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Remember what so many people said when Kansas City leaders set out to build the Sprint Center?
We don’t need it. Kemper Arena still has years of life. We’re wasting our money.
“This is just not a good deal,” former Councilman Paul Danaher said at the time.
But build it we did. And the city never looked back.
Remember the scrap over the Bloch Building, the big addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art that opened in 2007? That didn’t go over well either.
Looks like it belongs in an industrial park, William Eickhorst wrote in a letter to The Star.
“Grotesque, a metal box,” another said.
Banking tycoon R. Crosby Kemper Jr. likened it to a Butler building. But that’s before he changed his mind, as so many others did.
Kansas City never looked back.
Mayor Sly James likes to talk about the fight back in the early 1970s over building Kansas City International Airport way up north taking the place of what’s now known as Wheeler Downtown Airport. You can imagine the protests.
The downtown airport was just so convenient.
No doubt about it: Kansas Citians have a well-documented history of resistance to change. That’s exactly what James and some members of the City Council are bumping up against now in this increasingly tough fight for a new single terminal at KCI.
We love our horseshoes. No one else has anything like ’em. There’s not an airport anywhere easier to navigate.
That said, it’s time to move on. We’ve gotten nearly a half-century out of those terminals and, well, it’s a new day. This town is on a roll, and we need a new front porch.
Remember the sculptures installed in 1994 atop those 280-foot Bartle Hall pylons? Remember the criticism? Maybe you don’t because nowadays, the darn things are calendar art.
“I’d like to take ’em down and sell ’em for scrap,” one resident opined at the time.
“I think that the guy that designed those ought to have been left on top of them,” growled another.
Calls to this newspaper ran 3 to 1 against R.M. Fischer’s $1.1 million “Sky Stations Pylon Caps.” Some thought shuttlecocks or the logos of the Chiefs and Royals should be up there.
Amazing how things change, isn’t it?
Speaking of shuttlecocks, let’s go there.
Those whimsical birdies on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, courtesy of artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, were embraced with all the warmth the French once showed the Nazis.
“I am horrified,” one mom said on opening weekend 1994.
“So where’s the giant racquet to go with this badminton set?” one man asked.
“Trash,” said another.
Today? Those shuttlecocks have become part of who we are. They’re featured on postcards and posters and magazine covers.
In fact, my theory of this town is that its latest push toward world-class status took flight when we got those birdies. Think about it: Brush Creek was renovated about that time. Union Station reopened in 1999. A few years later, the zoo finally became a real zoo. The city elected its first woman mayor, Kay Barnes, in 1999 and off we went transforming our downtown and rebuilding our stadiums.
Maybe those birdies in front of that staid old museum opened our minds to new possibilities.
Yes, things that are new can be tough to swallow. But, hey, they’ve transformed this town.
Power and Light District too. Actually there are still people that don't see why the city helped build that even though it was the one thing that actually pushed downtown over the hump and started a much more robust revitalization of downtown.
Same issues with the streetcar and past light rail proposals.
Like the streetcar, people will wonder why they waited so long once a new terminal finally opens.
Why is Kansas City the only place in the country where the public has to vote on an airport bond?
Whose bright idea was this?
It's amazing how almost every other major airport in the country has been able to have major terminal renovation / replacement / expansion projects since the KCI terminals were built without public votes.
I was in KCI last week. I flew in on Southwest and out on Spirit. The "sterile" area feels like a broom closet (especially in the Southwest area where its packed full of people). The baggage claim area is tiny.
I got to the Spirit terminal about 2.5 hours before flight and it felt like an eternity. Not to mention the hold rooms don't have any room when multiple flights are departing.
Why is Kansas City the only place in the country where the public has to vote on an airport bond?
Whose bright idea was this?
It's amazing how almost every other major airport in the country has been able to have major terminal renovation / replacement / expansion projects since the KCI terminals were built without public votes.
