ENTERTAINMENT & LIFESTYLE

The Only Thing Missing is Time For Sleep

by David Smale

Imagine this: you step out of your condo at 11th and Grand and walk a couple of blocks to the Bagel & Bagel or Starbucks on your way to work at the H&R Block Center. Over the lunch hour, you and a buddy stop for a bite of lunch at KC Masterpiece and then stroll over to the new Sprint Center to tour the Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.

It won’t be the only time you’re in that building today, because later tonight, the Kansas City Tornadoes, the city’s new NHL franchise, play the Dallas Stars. Hockey not your thing? You might head over to the new Performing Arts Center and catch the Kansas City Ballet or the Kansas City Symphony. Following your evening’s entertainment, you stop by the watering hole across the street from the Sprint Center. You don’t worry about finding a way home, because remember, it’s only a couple of blocks away.

Here’s the beauty of this little trip to the land of imagination. It won’t be a dream much longer. The names may change, but you can rest assured that your entertainment, dining, work and living options will be more varied than this space will allow. That’s how exciting the future is for Downtown Kansas City.

More than $3.4 billion of renovation has been completed or is under construction currently in Downtown Kansas City. There is no signature project—there are enough signatures to make a proclamation.

Start with the Kansas City Live! entertainment district. It is a $330 million district that covers seven square blocks between Main and Grand and between 12th and 15th streets. There will be entertainment, restaurants, retail (most likely a mix of local and national shops), office and residential elements. It will be anchored on the west by the new world headquarters of H&R Block. The retail/entertainment space will comprise 425,000 square feet, enough for that Starbucks to be next to a KC Masterpiece next to an ESPNZone.

“To achieve long-term vitality, we believe the district must be authentic to Kansas City,” said Mike Morris, development director for the Cordish Company, the Baltimore-based developer. “This is achieved through architecture, landscaping, signage, marketing and a merchandising effort that carries great national brand names with unique local restaurants, entertainment and retail concepts.”

Each block will have a theme that will tie into the overall district. An amenity district will include a gourmet grocery store, a health club, a coffee bar and a day spa. There also will be a boutique shopping street and an outdoor plaza with cafes, bistros and an outdoor stage for live events.

“The ability of major anchor retail/entertainment projects to change perceptions—and then ultimately reality—is remarkable,” Morris said. “There is a simplistic but incredibly powerful axiom in the entertainment field: ‘More is more.’

“Unlike traditional hard goods retail, entertainment is an expanding pie. Twenty great restaurants do better in a district than a stand-alone concept with no competition.”

To enhance the “community feel” of the district, Cordish requested, and received, a waiver of the state law that prohibits patrons from entering and leaving an establishment with an alcoholic beverage in hand. Now other districts in Kansas City are wanting to get the same waiver.

Just outside Kansas City Live! is the recently announced AMC Entertainment project that will reincarnate former AMC CEO Stan Durwood’s dream of a theatre complex in the heart of Downtown. The Midland Theatre, with a theatre, restaurant and bar, will anchor the northwest corner of Kansas City Live! The Empire Theatre will anchor the southwest corner and will have either four or six screens, plus a restaurant and bar. The project also includes the renovation of the Midland Office Building into a 40-unit loft building.

The Sprint Center is a $250 million project that will be paid for by a combination of public (hotel and car rental tax) and private (Sprint’s naming rights and Anschutz Entertainment Group’s $50 million investment) money. AEG President Tim Leiweke, who made his name in Kansas City as the creative President of the old Kansas City Comets, is confident that the new arena will entice an NHL or NBA franchise to Kansas City.

How confident is he? “We bet $50 million on it,” he told a local sports radio station after the groundbreaking.

Other sporting events likely will include the Big XII men’s basketball tournament with regularity, as well as an occasional NCAA basketball regional. But the arena will attract more than sporting events.

“Arenas are for more than sports,” Downtown Council Vice President for Business Development Sean O’Byrne said. “They are built as multi-purpose facilities. I go to Kemper more for ‘Disney on Ice’ than I would have for a Blades game, just because I have kids.”

