Comments on: Orange Revolution

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:59:15 +0000

The city’s biggest tourist draw, the Country Club Plaza, is also almost entirely national chains. Yet it is enormously popular, and at any given time about 70% of the patrons are from out of town. It’s far away from the convention center, and there is certainly no arena to further help it along.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:37:37 +0000

It won’t have to be all that unique or interesting, it’ll be bars and restaurants conveniently there when the arena has events. Plus, it’ll be very attractive when courting conventions. We have lost countless conventions because they are normally held downtown and downtown had nothing to offer in terms of entertainment after dark. Every out-of-town tax dollar means that we residents are one dollar closer to paying it off with someone else’s money. Plus more convention money means more, better jobs. It’s an investment in our city’s future. Why are there so many huffalumps with no sense of vision or possibility?

By: stacey

stacey — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 16:55:25 +0000

Unless the area gets some local flavor and not just more of the same old national chains that you can find anywhere, I don’t see it ever becoming vibrant and interesting. Kemper doesn’t get that much trafic at night unless there is an event, so the Sprint Center replacing it will not really boost traffic. The area around the center has to be interesting, and it’s not.

By: jeanne

jeanne — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 04:58:52 +0000

and we’ll still be paying for Kemper

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 03:30:16 +0000

Downtown is not yet a “shining beacon” after dark because the projects are not finished. When Sprint Center opens and basically replaces Kemper, there will be a lot of foot traffic at night. There will be events there on a regular basis, major tenant or not.

By: stacey

stacey — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 22:50:03 +0000

Downtown may be better than it was, but it’s far from a shining beacon guiding people in from afar. It’s a fairly clean ghost town. I feel less comfortable walking downtown with so few people than I do walking in Westport with all its assorted problems.

By: patrick

patrick — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:15:05 +0000

Agreed, Ryan. One long-standing Downtown attraction is the Crossroads district. That was started by artists and grew organically from there. Kay Barnes had nothing to do with that. A lot of credit is due to “urban pioneer” artists, small businesses and residents for at least demonstrating downtown could be a viable area.

The “River-Crown-Plaza” was not the tipping point for downtown redevelopment. The revitalization of the River Market area happened under Emmanuel Cleaver. Barnes is a couple years late in coming to the downtown redevelopment table.

Besides, “River-Crown-Plaza” or “String of Pearls” plan never did pan out. There has admittedly been a ton of development downtown. But Crown Center has been left to it’s own devices, and Barnes has thrown TIF money at the one of the city’s ritzy shopping districts. She completely ignored the Midtown area, from roughly 29th Street to 39th, completely. Broadway, Main and the surrounding neighborhoods haven’t thrived under her neglect.

Any “progress” made has yet to live up to it’s potential because so much of it remains half built and empty. For the new development has been completed, no one has even tried to quantify the benefits in terms of the number of jobs or additional tax revenue.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:08:39 +0000

Revitalizing downtown was and is important. And yes, Kay does deserve credit for it. Good for people who are opening businesses there, but the businesses would have a much harder go of it if downtown was still the scary, ugly, abandoned place it was just a few years ago. And yes, the Brooks campaign was an astonishingly lame one. I assume they didn’t try very hard because they thought they would win anyway. I can’t think of another explanation. The main reason I voted for Funkhouser is because I feel that Brooks is too old.

By: Johannsen

Johannsen — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:40:33 +0000

I just can’t believe how poorly the Brooks campaign was run – probably the worst run major political campaign I’ve ever seen. It wouldn’t have taken much to crush the Funk, regardless of all this “revolution” talk. KC is in better shape now than it’s been in 30 years.

By: ryan

ryan — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:25:13 +0000

I see. I’m glad that Kay Barnes is to thank for the downtown revival, while myself and all the “little people” who moved there and opened businesses there because we always wanted to had nothing to do with it.