Bill Haw Jr., owner of Haw Contemporary gallery, sits at the same table his late father occupied inside The Ox Cafe and Bakery in the Livestock Exchange Building. (photo by Jim Barcus)
Residents, artists and business respond to the development of 1,200 new apartments on the north side of 12th Street
We call it the West Bottoms now, but the strip of land where the Missouri and Kansas Rivers meet was originally known as the French Bottoms, so named because the first Europeans to settle there were trappers and traders from France.
By the 1880s, French farms were gone, and the lowlands were booming. The train station, the stockyards and the “wettest block in the world” drove the young town’s economy. At least until floods and changing modes of transport eventually sent much of the action elsewhere.
By the 1980s, the American Royal, Kemper Arena and a few haunted houses felt like the last lights burning in the Historic West Bottoms. So artists did what they always do: They moved in for the low rents and large workspaces. Antique dealers and flea markets soon joined them, spawning First Weekend events that still clog the crumbling streets.
Now a new phase of the West Bottoms’ life cycle has officially begun. In 2024, dignitaries armed with golden shovels turned the first dirt in the city’s most ambitious development project since the Power & Light District nearly 20 years ago.
SomeraRoad, a New York firm with a glossy resume from projects in Nashville, Memphis and Pittsburgh, is building 1,200 new apartments — a mix of renovations and new construction involving at least eight factories and warehouses north of 12th St. Their “live-work-play” approach will include offices, retail, a hotel and an urban greenspace near The Ship on Union Street.
The 527-million-dollar long-term project has generated both enthusiasm and fears that gentrification will drive the area’s current occupants out. “It’s taken a long time to happen,” Bill Haw Jr. said over coffee at the Ox Cafe on a crisp fall morning. “It was always going to be the next big thing for like the last 20, 30 years.”
Haw knows the West Bottoms well. His father bought the Livestock Exchange Building in 1991 and rented space to artists like Wilbur Niewald at rates the younger Haw (who runs the place now) still chuckles about. His own gallery, Haw Contemporary on Liberty Street, picked up where the legendary Dolphin left off over a decade ago. While he expects the new housing will quickly find takers, Haw doubts it will bring large numbers of art patrons through his door.
“But it might help this building,” he said. “It might help us keep a waiting list of people who want to office here. It can all co-exist.
“I think whenever there’s change, people instinctively don’t like it. But when I look at the efforts SomeraRoad is making, I really think they’re trying to do things in a way that’s respectful, while still working for them financially.” Haw added that business owners in the Bottoms (and across the metro) already faced down one existential crisis in 2025 — when the Jackson County Legislature proposed raising property taxes, in some cases by as much as 700%. A last-minute reprieve capped the increases at 15%. For now.
Ian Davis at Blip Coffee Roasters on Woodswether Road was among those who questioned the way the county’s process was handled. And the “chaos” that could have ensued. He also expressed disappointment that locals were largely left out of the West Bottoms redevelopment process, though he understands it’s a tough league to play in.
“These are big buildings. They take a huge amount of work to bring them up to code, to get the infrastructure working again,” Davis said. “So they’re not easy, not everyone can do it. I’m just glad they decided not to tear everything down.
“What I will continue to work on is local ownership. Investment from the city, investment from the county. Not just out of town and out of state folks.”
In the 11 years since Davis opened Blip, he’s seen businesses come and go. But ambitious new endeavors like the Rock Island Bridge Entertainment District and the Woodswether Port Terminal suggest that the area’s central location has begun to find favor again.
“The West Bottoms is so vibrant and so diverse. It might look really industrial, but right around the corner we’ve got a greenhouse. There are furniture companies . . . or if you need an air conditioner or striping done in a parking lot, or just a sandwich and a beer. It’s like every type of business you could imagine. And you’ve got trail systems down here that connect to rivers and bicycle paths too.”
One thing the West Bottoms doesn’t have (yet) is a stoplight. And as painter Laura Nugent points out, confused drivers on one-way streets can make things, uh, exciting. Nugent moved her studio to the Holsum Foods Building next to the 12th Street Viaduct five years ago. She likes the community she’s found both inside and outside the old factory.
“It’s really a neighborhood,” Nugent said. “Maybe it’s not a traditional neighborhood, but there are people who are here every day. You might not have a hundred options to go to lunch, maybe you’ve got three or four. So you become familiar with those, and the people who work there.”
Nugent has nothing but praise for the Holsum’s owner, Joey Grimm. She hopes he’ll be able to navigate the next rounds of tax hikes and fiscal pressures those new neighbors might bring. Meanwhile, she’s got a good view of the progress underway on the first piece of SomeraRoad’s construction puzzle — the old Moline Plow Company building at 10th & Mulberry.
“I’m trying to maintain the attitude that it’s such a long process that it could be a decade before it’s really noticeable,” she said. “And artists are used to having to move on anyway.” Her partner, Mark Hennick, has already resigned himself to doing just that.
“Picking up and trying something different” is what artists do, he shrugged. “Otherwise, you accumulate too much. Ten years is about the cutoff. And we’ve been here for five.”
For some artists, it could be a rerun of what they saw happen in the Crossroads. Brady Vest, for example. He was among the area’s early adopters. But in 2020, when the costs got too high, he moved his Hammerpress print studio and design shop to a West Bottoms warehouse on 11th Street.
Vest shares the building with a photographer and several other artists who rent space upstairs. Based on experience, does he believe that a revitalized, more populous West Bottoms will mean more prosperity for urban pioneers like him?
“I’m reserving judgment for now,” Vest answered cautiously. “I hope too many people don’t have to leave. Rents will increase. So you’ve got to have more people spending money. I’ve kind of given up trying to predict any of that.
“I think I’m slightly skeptical, like a lot of people are. But I hope that it results in good things.”
