Kansas City is preparing to restore the building where the Negro National League was founded.
The Kansas City Star reports the effort to upgrade the building near the 18th and Vine Jazz District comes just months before the 100th anniversary of the league's founding.
The Kansas City Council on Thursday fast-tracked an ordinance to take over the Buck O'Neil Research and Education Center. The building was known as the Paseo YMCA when independent baseball team owners met there in 1920 to establish what became the Negro Leagues.
Under the ordinance, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will donate the building to the city, which will spend $1 million from its one-cent sales tax for public improvements and more than $283,000 in state tax credits to restore the basement and ground level.
