@BlogKCLooking for a hotspot? In addition to the various national services, here are some wi-fi access points that are free and/or in popular visitor destinations.
Downtown
- Town Pavilion – large office buildng with a hotspot in the third floor food court. 12th & Main Streets.
- Crown Center – fast, 802.11g access available in the food court on the lower level
- Union Station – available in the main lobby and Union Cafe. Antenna is on top of the information booth (more info)
- Ilus Davis Park, a.k.a. The Civic Mall – 11th and Oak (between City Hall and the federal courthouse), and the Subway restaurant on the Oak Street Garage on the southwest corner.
- Barney Allis Plaza (12th and Wyandotte Streets, next to Bartle Hall)
- Central Library – Downtown at 10th and Baltimore Streets. More info
- North-East and Ruiz branch libraries.
- Cup and Saucer - 412B Delaware Street, Downtown in the River Market neighborhood.
- Tchoupitoulas - Coffee/wine bar in Downtown in the Crossroads districts, 1526 Walnut.
- The Brick – bar/restaurant/live music at 18th and McGee in the Crossroads.
- Mildred’s Coffee House – 1821 Wyandotte in the Crossroads and 920 Main Suite 209 in the loop.
Midtown and Westport
- Westport Coffee House – 40th and Pennsylvania.
- Tea Drops – tea house at 4111 Pennsylvania.
- Mesa Wraps – 4129 Pennsylvania in Westport.
- Fric & Frac – Neighborhood restaurant/bar near Westport, 1700 West 39th Street.
- Room 39 - coffeehouse and cafe. 1719 W. 39th St., between Bell and Genessee.
- Crave Cafe – Coffee house. 1615 W. 39th St., between Wyoming and Genessee.
Plaza and South KC
- Plaza Branch Library – 4801 Main Street on the south side of the Country Club Plaza. 802.11g throughout the public areas of the library.
- Cherries Frozen Custard Bistro – 428 Ward Parkway on the Plaza.
- O’Dowd’s Little Dublin – Irish pub/restaurant, 48th and Pennsylvania on the Plaza.
- Muddy’s Coffee House – 51st Street between Oak and Brookside Blvd, next to UMKC .
- Roasterie Cafe – New coffee house from the folks at KC’s local coffee roaster. Located in the Brookside shopping area at 6223 Brookside Blvd. Laptop and bicycle friendly, adjacent to the Trolley Track Trail.
Northland
- Zona Rosa – I-29 and Barry Road. Outdoor shopping/entertainment district. First 15 minutes free. Very close to the airport.
- Perfect Cup Coffee – 7825 N Oak
- Espresso dell’Anatra – I-35 and Chouteau
- Illiki Cafe – I-29 and NW 64th St.
Suburbs and Others:
- Panera Bread – all metro locations.
- The Pastry Goddess – bakery, cafe, and coffee in Independence, MO. 20120 E. Jackson Drive in the Hartman Heritage strip mall (eastern suburbs)
- Clancy’s Cafe and Pub – Irish pub at 800 NW Outer Road in Blue Springs, MO. (eastern suburbs)
- Homer’s Coffee House – 7126 W. 80th St. in “downtown” Overland Park, KS. (southwestern suburbs)
- Johnson County Library – select locations in the Kansas suburbs.
Pay access:
- Airport – Sprint’s wi-fi service is available in all terminals at daily rates, and an Expedia.com cafe is located in Terminal C at Gate 76.
- Flash Network – local company building metro-wide network, mostly just in Johnson County and parts of Downtown.
- T-Mobile hotspots in the metro area (includes Starbucks, Borders, Kinko’s)
- Wi-fihospotlist.com directory for Kansas City, Lee’s Summit, and Johnson County.
- Search for wi-fi hotspots by location with Google
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All of the Panera Bread locations have WiFi I believe. You can just drive up and access it all you want, even if they’re closed!
Clancys has free wireless in Blue Springs.
The Perfect Cup, in the northland at 7825 N Oak Trafficway,
has free WIFI. Family owned and run, fair trade coffee, and
best coffee in the northland.
Please add Mesa Wraps Eclectic Burritos at 4129 Pennsylvania in Westport, Kansas City, MO to your lis of free WI-FI spots in Kansas City. Patrons are welcome to bring in their laptop and surf or work. Thanks. NLK
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Just found The Pastry Goddess. Free internet access and the BEST cheesecake there is!
Jeff, you are right, the Pastry Goddess is great. And for all you central city folks, there is something worth the trip to Eastern Jackson County!
(It is located at I-70 & Little Blue Parkway).
Todd, I was in The Pastry Goddess again today and there were like 3 people using the WiFi at the same time. Guess WiFi is becoming popular out here. I still got great speed (and of course great cheesecake!!!)