I was in KCI last week. I flew in on Southwest and out on Spirit. The "sterile" area feels like a broom closet (especially in the Southwest area where its packed full of people). The baggage claim area is tiny.
I got to the Spirit terminal about 2.5 hours before flight and it felt like an eternity. Not to mention the hold rooms don't have any room when multiple flights are departing.
I keep up with BWI, DCA and IAD.
All of them are constantly doing major updates, expansions, changing things, just spending money. And the general public is completely out of the picture and they don't seem to care one single bit. The airports are basic infrastructure. People here do not have any emotional ties to the airports like people in KC do. They wouldn't have a say if they did care.
The article is fluff. There are good changes and bad changes.
The article doesn't mention the many needless and poor changes KC has made. (Kemper Arena)
I'm indifferent about a new airport, but in perspective a billion+ $$ is a lot of money.
Is the pay off really there?
This may be a dumb question but if we build new, why isn't the old airport downtown site being considered?
Not enough land? Height restrictions?
If we've learned anything at all, it's that the current airport is needlessly too far out from the city.
Build a new single terminal downtown and the cost for new, dedicated transit from the core to it become pennies on the dollar. People flying into KC would then see the city, building the city's image. And building new at the current airport location is going to cause serious disruption. Seems like a no-brainer to bring the airport back into the city, and cause no disruption to current travelers. KCI (north) could be re-purposed for freight. Either way it's getting torn down with a new build. Midway (CHI) does far more traffic than KCI ever will and it's smack-dab in the city. I would get behind a new airport that was at the downtown location.
The article is fluff. There are good changes and bad changes.
The article doesn't mention the many needless and poor changes KC has made. (Kemper Arena)
I'm indifferent about a new airport, but in perspective a billion+ $$ is a lot of money.
Is the pay off really there?
This may be a dumb question but if we build new, why isn't the old airport downtown site being considered?
Not enough land? Height restrictions?
If we've learned anything at all, it's that the current airport is needlessly too far out from the city.
Build a new single terminal downtown and the cost for new, dedicated transit from the core to it become pennies on the dollar. People flying into KC would then see the city, building the city's image. And building new at the current airport location is going to cause serious disruption. Seems like a no-brainer to bring the airport back into the city, and cause no disruption to current travelers. KCI (north) could be re-purposed for freight. Either way it's getting torn down with a new build. Midway (CHI) does far more traffic than KCI ever will and it's smack-dab in the city. I would get behind a new airport that was at the downtown location.
A billion dollars is a lot of money, but everything is relative. It's not a lot of money for a new airport terminal. And the taxpayers aren't on the hook. If the taxpayers were on the hook, I could kind of see all the debate. But first the airlines wanted to buy us a gift and now another company does. And yet we still stomp our feet and freak out because the walks from our cars is going to be longer.
The article is pretty much fluff. But it's still right. KC, in the aggregate, is so averse to change it's really unbelievable if you've lived in other places and seen how things get done. The referendum process here is very unfortunate. It's makes it way too easy for a very small group to muck things up. It takes away any sort of consistency or predictability, which in turn hinders growth and progress. I'm not against any referendum process. But it should take more than 3,700 people to derail major projects.
I don't disagree that a closer in airport would be nice. But he cost would go up HUGE. You'd need new runways and taxiways and all sorts of other infrastructure. This way, it's more or less just a new building rather than a whole new airport.
The article is fluff. There are good changes and bad changes.
The article doesn't mention the many needless and poor changes KC has made. (Kemper Arena)
I'm indifferent about a new airport, but in perspective a billion+ $$ is a lot of money.
Is the pay off really there?
This may be a dumb question but if we build new, why isn't the old airport downtown site being considered?
Not enough land? Height restrictions?
If we've learned anything at all, it's that the current airport is needlessly too far out from the city.
