Keeping Up With the Cordishes: Expensive New Sign at 18th & Vine?

By JOHN KREICBERGS

On Monday, The Kansas City Star ran an article that detailed plans for a new addition not only to the city’s struggling 18th and Vine jazz district, but to the city’s visual landscape as well: a two-story, hunk of flashing, blinking and (hopefully) enticing metal and neon that’s part of an $823,000 project “to to improve the gateway to the jazz district.”

Inspired in part by the Western Auto sign that adorns the roof of the former-company-headquarters-turned-condo building, this audacious act of “landmark nouveau” would be visible from the Power and Light District as well as to people driving along the city’s eastern I-70 corridor. Per the Star article “Jazz district soon will have an eye-catching beacon”:

The red, green and blue elements of the sign will illuminate in succession followed by a twinkling of white lights within the numeral 18.

Hm, maybe instead they should put up a giant NO VACANCY motel sign and leave the NO switched off for the next few years. …