And if you’re bowling, I believe park Lanes should be up and running by now
there is also 802.11g access in the bar area of Johnny O’Quigley’s on NW 64th st. FYI, might want to list them, I kinda found out by accident and they said it was open to customers mainly for watching their fantasy teams while they watch all the games.
KU Med has a public 802.11 A/B/G network. It comes from the main hospital building. SSID: Internet (broadcast)
Anyone know of some free spots in Lees Summit?
Kyle,
Come out to The Pastry Goddess.
It’s not too far from Lee’s Summit – Independence Center. Great stuff and very fast wireless!
Junction Gourmet Coffee shop-This is for the folks out south in JC
Open 24 hours – Free Wifi-coffee shop and restaurant. This place just opened last month–Good prices — good food — cool location – you can watch the SF trains go by all night long.
87th and I-35—-12804 Santa Fe Trail Drive– Lenexa, Ks
913-2270117
Thanks for all the suggestions, folks. Unfortunately it’s beyond the scope of this blog to keep up with rapidly expanding number of hotspots. I am just focusing on the main areas of the city like Downtown, Midtown, Plaza, and airport. Other places like Jwire or Google do a good job covering the whole metro area.
Are there any hot spots in the Raytown area?
Lees Summit has the Java Internet Cafe on the 700 block of SE Blue Parkway, zip 64063. Great coffee and lounge designed for comfort. Leather chairs, multiple computers open for public use, wifi for laptops. Try it, you’ll like it.
The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art at 4420 Warwick Blvd. in Kansas City, MO, also offers free Wi-Fi access.
The Johnson County Library finally has wi-fi at its Central Resource Library as well as its Blue Valley, Leawood, Antioch and Corinth branches. It’s hardly worth bothering with, though. It’s web-only (I couldn’t even download antivirus updates, let alone receive POP mail) and VERY heavily filtered.
Looking to have a drink and surf the net??? Free WiFi is available at SidePockets at 169 & Englewood Road in the Northland. People are playing party poker with their friends all the time.
Kansas City Public Library’s North-East branch at 6000 Wilson Road now has wi-fi. Bring an extra battery if you’re going to use it for a wihle, however. They don’t have any laptop-ready tables, and I didn’t see any easily reachable power outlets near any of the chairs.
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For my work I just need to plug my computer into a phone line and send my orders in to a 800 number. Also download new info from my home office in Iowa. Is there anywhere near 64th street I can do this?
Looking for free WiFi access in Johnson County then check out Johnson County Library at http://www.jocolibrary.org. The library has free WiFi access at the following locations:
Central Resource Library
9875 W. 87th St.
Overland Park, KS 66212
(913) 495-2400
Antioch Library
8700 Shawnee Mission Parkway
Merriam, KS 66202
(913) 261-2300
Blue Valley Library
9000 W. 151st
Overland Park, KS 66221
(913) 495-3850
Corinth Library
8100 Mission Rd.
Prairie Village, KS 66208
(913) 967-8650
Leawood Pioneer Library
4700 Town Center Dr.
Leawood, KS 66211
(913) 344-0250
Mesa Wraps has moved to 4120 Pennsylvania in the Westport Horseshoe – still a WIFI hotspot! Thanks.
There is free internet at Paddy O’Quigley’s in Lee’s Summit and it is a great signal.
McDonalds – Legends (Kansas Speedway)
This new McDonalds has Free WIFI, even during lunch. Due to a problem with the private WIFI from Wendy’s, make certain that you’re linking up with the one identified as McDonalds.
All MCC-Metropolitan Community Colleges have hotspots in various areas, mostly the libraries, snack bars/cafeteria areas, and designated classrooms.
Greetings and Hello to ALL, my name is Ella, from Birmingham, AL. Your site is very easy to navigate, informative, and it contained the information on the subject I needed for my research paper, Have a nice day!
Okay, I have set up a database driven site of which is dedicated to the listing and discussion of WiFi Hotspots in and around the Kansas City Metro Area. Check it out…
http://antagonyst.org/wifi
No advertising, no banners, privately owned domain with plenty of storage for the database.
excellent blog i love this article
Futura Technologies LLC a wireless internet/WiMax service provider based out of Overland Park, KS; is deploying Kansas City proper with their next generation technology. This will bring the same wireless technology and coverage that exists in San Francisco, Philadelphia and other major cities to Kansas City. Rates for wi-fi will start at $19.99 a month and include free roaming to any of Futura’s coverage areas. Futura will also provide businesses with wireless T-1′s for $399.99. You can pre signup by contacting sales@futurtechnologies.net
The Kansas City Public Library has “lit up” the following branches:
Waldo Community Branch, 201 E. 75th Street
Westport Branch, 118 Westport Road (but there are signs all over the place warning that you can only sit for two hours a day-I’m not kidding!)
