Hospitality and Tourism: The best of everything is right at your doorstep
Great food and great entertainment: You can find them in most any major metropolitan area.
But only in Kansas City is the wide range of offerings underpinned by an affordability that lets visitors sample so much of what a community has to offer.
That extreme level of affordability made this one of Budget Travel magazine’s Top Budget Travel Destinations in 2012—and it’s one reason that the magazine’s flagship company, travel guru Frommer’s, selected Kansas City as the only U.S. city in its 2012 list of Top Destinations.
What gives? Well, ask the other experts and follow the trail of accolades. Saveur magazine ranked Kansas City as its Top Culinary Destination in 2012, and not just because we know our way around a barbecue pit. Forbes listed this among its Best Cities for Manufacturing Jobs this year, following up on last year’s inclusion of Kansas City among its list of America’s Best Downtowns.
All of that came after Kansas City earned Travel + Leisure’s No. 1 ranking as Most Affordable Getaway last year (as well as America’s No. 1 Barbecue City); under30ceo.com included us in its ranking of Top 10 Cities for Young Entrepreneurs, Livability.com hailed us as fourth-ranked on its list of Top 10 Cities for College Grads—well, you get the idea. Whether it was food, culture, sports interests or business, Kansas City has captured the fancy of publications across the country for what it has to offer.
And yet, we didn’t get here overnight. Project by project, as part of a grand plan spanning more than a decade and drawing on more than $6 billion in public and private funding, Kansas City’s Downtown has consciously rebuilt itself. Through a series of improvements that upgraded the Kansas City Convention Center, infused a strong nightlife draw with the Power & Light District, created venues for sporting events and top-tier entertainment with the Sprint Center, all topped off in 2011 with the world-class Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the region has added new convention and tourism muscles—and it’s flexing them.
Those are the broad brush strokes. Filling in the details millions of dollars in renovations to the hotel stock Downtown, as well as construction of thousands of new Downtown residential units, both condo and apartment, along with retail businesses to serve that emerging marketplace of roughly 20,000 residents.
Whether visiting or living Downtown, what those people find is access to some of the best of Kansas City’s attractions, right next door.
Museums? How about the American Jazz Museum or the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, both just east of Downtown, or the Arabia Steamboat Museum in the River Market district? Upgrades at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, on the southern fringe of the Downtown area, have positioned that facility nicely for the coming centennial observations of the War to End All Wars.
Looking for big-ticket attractions? Since it opened in 2007 with Elton John on the stage, right up through Madonna in 2012, the Sprint Center has hosted all kinds of musical, theatrical, circus and sporting events, and the adjacent College Basketball Experience solidifies this region’s claim to being a cradle of the sport. Just west of Downtown is the American Royal Complex, which becomes the national epicenter of barbecue each fall with the biggest smoking and grilling competition in America.
Looking for retail? The Kansas City Power & Light District, sitting across Grand Boulevard from the Sprint Center, has injected dozens of retail venues, restaurants and nightspots. Just blocks away, Crown Center is still a shopping and culinary force to be reckoned with, especially with the new vigor injected by a revitalized Union Station complex next door. And the City Market, right across the Downtown Loop to the north, offers an eclectic mix of retail and restaurant options.
Other amenities abound, as well, starting with Downtown’s crowning achievement, the Kauffman Center. But you’ll also find venues for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, stages for refined tastes and children alike at Crown Center’s American Heartland and Coterie theaters, the Midland by AMC, the Gem and Folly theaters, and still a number of attractions on the stages of Municipal Auditorium.
The bottom line: Kansas City offers more than enough to pique the interests of just about any visitor, whether here for an overnight or weekend excursion, a corporate conference or extended vacation any time of the year.
Return to Ingram's November 2012