Home Facade Project Demonstrates New Urban Housing Possibilities

The Gem Cultural and Educational Center is partnering with Civic Saint, an urban core housing developer, to unveil a new Home Facade Project on “The Castle” grounds at 2001 Vine Street, Kansas City, Mo. on Thursday (today), April 25, 2024.

The Home Facade Project will feature the outside walls of a home made of bricks of compressed earth along with energy-saving windows featuring InVert [tm] shades.

“We look at community development from a holistic perspective,” Pat Jordan, president of the Gem organization said. Jordan, who is known as a consultant for urban core real estate development projects, has also begun a special housing advocacy group. “When you talk about after-school educational programming for at-risk teens – the core mission of our Gem non-profit organization - you’ve also got to include resources for their parents and families,” she said. “Housing automatically becomes an important part of the conversation”.

Jordan says that attainable, energy-efficient housing is vitally important to wealth-building in urban core communities. “We’re currently experiencing an urban core housing crisis,” Jordan said. “Not only is it affecting low-income residents; but now also middle-income residents in all areas of Kansas City as well”.

PANEL DISCUSSION AT 2000 VINE

The Public is Invited to Attend

Jordan is partnering with Godfrey Riddle, founder of Civic Saint, as hosts of a special Panel Discussion called “Super Abundant Neighborhoods: Regeneration on Kansas City’s East Side” which will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on April 25 at 2000 Vine.

The panel is being held in conjunction with the Kansas City American Institute of Architects’ Design Week. The public is invited to attend and can purchase tickets at the KC Design Week’s web site: https://www.kcdesignweek.org.

Panelists are as follows:

Pat Jordan, president of Pat Jordan & Associates, Inc., is a specialist in community development. Jordan spearheaded the renovation of the Gem Theater in the Historic 18th &

Vine Jazz District. She first served as a development consultant for Jeffrey Smith Development Company for the first KCMO School District adaptive reuse project transforming the D.A. Holmes School into Senior Housing. She also served as project manager for the Morningstar Youth & Family Life Center and project consultant on the 40-unit Morningstar Senior Housing development. Ms. Jordan has served on numerous civic and community organization boards and initiatives. She currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for the Town House Community Development Corporation in Kansas City, KS. Town House CDC just completed a

$40M renovation of a 130-unit Senior Housing project in downtown Kansas City, KS. She also serves as President of the Gem Cultural and Educational Center which has produced performing arts shows and visual arts exhibitions. The non-profit owns the Vine Street Studio and recently pivoted into media production and a new STEAM project. Ms. Jordan was previously appointed Co-Chair of Mayor Sly James' Task Force for the Arts. She is a recipient of the Downtown Kansas City, KS Shareholders Award; the Kansas City, Missouri Economic Development Corporation Cornerstone Award and the coveted Missouri Arts Council Leadership Award. She is also a past Commissioner for the Missouri Housing Development Commission and currently works on several community development projects in Kansas City’s urban core.

Godfrey Riddle, artist and serial social entrepreneur, is driven to create inspiring communities where people reach their full potential. Riddle founded Civic Saint in October 2020 as a protest brand offering affirming apparel and accessories to advance social justice through donations to advocate organizations. Today, informed by his life as a gay, Black man and cancer survivor whose late parents struggled with homeownership, Civic Saint pioneered a process to sustainably produce artful, affordable homes and adaptive communities for revitalization and wealth creation in redlined areas. Its business model prioritizes the environment while eliminating the racial wealth gap through job creation, homeownership, and their ambient economic impacts. His degrees in architecture and city management allowed him to see a need for sustainable, affordable housing but delivered with resilience and beauty to offset the legacy of low-quality investment in Black neighborhoods. Riddle is an Ambassador for American Cancer Society and Board Member of BlaqOut which works to improve healthcare access and social outcomes for Black queer people in Kansas City. Past honors include 2023 National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Main Pitch Winner and Inaugural Communities of Color Pitch Winner, 2023 ACE Champion of Diversity Award, and INK Magazine “30 under 30”.

Doris Sung brings active systems to sustainable design far beyond the simple "greening" of a building. With the belief that buildings can be more sensitive to the changing environment like human skin, she seeks ways to make the building skin dynamic and responsive. Through grant- funded research, she is developing smart materials, such as thermobimetals, to self-ventilate, self-shade, self-structure, self-assemble and self-propel in response to changes in

temperatures--all with zero-energy and no controls. More recently, she is rethinking the liminal

surface of the façade as a part of a city’s infrastructure and designing innovative building products that will improve public health for pedestrians.

Sung .juggles between research and teaching at the University of Southern California. She publishes, lectures and exhibits, internationally while managing to bring her patented inventions to the market. Her TED.com talk has reached 1.3 million views and her list of awards include a Time Magazine Best Invention Award, a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, National AIA Small Projects Award, ‘Architect Magazine’ R+D awards, World Technology Award and the [next idea] award from ARS Electronica. She has been named a fellow of Google’s R+D for the Built Environment, the U.S. Artist, the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio Center) and the Headlands Center for the Arts.

Sung received her M.Arch. degree from Columbia University and her B.A. degree from Princeton University.

Ajia Morris, Founder of both The Greenline Initiative and LocalCode Kansas City. Morris is creating vehicles that increase generational wealth in historically excluded communities through redistributing ownership. Through her businesses, She is responsible for turning low to moderate income renters into homeowners, as well as creating opportunities for low to moderate income community members to invest in commercial real estate development. Morris has created meaningful wealth generating vehicles for low to moderate income families across two touch points: through nontraditional financing of residential real estate development and creation of a marketplace where the same community can easily invest in commercial development projects. The activation of these long vacant properties is revitalizing blighted neighborhoods on the east side of Kansas City, Missouri.

For more information on the project contact Jordan at 816-645-1052 or pjordankc@aol.com.