Basketball fans won’t have to wait for a game to get their fill inside the Sprint Center. The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) committed to moving their national offices to the new arena as soon as the plans were revealed. Part of the allure will be the College Basketball Experience, which will include the Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. The Experience will have televisions throughout the venue. As you walk in, you’ll have a chance to grab a basketball and practice your shooting.

“The Experience accurately depicts that it’s more than seeing significant people, because it will be highly interactive,” said NABC Executive Director Jim Haney. “It will be fun and exciting and entertaining. Calling it the College Basketball Hall of Fame would be very staid. People would picture looking at busts and photos. This will be a fun experience.”

Haney notes that there already is a Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., but that one focuses much of its attention on the NBA. “That is true particularly for players. You could be a very successful collegiate player, but without a very successful pro career, you’re not going to get in. This will celebrate college basketball.”

The hours will be expansive, because Haney believes the venue will see school groups coming in the morning, businessmen and women in the afternoon and casual fans in the evening. “There are lots of great possibilities for group outings like watch-parties,” he said. “It will be like the Final Four Experience, interactive with computers and video. When you walk in, you’ll have a hands-on experience with a basketball, but we’re in a high-tech world.”

O’Byrne says the arena fits nicely with the entertainment district at its door.

“Both of them can have shared success,” he said. “If you were to design an entertainment district from a ‘greenfield,’ you probably would want to have it anchored by hotels and theatres on one end and a sports venue on the other. Then you could have your entertainment district between them. That’s the way it lays out.

“I think it’s more important for the arena to have the entertainment district than the other way around. Look at Kemper Arena. You need to have density around it. Folks who go to Kemper generally can drive in and drive out. With the way it’s going to be with the Sprint Center, you’ll be able to percolate through the neighborhood. There will be shops, restaurants and live theatre throughout for you stop and hopefully spend some money.”

The site of the new Performing Arts Center is still in flux, as locations on 17th Street south of the Convention Center and the current Lyric Theatre site are being considered. The location is less critical than the quality of the structure.

“Both sites have advantages,” said Joan Israelite, President and CEO of the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City. “Our preference is to have a world-class facility that allows the highest quality art to be performed.

“It will provide a facility that will be worthy of the performing arts groups that will perform there. I believe we have a world-class symphony, world-class ballet and world-class regional opera. They are performing in facilities that are not as good as they deserve.

“This will help us retain the talent that we now have, which is considerable. In addition to keeping the most talented visual and performing artists in our region, we will likely attract more talent to our area also.”

The designs for the new facility certainly fit Israelite’s wishes. “The facility will initially contain two performing spaces: a 2,200-seat Ballet/Opera multi-purpose facility, home to the Kansas City Ballet, Lyric Opera, touring Broadway shows, and other concerts and comedians and a 1,350-seat Concert Hall for the Kansas City Symphony and other mid-size musical organizations,” according the web site www.visitkc.com. “A 500-person banquet facility with restaurant, café and suites adjacent to the box seats will be constructed as well as a 950-space parking garage connected to the Center.”

Downtown is rich in the arts already. Within walking distance of the Loop, cultural arts connoisseurs can experience such festivities as Quality Hill Playhouse; the Folly Theater; the Heartland Men’s Chorus; the Civic Opera; the Chamber Orchestra; Wylliams Henry Danse Theater; Alvin Ailey; Mattie Rhodes Art Center and other groups. There will be a new theater for the Kansas City Repertory Theatre inside the new H&R Block building.

Expand your definition of arts, as well as your definition of Downtown, and you would need months to complete the tour.

It’s an exciting time for Downtown and for all of metro Kansas City. The energy being spent—and created—Downtown is spreading. All of Kansas City will benefit from the synergy of concentrated revitalization.

And according to O’Byrne, it’s about time.

“We’ve had a history of spreading things out. We’ve got our stadiums out in Raytown and our airport up in Iowa,” he said somewhat sarcastically. “We need the density. If you have a roaring fire, you don’t kick the logs in four directions. You’ll only end up with five smoldering masses.

“Let’s keep the fire in the center.”

The H&R Block headquarters will tower over the entertainment district, making the dream of a vital, lively

Downtown Kansas City reality.