Category: Opinions

Window on the West
by Mary Rupert

Besides talking about the “border war” issue last Tuesday evening at the Leavenworth Road Association meeting, Mayor Mark Holland also gave an update of various economic development projects and challenges in the community.

The audience at the Leavenworth Road Association meeting, held at Eisenhower Recreation Center, heard his speech and asked plenty of questions for him to answer. Earlier in the day, the announcement was made that Dairy Farmers of America would construct a new 100,000-square foot office building on 98th Street between State Avenue and Parallel Parkway.

Here are some of the other Unified Government projects that he discussed:

Indian Springs – Mayor Holland said there is currently a $1.5 million project to take the asbestos out of Indian Springs. This will have to be done before the buildings are torn down and the area is redeveloped, he said. The mayor said he wanted retail development at Indian Springs, which was a 700,000 square-foot facility.

“We need to bring retail back to the heart of Kansas City, Kan.,” he said, and he is willing to wait for it. While they are working on redevelopment, there is nothing to announce yet, he added. A big-box store such as Walmart or Target would be needed, but they are not doing those kinds of building projects right now, he said.

Downtown – The UG is working on a $14 million community center and grocery store downtown, in the healthy campus project, he said. He is still in the process of raising $7 million for the community center, to be run by the YMCA. Together the buildings represent a $30 million investment, he said. It would be the largest development downtown in two generations, he said. “It would do for that area what Prescott Plaza did for 18th Street,” he said.

American Royal – Mayor Holland said representatives of the American Royal have talked with the governor and him, as well as with other communities, to move from the present location near Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo. If there is an interest in it and it makes financial sense, the UG would take a look at it, he said.

It would be similar to the move of U.S. Soccer to Kansas City, Kan., according to the mayor. By itself, U.S. Soccer doesn’t do a lot for Kansas City, Kan., but it would bring a lot of people to the area as tourists or visitors, who would stay in area hotels and spend money at The Legends, he said.

“If it doesn’t work financially, I don’t want us on the hook for something that we can’t afford to do,” he said. Other media have reported the American Royals also has had conversations with Clay County, Mo., about moving.

The mayor added that the UG could not be the only partner for the American Royal for it to succeed; there would have to be other partners.

Casino hotel – The UG Commission asked the Hollywood Casino at Kansas Speedway to wait until a feasibility study was done to see if a convention center was feasible in Wyandotte County, he said.

The study said a Bartle Hall-type convention center wasn’t feasible. If one were built similar to Overland Park, it would just take away business from Overland Park and Bartle Hall and not add new conventions to the area, he said. So, the UG is looking at exhibit space and other alternatives to see how it can fund another tourist draw, he said. He wouldn’t mind another arena, as currently, all three stadiums are closed for the season, and no one is coming to the community while they are closed.

A year-round arena could draw tourists, he believes, for events such as youth sports, but he wants it to make financial sense. Could it be built, he asked, without a long-term taxpayer subsidy? He said while he didn’t like the idea of a long-term taxpayer subsidy, he did not oppose a taxpayer incentive for it.

Since the feasibility study did not show any reason to change the plans for a hotel, the hotel proposal at the casino is moving forward, he said, and should go to a Standing Committee on March 9.

The EPA building downtown – Mayor Holland said the Environmental Protection Agency office building downtown, now vacant, has changed hands, and is owned by a real estate investment team. It has been sold a couple of times, he said. There have been a couple of nibbles, but because it is 200,000 square feet and was made specially for the EPA, it would be difficult to subdivide, he said. It would take a very large company to take that much space, he added. “It’s high on our radar screen for downtown,” he said.

While there has been talk about making the EPA building into a convention center or a new city hall, Holland thought that might be a disaster. The current Reardon convention center is only 20,000 square feet, the EPA building is 10 times that size, and it was built for offices, not conventions, he said. Currently, they are looking at selling the Hilton Garden Inn, he said. Holland said the EPA was the No. 1 user of the Hilton Garden Inn, and now the American Royal is the top user of the Hilton Garden Inn.

Leavenworth Road corridor – Mayor Holland said the infrastructure needs to be redone on Leavenworth Road, such as curbs and sidewalks, and utility infrastructure. He said it should be a historic byway, not a four-lane parkway. Maybe it could have historic period lighting. A master plan would be developed, and once approved, the project might be developed in small segments at a time, he said. From 62nd Street to I-635 might be the first stretch.

The Woodlands – The closed Woodlands racetrack on 400 acres at 9700 Leavenworth Road is caught in a dispute at the state, according to Mayor Holland. The state would take a higher percentage for slots at The Woodlands than it does at the casinos, and the racetracks have said that they cannot afford to open at that percentage. All parimutuel racetracks in Kansas are now closed, he said, largely because of the lack of slot machines and the law outlining the percentages. The UG has lobbied against reopening the bill, as it does not want to risk the success of the casino, he said.

