Kansas City business owner Chris Goode has watched the stretch of Troost Avenue along 30th Street change since opening up Ruby Jean’s Juicery at the intersection nearly eight years ago.
“When we got here, it was dark,” he said. “It was very little activity. There wasn’t a lot going on just even around us, in the immediate vicinity that we can see.”
The area was dotted with empty lots and boarded-up storefronts. Down the block, a dingy muffler shop struggled to stay open and Walt Disney’s old Laugh-O-Gram studio, around the corner, sat crumbling and forgotten…