History of Our Mission

Oak Street Viaduct looking north towards 19th Street, Kansas City, 1952. @kansascity

UC-B Properties was established in 2012 by merging Urban Coeur Properties and Bridger Properties into one company led by Lance Carlton and John Hoffman. Their mission has been and will continue to be rebuilding urban Kansas City.

UC-B is committed to erasing a decades-old stigma that living in the urban core is inferior to living in the suburbs. Beautiful urban neighborhoods were built from the 1880s to the late 20th century, but in the 1950s, with the desegregation of public schools and the creation of a highway system that circled the Kansas City urban core, many families chose to leave “older” neighborhoods and “inferior” school systems for new suburban developments. There were efforts to deal with civil rights issues in the 1960s and again in the decades that followed but it wasn’t until the turn of the century that we began to see a major shift and reinvestment in the urban core that had become blighted and derelict. In 2002, young people returned to the urban core, drawn to older buildings being restored in the River Market, downtown Kansas City, the Crossroads and Westport. Over the last two decades, we’ve seen a major revitalization of these areas and UC-B Properties has been catalytic in helping to return urban living as a desired destination not only for young people but also for a growing number of families and empty nesters.