Stinson's Kansas City Neighborhood Partnership Project Celebrates 10 Years

06.07.2019

Stinson LLP celebrates 10 years of partnership and service between the Marlborough Community Coalition (MCC), Legal Aid of Western Missouri (LAWMO) and the firm in this Adopt-a-Neighborhood program. The anniversary is being celebrated at a reception today at the Marlborough Catalyst Center in Kansas City.

The collaboration was the founding partnership of LAWMO's Adopt-a-Neighborhood project, pairing law firms with economically distressed neighborhoods in Kansas City. In 2009, the firm's Kansas City office, in conjunction with LAWMO, helped five local neighborhoods establish and obtain 501(c)(3) status for the MCC, to form a collective neighborhood organization focused on increasing homeownership, economic growth and high quality education opportunities.

For 10 years, the firm has represented the MCC and its residents to help facilitate compatible new development and redevelopment projects, encourage rehabilitation of the neighborhood's housing through the Abandoned Housing Act and nuisance actions, and restore access to health care, healthy food and recreational spaces.

Throughout the partnership, more than 90 Stinson attorneys and paralegals in Kansas City have donated nearly 4,000 hours of pro bono service to the coalition and individual residents of the Marlborough neighborhood, with attorneys Rich Cook and Jere Sellers currently acting as lead attorneys for the project. Following years of successful outcomes as a result of the Marlborough partnership, LAWMO received a grant to implement the program with seven new law firms and neighborhoods in the city's urban core. The concept has also been replicated in the firm's Minneapolis and St. Louis offices.