Brad Pitt's foundation to help rehab abandoned Kansas City school building

KANSAS CITY, Mo - The announcement is about new housing in Kansas City's Green Impact Zone, but most people just want to know when Brad Pitt will be in Kansas City.

Pitt's Make It Right Foundation , which has worked to rebuild New Orleans with sustainable housing practices, will be in Kansas City Monday afternoon to announce a new project in the city's urban core.

The former Bancroft school at 43rd and Tracy has been vacant for more than a decade. It will be renovated to LEED platinum status, which involves using energy saving and sustainable features.

Tim Duggan is an architect and KC native who works with the foundation. He told 41 Action News that the school will be turned into 29 housing units, with 21 more units in a new building on the grounds.

Duggan said the units will have a "modernistic, contemporary feel", in contrast with the historic features of the old school.

The Manheim Neighborhood Association has been helping with design features over the past 10 months.

Truman Medical Center is one of the local partners in the project. The renovation will include community spaces like a garden and auditorium, and a neighborhood health clinic.

Stephen Boyd lives about a block away and went to school at Bancroft. He's excited about the help coming to the neighborhood, and hopes it brings additional rehab work. Bancroft is on a blighted block that only has a few families still living on it.

Duggan said the total project is $14 million dollars. Most of that will come from historic and affordable housing tax credits. Make It Right will contribute $2.3 million in private funding, and Duggan said half of that has already been donated.

Pitt started the Make It Right project to help rebuild New Orleans. It has focused on the Lower 9th Ward, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

His foundation approached the Green Impact Zone because its sustainability mission fit with the foundation's work.

This could be the biggest private investment since the Green Impact Zone started almost three years ago.

The zone is an area of KC's urban core that the congressman has been trying to rebuild using green technology and federal stimulus funding. It has been criticized for lack of progress, although it has provided weatherization for many private homes and money for a new bridge on Troost.

The KC groundbreaking will probably be this summer, which is when Pitt could make a personal appearance.

Pitt grew up in Springfield, Mo., and attended the University of Missouri before becoming an acting superstar.