Trails West Branch, 11401 E. 23rd Street, Independence
Southeast Branch, 6242 Swope Parkway
Lucile H. Bluford Branch, 3050 Prospect
These last two don’t appear as such on the library’s website, but I’ve been to both and they’re unwired.
Chances are the Sugar Creek Branch at 102 S. Sterling in Sugar Creek (duh!) will be finished within the next few days.
Also, Dunn Bros. Coffee has a location here now with a hotspot. It’s in the Red Bridge Shopping Center at 535 E. 111th Street.
A couple of free hotspots in the Legends Shopping Center across from the Kansas Speedway in KCK:
Yard House Restaurant, Suite 101
Scooter’s Coffeehouse, Suite 103
And I’m really not a fan of “play-for-pay” access, but the McDonald’s restaurant out there is a Wayport/AT&T location.
The Wi-Fi at KCI is now free, according to both the link in the “Pay access” section above and a recent story in the Kansas City Business Journal.
Also, the KCMO Public Library now lists all of its locations as having wireless Internet, so Sugar Creek should be lit up.
Come one, come all to the Kansas City Premiere of …
THE STAR CHAMBER
a comic and cosmic farce about
truth, the universe & pudding
“a piece of inspired lunacy”
Brendan McNally, playwright, Ottawa Fringe Festival
at the Arts Incubator
Thursday 8PM
Friday 6:30PM
Saturday 11:00PM
Sunday 3:30PM
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Hey there is a place on blogger.com called kcwifi or they have a url of http://www.freekchotspot where you can find out free wifi places in kc. Plus they have like real reviews of the places they visit. i noticed they haea free publication available.
I’ve got a blog over there too that everyone might want to look at:
kc-free-hotspots.blogspot.com
Hi, I live in Blue Summit, KC MO, about 10 mins from Independence and 15 from downtown.I used to live in North East and had DSL but it is not available here so I am stuck with dial-up or paying comcast some crazy fee each month.
Soo.. I am investigating wireless internet and wireless ISPs but I have some basic stupid questions that I need answered first because I know next to nothing about wireless.. so here goes
1) If I can’t get DSL in my area does that mean I can’t get Wireless either?
2) What equipment would I have to buy for my PC to make it wireless ready?
3) I know about hotspots but can I subscribe to an ISP for wireless instead of using hotspots as I am sure none exist here.
4) How safe is it in terms of hackers etc?
Any advice would be wonderful!
Thanks, Gaby
Gaby, do you have a desktop computer or a laptop? If the former, you’re stuck with dialup or paying Comcast some crazy fee each month, unless they’re offering a special deal (which I think they usually do).
The wireless Internet access discussed on this blog is only available through Wi-Fi, or wireless Ethernet, which is a short-range technology usually only receivable within about a hundred yards of an access point at the most. Therefore, you’ve got to have a laptop in order to use it, and you can only use it away from home unless you buy your own access point/router and hook it to your broadband connection. While it’s POSSIBLE to access or share a dialup connection via Wi-Fi-I’ve done it-I think I’d just as soon bite the bullet and pay for broadband. It’s not worth the hassles or the slow speed.
If you have a laptop, though, there is another possibility for wireless at home. If your laptop has a PC Card slot you can buy a cellular card from Verizon, Sprint or Cingular to access their wide-area-wireless networks. Be forewarned, though, that Comcast may be a better deal. I think “unlimited” access (which really isn’t, according to some reports) goes for between $80-$100 per month for access that’s nowhere near as fast as what you’d get from cable.
So, to answer your questions directly, in order:
1) Not necessarily, but it won’t be cheap.
2) If you just want to connect it to a home network, you’ll need both a Wi-Fi access point/router, and an adapter for the computer. Frankly I wouldn’t bother with buying an adapter for a desktop computer (assuming you have a laptop as well and you want to share files with the desktop). I’d just place the router near it and hardwire them together. Chances are that if your laptop is less than three or four years old it already has Wi-Fi built in. That’s all you’ll need for hotspots as well. If you decide to go the wide-area route, the celluar company you go with will sell you the card you need.
3) Yes-the cellular option I described above.
4) As far as I know the wide-area cellular networks are encrypted and thus should be relatively safe. If you decide to bite the bullet and get cable broadband, you’ll have to set up encryption on your access point and adapter to keep others from being able to use your connection. Hotspots are generally “open” (read unencrypted) so it’s possible others can see what you’re doing unless you’re on a website that uses SSL encryption (the little lock icon that your browser shows on banking websites and the like) or you’re using a virtual private network.
LEE’S SUMMIT FOLKS:
The Dairy Queen at 4th and Douglas went Wi-Fi, and its free too.
Who could refuse a Peanut Buster Parfait while surfin’ the net? Seriously.
WiFi at the airport is free now.
Perfect Cup closed.
Just a few doors down, coffee shop and WIFI
Back2Life Coffee Bar
http://www.back2life.us/