KCI Terminal Advisory Group will make a recommendation after all

Tuesday morning’s Kansas City Terminal Advisory Group meeting cleared up one thing: The appointed task force studying the future of KCI will make an official recommendation after a volley of contradictory news reports.

More than a week after the Kansas City Business Journal quoted KTAG co-chairman Bob Berkebile saying the group didn’t have enough information to make a specific recommendation, the other co-chairman, David Fowler, told The Kansas City Star that he wouldn’t spend a year working on something without making a recommendation.

It’s perhaps these mixed messages that resulted in the KTAG board recently receiving a memo, instructing the 24 members to no longer talk to the media and direct inquiries instead to Fowler and Berkebile so that they could coordinate a response with Kansas City Mayor Sly James’ spokeswoman, Joni Wickham.

So the official story for now is that KTAG will recommend one of three options at its May 7 meeting. Those options are:

* Renovate the three existing terminals. 

* Renovate the terminals and build a central connecting point among the three.

* Rebuild KCI into a single terminal.

Some members of KTAG, namely Nia Richardson, believe the group hasn’t gotten enough information to pick one configuration over the others and that the final report should perhaps list pros and cons among all three ideas.

But it appears KTAG will press on with a specific recommendation even with some of its members feeling like they aren’t informed enough to make such a decision.

Speaking of limited information, it now appears that cost estimates of all the options are not reliable until it’s studied further.

“Any dollar amount placed on any alternative is almost pretty random,” Fowler said.