18-05-2025
Surrounded by closed bridges, famed KC-area BBQ place is ‘dying on the vine'
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Mike Pearce describes the Central Avenue corridor in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, as the kind of place you don't want to leave — if you can make it there.
Bridge closures and endless detours complicate that.
'It's salt of the earth people. We're out here trying every day to make our little area here just gorgeous and awesome,' said Pearce, adjusting his charcoal gray ballcap and gazing out at the neighborhood on a recent Friday morning from the raised patio seating outside Slap's BBQ.
After taking the competitive barbecue scene by storm and starring in TLC's 'BBQ Pitmasters,' he and his brother, Joe, opened the joint 11 years ago, just minutes from their boyhood home in Strawberry Hill.
They've racked up awards, guest appearances and coveted spots on regional and national barbecue restaurant rankings, drawing hungry patrons from around the country to their modest barn-style building in downtown KCK.
'We love it here. We're here for the long haul if we can stay alive,' Pearce said.
But when the Central Avenue Bridge spanning the Kansas River between KCK and Kansas City closed in 2021, the restaurant's bottom line immediately took a 15-20% hit, he said.
Four years later, repair work is just getting underway on the Central Avenue Bridge, along with the nearby Interstate 670 Bridge.
The Kansas Department of Transportation is now managing six bridge projects in Wyandotte County associated with three complete closures, several partial closures and additional lane restrictions.
The much-anticipated opening of the Rock Island Bridge between Armourdale and the West Bottoms — a separate project being managed by private developers — has been delayed from spring to fall of 2025.
And another major artery connecting the two states, the Kansas Avenue Bridge, remains blocked off indefinitely while local officials work to secure funding for its repair or replacement.
Frustration is mounting for residents and business owners who say they don't know why new projects are being undertaken before bridges already under construction can be opened to commuters.
Pearce said his restaurant is a 'working lunch kind of place.' When diners can't get in and out quickly, they go somewhere else.
'We live and die by the good weather months, so if there's anything that becomes an obstruction on those months when you're just barely staying alive or potentially losing money and just trying to keep your employees employed, those things, the impact of those is proportionally much greater,' Pearce said.
He said he doesn't doubt that local officials have residents' and business owners' best interests in mind. But he feels there's a lack of urgency around construction projects that are choking off access to KCK.
'I don't want to sit here and complain about those guys too much because KCK got us up and running in two seconds flat,' Pearce said. 'It's still got a small-town feel when we need to work through problems.'
Although he's excited that work is finally underway on the Central Avenue Bridge, his patience is running thin.
'We're slowly dying on the vine.'
Rose Eilts, president of the Strawberry Hill Neighborhood Association, said her vibrant community has started to feel like an island in recent years.
'We're pretty much surrounded by bridges and the lack thereof,' Eilts said.
'It increases everybody's commute time, makes it inconvenient, and it keeps people from visiting us and our businesses and keeps us from getting out to our work and other places,' Eilts said.
When the Lewis and Clark Viaduct Bridge closed abruptly for several months over the winter, Strawberry Hill residents received an influx of confused motorists on their narrow streets, including semi-truck drivers who needed help backing out, Eilts said.
Detours have been an endless source of frustration for Shawn Hensley, a regional operations manager at trucking company Dana, which owns two yards and a rail transfer facility in KCK.
'One of my yards is directly across the river off the Central bridge, so it used to be a two-minute drive, and now they've got to go all the way around I-70, come down James Street,' he said.
Hensley, who fights traffic every day to get to work from his home in Blue Springs, said he's just waiting for the James Street Bridge to be put out of service because of all the extra traffic it's taken on.
'It just adds time, and time's everything anymore,' Hensley said.
'You add fifteen minutes to every trip and then the day's over before you even get started, it seems like.'
As work kicks into high gear across the Kansas City metro to address aging infrastructure ahead of next year's World Cup, KCK residents increasingly find themselves cut off from the nearby communities they're used to traveling freely between.
Besides the Central Avenue/I-670 repairs, KDOT's Wyandotte County projects include work on multiple Interstate 435 bridges, the 18th Street Bridge, the Turner Diagonal Freeway and the KS-32 bridge, and a K-5 bridge deck replacement that's scheduled to start this week.
'Coordinating projects in a densely populated area that encompasses numerous roadways and multiple public entities' needs can present challenges,' agency spokesperson Philip Harris told The Star in an email.
Projects managed by other entities, including the railroads and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, can compound those challenges, he said.
'The logistics of project delivery are complicated and KDOT acknowledges the potential for frustration,' said Harris, noting that the agency is in regular contact with the Unified Government about the status of its projects.
Some residents are skeptical about whether the overlapping layers of government are doing everything they can to coordinate — especially when multiple nearby bridges are closed at once.
'That's the frustrating part — thinking that the agencies with this much expertise on transportation and infrastructure would have their act together,' said Jim Schneweis, a retired high school teacher who lives in the Cathedral neighborhood.
'We can't get to our doctor's offices, grocery stores — even to other parts of the city. More importantly, we have people who can't get into the city. It's real difficult for people that own businesses here that rely on people from outside the Kansas City, Kansas, area to come in.'
Disruptions to north-south traffic in the middle of the city have also proven detrimental to local retailers.
Jorge Salazar, owner of Tapatio Mexican Grill on 18th Street, said he's noticed a steep decline in customers since the closure of the 18th Street bridge in February.
'It's hurting a lot,' Salazar said.
'I know a lot of customers, they say, 'I don't order right now because the bridge is closed.'
Schneweis said he also worries about whether first responders can quickly make it to his neighborhood if they're needed.
The Kansas City Kansas Fire Department falls short of national standards that recommend departments send out four firefighters per truck and meet a four-minute travel time between station and response scene during at least 90% of incidents called in.
A spokesperson for KCKFD said advanced planning and real-time adjustments help minimize response time delays.
'Road closures and construction can be inconvenient and sometimes complicate how we respond to emergencies. Fortunately, we have enough resources to adjust quickly,' assistant fire chief Scott Schaunaman said in an email.
Every morning, crews communicate construction updates through emails, Zoom calls and in-person briefings, Schaunaman said. If something comes up unexpectedly, like a train blocking a route, dispatch can send another crew from the other side.
Schneweis said he's unconvinced that response times across the city aren't being affected by the number of construction projects and indefinite closures.
'In our area, it's real difficult to get emergency equipment because of all the closures,' he said. 'As you get further out west, it's not so bad, but for us, it's a nightmare.'
