often take years to see the finished product realized. The process can cause friction in the community if there’s too much of this and not enough of that. But every once in a while, we get paid back 100 times when a revitalized park stands as a transformational beacon of hope for a neighborhood that desperately needs it.

Boston Daniels Park in Kansas City, Kansas was recently rededicated after a major redevelopment. But the most important part is not the equipment, the landscaping or the site design – it’s what it means for the neighborhood.

City officials, community activists, neighbors and friends gathered to rededicate the park on Quindaro Boulevard, and we heard story after story about how far the site, and the neighborhood, had fallen in the past 20 years, but this one piece of ground was the foundation upon which the entire neighborhood could begin to rebuild.

“We've taken this park back from blight and dysfunction, and made it something beautiful,” KCK Mayor Tyrone Garner said, “took blight and made it bright in honor of Boston Daniels.”

Boston Daniels worked his way up the ranks of the KCK police department and became its first black police chief until retiring in 1971. He spent every day serving his community, rather than policing it. He inspired others to do good and fought to make KCK a safe place to live. And it was his family that made it their mission to carry on his legacy and make one little corner of the city the brightest spark in town.

It’s been a privilege to be trusted with a vision and a legacy as pivotal as his, and it was a unique reward to see what a little park can and does mean to so many.

You can read more about Boston Daniels and the park opening here:  

https://www.kcur.org/housing-development-section/2025-08-21/kansas-city-kansas-took-blight-and-made-it-bright-at-revamped-park-honoring-a-black-police-chief