Rebuilding Westwood: The City of Westwood voted on tearing down Westwood Elementary and the Westwood church, replacing them with a green space and businesses

The Westwood City Council unanimously approved a plan on March 9 to revamp the former Westwood View Elementary building and Westwood Christian Church on Rainbow Blvd. into a green-space park and business buildings.

Karbank Real Estate — based in Mission Woods — presented the plan two years after city council and Westwood Mayor and East parent David Waters began considering the remodel.

“I think [having] a park can become a gathering place for our community,” Waters said. “It can be a place for generations of people to be able to come and all be together in the same green-space.”

Though the plan is halted until at least 2025 due to the former elementary school being occupied by a refurbishing Rushton Elementary School, real estate agent Steven Karbank states that 3.5 out of the elementary school’s 4.5-acre property will be turned into a park and green-space. The park will be used to potentially host Oktoberfests and other family gathering events or become a Westwood Plaza, according to Waters.

Additionally, four multi-story buildings and an underground parking garage will replace the land where the Westwood Christian Church was located. While plans are not finalized, the city council has also expressed desires to potentially move Westwood City Hall into one of the new business buildings.

“The needs that [Westwood has] have a balanced revenue source between residential property taxes, sales taxes and other things,” Waters said. “Last fall as part of that [research] we did a city facilities study which identified some of the needs that our community has for our municipal buildings and amenities.”

The city council chose Multistudio, a Kansas City-based architecture firm, after requesting proposals for the project from local firms. In an open house on November 5, 2022, the council presented various different layouts and plans for the park and business buildings to the Westwood residents in order to receive feedback. Westwood resident and freshman Jordan O’Brien thinks that the current plan will help local businesses if they choose to move into the area.

“I think that [this plan] could be good for the [selected] businesses because it’s in the center of Westwood and next to Westwood hills, so I think for those businesses, [it will] be a good thing,” O’Brien said.

The council’s approved funding agreement ensures that Karbank Real Estate will provide funding for the development of the buildings while city council will work on the park area, according to Karbank.

“We’re working on the design of the buildings, working on the layout of the site and we’re working on a contract with the city,” Karbank said. “We’re planning various kinds of testing of the site to determine what can be built and how it needs to be built.”

Although the construction of the site on Rainbow Blvd. hasn’t even started, O’Brien has already seen the impacts of a newly built Westwood View building in the community, and she only expects more residents to move into the area once construction starts.

“There’s a lot of kids and [Westwood residents are] saying that [Westwood is] expecting a lot more kids to be moving here because of the new school,” O’Brien said. “I think [the park and businesses] can only bring benefits.”