Peter Witte, of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, said the rapid-transfer technology could open new vistas for addressing one of the urban core’s most nagging and persistent problems: The performance of its public school system. The ability to expose students to on-line instruction from the Khan Academy’s gifted instructors—“The best teachers in the world,” he said—could cut the Gordian knot that has bound students here for generations.

Asked by David Frantze how the city could capitalize on the Google venture, Rick Usher of the city manager’s office noted that various groups were already hard at work identifying strategies to capitalize on that unique technological advantage. Some of those would include the kinds of usual suspects that come to mind when considering rapid transfers of massive data files—marketing, media and communications-centered businesses. Others, though, could involve businesses that haven’t even been thought of yet.

That’s exactly what was on the minds of the people in charge at Google, said Peter Witte; the motivation for choosing Kansas City isn’t about specific outcomes, he said, “it’s more about the journey, and they’re OK with that.”

Rick Hughes, however, noted that whatever technological advantage the city was about to realize would take place within “an incredibly small window.” Google’s technology and its presence in Kansas City won’t remain novelties forever, and he said that reality should compel quick action to seize this unique opportunity and create new economic growth for the city.

On an Artistic Note

Much as Rick Hughes was able to set the table for discussion about a convention hotel, Peter Witte was given the reins for exploration of another Big 5 idea from the Chamber: Relocating the conservatory from the UMKC campus near the Plaza to a part of Downtown. Such a move would allow the conservatory to fully realize potential connections with assets like the Kauffman Center for Performing Arts or the Folly Theatre.

It also would provide a double benefit for a university committed to raising its enrollment from roughly 15,000 students today to 28,000 or more over the next generation. With the conservatory moved off-campus, landlocked UMKC would free up vital space needed for that kind of growth.

Downtown, on the flip side, would see an infusion of 600 music majors, and perhaps another 150 theatrical students, in an area that is already drawing on the artistic energy and creativity of younger residents. The Crossroads district, he noted, spanning the distance from the Kauffman Center to Union Station and across the southern Downtown loop, “would be kitchen space for the Kauffman dining room,” Witte said. That would bring those who “do the cooking” for artistic performances closer to prime venues for them, turning those stages into everyday attractions, not just weekend magnets.

Witte cited Julliard in New York, the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston or the Colburn School in Los Angeles as premier examples of effective synergies between artistic instruction and performance venues. “We know that this works,” he said.

Ron Coker of Burns & McDonnell, doubling as vice chairman of the Downtown Council, said such a move “intertwines with everything we’ve been talking about here today. It’s a chance to reframe what the Crossroads-to-the-Central-Business-District area looks like.”

“But is has to be right for the students,” Witte said. And he had a hard time seeing how relocating from four scattered buildings on the current campus would be a bad thing, considering that they would “suddenly be located in the most livable arts district in America,” one far more affordable than its counterparts in Los Angeles or New York.

And it could provide critical mass, as the Mid-America Regional Council’s Jeff Pinkerton noted, “for permanent First Fridays,” extending that once-a-month Crossroads tribute to all things artistic and making it a defining attribute for Downtown Kansas City.

Tying it All Together

Bill Dietrich ran down a lengthy list of new and emerging attractions that, once in place, will represent a transformation of Downtown as a destination not just for the empty-nesters and young singles, but for families, as well, including such kid-friendly venues as the Crown Center aquarium project and Legoland.

If the community is to seamlessly integrate those, he suggested, it will need an effective, unified transportation network, such as the 2-mile streetcar line currently being studied by the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. Running from the River Market area to Crown Center, it could potentially serve as a starter line to an expanded light-rail network, proponents say.