Build a new single terminal downtown and the cost for new, dedicated transit from the core to it become pennies on the dollar. People flying into KC would then see the city, building the city's image. And building new at the current airport location is going to cause serious disruption. Seems like a no-brainer to bring the airport back into the city, and cause no disruption to current travelers. KCI (north) could be re-purposed for freight. Either way it's getting torn down with a new build. Midway (CHI) does far more traffic than KCI ever will and it's smack-dab in the city. I would get behind a new airport that was at the downtown location.
It doesn't sound like you know anything about the issue.
The FAA would never allow the downtown airport to be upgraded for general commercial aviation. And they'd be right. MCI is only averagely far from downtown (it's just the extreme southsiders that suffer, I guess). And the disruptions to MCI would be minimal for a new terminal, because they've already mothballed one of them, and the terminal can be built in its place, while the open ones can continue undisturbed.
It doesn't sound like you know anything about the issue.
The FAA would never allow the downtown airport to be upgraded for general commercial aviation. And they'd be right. MCI is only averagely far from downtown (it's just the extreme southsiders that suffer, I guess). And the disruptions to MCI would be minimal for a new terminal, because they've already mothballed one of them, and the terminal can be built in its place, while the open ones can continue undisturbed.
I asked why the downtown airport location could not be used and you reply with a silly insult?
I disagree about MCI being "averagely far from downtown."
This isn't Chicago and MCI isn't O'Hare - by metro population size standards MCI is in the boonies. The main point which you can't grasp is that there was (and to some degree still is) plenty of land closer to downtown for a new airport. And that was especially the case when MCI's location was chosen in 1953.
The downtown airport has never been officially downgraded from commercial aviation. The FAA only issued a memo in 1963 calling the downtown airport "one of the poorest major airports in the country for large jet aircraft" and recommended against spending any more federal dollars on it. It's 2017 and aircraft technology has come a long way. Despite concerns about the old airport being unsafe, Air Force One still uses it during Presidential visits.
Perhaps someone with some tact and understanding of the issue can help me better understand "the issue."
I asked why the downtown airport location could not be used and you reply with a silly insult?
I disagree about MCI being "averagely far from downtown."
This isn't Chicago and MCI isn't O'Hare - by metro population size standards MCI is in the boonies. The main point which you can't grasp is that there was (and to some degree still is) plenty of land closer to downtown for a new airport. And that was especially the case when MCI's location was chosen in 1953.
The downtown airport has never been officially downgraded from commercial aviation. The FAA only issued a memo in 1963 calling the downtown airport "one of the poorest major airports in the country for large jet aircraft" and recommended against spending any more federal dollars on it. It's 2017 and aircraft technology has come a long way. Despite concerns about the old airport being unsafe, Air Force One still uses it during Presidential visits.
Perhaps someone with some tact and understanding of the issue can help me better understand "the issue."
I'm sorry, dude. It's just that this has been beaten into the ground over and over on this forum. So I'm not going to waste my time trying to explain it again. I'll just say that no public leader is actually proposing this. No serious, influential person has backed it. Feel free to prove me wrong.
I asked why the downtown airport location could not be used and you reply with a silly insult?
I disagree about MCI being "averagely far from downtown."
This isn't Chicago and MCI isn't O'Hare - by metro population size standards MCI is in the boonies. The main point which you can't grasp is that there was (and to some degree still is) plenty of land closer to downtown for a new airport. And that was especially the case when MCI's location was chosen in 1953.
The downtown airport has never been officially downgraded from commercial aviation. The FAA only issued a memo in 1963 calling the downtown airport "one of the poorest major airports in the country for large jet aircraft" and recommended against spending any more federal dollars on it. It's 2017 and aircraft technology has come a long way. Despite concerns about the old airport being unsafe, Air Force One still uses it during Presidential visits.
Perhaps someone with some tact and understanding of the issue can help me better understand "the issue."
Simply, look at the size of KCI in a satellite view and please tell me that fits downtown or any other place that's not K10 near Lawrence, KS? And as former Northlander, KCI is not exactly in the boonies. Perhaps if you live at the edge of Johnson County south of 135th Street it's too far....
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