The 18th and Vine neighborhood includes the Mutual Musicians Foundation, the Gem Theater, the long-time offices of African-American newspaper The Call, the Blue Room jazz club, the American Jazz Museum, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Smaxx Restaurant, a restaurant inside the Juke House and Blues Club, and several apartments and condos.

The neighborhood has long suffered epidemic blight, with huge portions being juggled for decades between unproductive owners and their countless colossal visions and broken promises of rehabilitation.

[6][7][8] In 2001, the Kansas City area manager of Bank of America proposed a $46 million redevelopment of 96 acres of blight across the District but canceled in 2005 ahead of the global crash of 2008, selling much of it to KC native millionaire Ephren W. Taylor II who likened his invisible investments to the comic book antihero The Phantom.

Actually a con artist, Taylor promised in 2006 to develop his large Jazz District property into 42 homes plus a community center or museum within the nearby historic city workhouse castle, but was instead convicted of a Ponzi scheme defrauding Black churchgoers of millions of dollars and then federally imprisoned.

[9] From 2016[3] to 2020,[9] the city government, community, and corporate investors have conducted many proposals for rehabilitation of the historic blight, including a massive $150 million project[10] pending a federal investigation into corruption.