Diane Forgy, CEO of Overland Limousine Service, agreed. She thinks more collective effort is needed to compensate for the city’s natural spread, although she acknowledged that “we’re getting better at consolidating and clustering our entertainment and hotels.”

George Guastello, the CEO of Union Station, argued for an incremental approach to connecting the various sites. As he noted, the transportation hub, Union Station, is now only five blocks from the performing arts center. And Union Station connects by walkway to Crown Center with Sea Life and LegoLand and sits across the street from the World War I Museum. As a first step, he recommended an obvious and accessible vehicle that runs from the Convention Center to Union Station—a straight route barely more than a mile.

This route would connect the convention centers and the most world-renowned performing arts center to the second-largest convention hotel in the Starwoods Properties group, the Sheraton and Westin Crown Center.

It would also take passengers through the culturally vibrant Crossroads District, which most tourists do not even know is there. “Connect those,” said Guastello, “and we’ll see what we have.”

“A lot of times,” affirmed Rick Hughes, “transportation is more than getting from point A to point B. It’s the psychological effect.” In cities like Chicago and New York, people think nothing of walking a mile from point to point “because you have the visuals.”

Bill George argued for setting up Union Station as the cultural/ transportation hub of Kansas City. There, tourists would be able to buy tickets, arrange tours, get advice, and, importantly, find subsidized transportation to every major attraction in the metropolitan area. “It would be a temporary solution until a more permanent solution comes down the road,” said George.

As Guastello pointed out, six or seven passenger trains a day still come into Union Station. He recommended a welcoming area to do exactly what Bill George recommended. He suggested too that for kids who have never been on a train, it would be easy to arrange a trip to Lee’s Summit and back. “It’s not rocket science,” said Guastello, “and we’re already doing it with no money.”

“If you ask me, do we need a 2-mile street car line as an initial step, you bet,” said Bill Dietrich. Phase Two in his program would connect that line to the Plaza. Phase Three would feature a regional line connected to a larger system. “That’s how you tie these wonderful assets together in an effective, efficient, and fun way for people to move between the assets,” said Dietrich.

The challenge, as Dietrich acknowledged, is that the federal government is moving away from helping cities make investments in infrastructure. “Those cities that figure out how to do public-private partnerships and invest in themselves will continue to see growth,” said Dietrich, “and the rest of the cities are going to stagnate for the next 20 years.”

Lodging

Although there has been consistent growth during the past two years in hotel rooms filled metro-wide, there remain widely divergent opinions on whether the city needs a new, 1,000-room Downtown convention-center hotel.

As past chairman of the Convention & Visitors Association, Bill George has spent about two years on this hotel project. He has seen the statistics and the financials, but he has also seen the comments from the guests that the
No. 1 obstacle to selling the city is the availability of first-class hotel rooms within walking distance of the Convention Center. The idea of putting 365,000 available rooms per year in a market already at less than capacity is, however, not an easy sell.