There have been nibbles as to what might locate at The Woodlands, he said. While there has been discussion about the American Royal there, the Woodlands buildings might have to be torn down if that were the case, and existing buildings might not be salvageable, he said. It might take $20 million to restore the facilities for racing, he added. Also, the American Royal might want to locate closer to The Legends, within walking distance, he said.

Wyandotte County Fairgrounds – The fairgrounds, 137th and Polfer Road, has been struggling, according to the mayor and Commissioner Jane Philbrook. Philbrook said there is an effort to try to get groups to work together, including the fair board, the Extension and 4-H. She said it would cost about $28,000 to get a fairgrounds study brought up to date, so she suggested putting some of District 5’s funding there, then take the new study and get other groups to support the fairgrounds as a destination location.

To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].

Views West

by Murrel Bland

William Allen White was born on Thursday, Feb. 10, 1868, in Emporia, Kan. I will take some time to celebrate the birthday of the patron saint of community journalism on the anniversary of his birth.

For the past several years, I have journeyed to Mt. Oread as fellow members of the William Allen White Foundation gather for an annual meeting and the awarding of a national citation on or near White’s birthday. But this year, the trustees decided to move the meeting to late April.

White had a Kansas City, Kan., connection. He was married April 27, 1893, to Sallie Moss Lindsay, a schoolteacher, at 330 Waverly Ave. (It is now a vacant lot.) Sallie’s sister was Mary Lindsay Haynes, wife of Lacy Haynes. Lacy was the manager of the Kansas City, Kan., office of The Kansas City Star who was known as a political kingmaker.

My friend Dave Seaton, the retired editor of The Winfield Daily Courier, is heading up a committee that hopes to produce a feature-length documentary film that tells the story of White’s life and his influence not only on community journalism but also on this country as it matured in its second century. It will be a fitting tribute to White; his 150th birthday celebration will be in 2018.

Dave asked me to suggest some choice comments from White’s autobiography that could be used in the film. When White was a student at the University of Kansas at Lawrence in 1887, he was a freelance correspondent for several daily newspapers. He dug up the fact the Democratic candidate for sheriff, while a deputy, allegedly had been a ringleader in lynching three or four blacks; the candidate threatened to kill White.

White tells of his and fellow students’ civil disobedience in 1888.

“We once had a riot in front of the chancellor’s office when the regents were in session, roaring, clamoring, and hooting because they were trying to expel the editor of the college paper for criticizing a professor,” White wrote.

White writes that a group of his college friends, mostly members of the Phi Delta Theta social fraternity, “grew up” the most during the summer of 1889 when they camped out in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The others and the positions they achieved in later life included Vernon Kellogg, director of the Belgian Relief in World War I and secretary of the National Research Council; Henry Riggs, professor of civil engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Frank Craig, president of the Oklahoma Bankers Association; Herbert Hadley, governor of Missouri; William Franklin, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Edward Franklin, professor of chemistry at Stanford (Calif.) University and president of the American Chemical Society; Frederick Funston, a major general in the U.S. Army; and Schuyler Brewster, attorney general of Oklahoma.

White was probably best known as an editorial writer. The first editorial that brought him national prominence was “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” written in 1896 and published in his newspaper, The Emporia Gazette.

“What’s the matter with Kansas? Nothing under the shining sun. She is losing her wealth, population and standing. She has got her statesmen, and the money power is afraid of her. Kansas is all right. She has started in to raise hell, as Mrs. Lease advised, and she seems to have over-production. But that doesn’t matter, Kansas never did believe in diversified crops. Kansas is all right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Kansas,” White wrote.

Probably White’s most famous editorial was a tribute to his daughter Mary White who died in 1921 following an accident when she was hit on the head by a tree branch when she was riding her horse.

“She was a continual bubble of joy. She seemed to think in hyperbole and metaphor. She was mischievous without malice, as full of faults as an old shoe. No angel was Mary White, but an easy girl to live with for she never nursed a grouch five minutes in her life,” White wrote.

“A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin as her nervous, energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn,” White concluded.

White won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial “To an Anxious Friend.” That editorial is displayed in bronze on the wall of Stauffer-Flint Hall that houses the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at KU. White wrote it in 1922 in response to the threat of the Ku Klux Klan.

“You tell me that law is above freedom of utterance. And I reply that you can have no wise laws nor freedom of enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people—and, alas their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive,” White wrote.

“So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold—by voice, by posted card, by letter, or by press. Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.”

White died on Kansas Day (Jan. 29) 1944 after suffering from cancer. I look at the challenges in Kansas and the United States today and only wish that White were alive today.

Murrel Bland is the former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press. He is a trustee of the William Allen White Foundation.