Chew On This

On March 29, Kansas City Star columnist Jerry Heaster goobered over City Market manager Lou Steele, writing that “there’s no denying his success” in making the market “a more enjoyable, exciting place.” Heaster might want to follow up on April 4, though, when an unhappy posse of merchants has scheduled a press conference to complain about Steele’s tactics.

Longtime restaurateur Frank Cascone says he might move his landmark short-order grill from the market, where it’s been since 1971. Cascone says he struggles to get Steele and his company, Prudential Commercial Resources Realty, to maintain his building.

Steele has managed the market for the past nine years. He is planning an $8 million upgrade, most of it publicly financed. Three years ago, he hired a New York-based consultant who recommended making capital improvements and putting in more restaurants.

That means trouble for longtime vendors such as Barbara Lunn, Joe Henderson and Lushrie Jardan, who run a cluster of stores on the market’s neglected east side, selling items ranging from brass lamps to incense to African clothing. In December, Steele told them they’d have to move to make way for a new entrance on Grand. A week later, he said they had to move out, period.

“This is a public servant telling a businessperson what to do,” Jardan says. “Why would they get $8 million and use that $8 million to put people out of business?”

Steele, whose company has a management contract with the city, says he likes the trio of shopkeepers personally. But the east building needs to be emptied for construction, and Steele won’t invite them back unless they’re willing to peddle food. “If we fail to make these changes, they will be unhappy because there is less total business,” he says.

Dave Winslow, of Winslow’s City Market Barbecue, doesn’t understand why Lunn and the others have to leave — or why Steele is being hailed as a hero. “It’s another beautiful example of the management company’s spin that everything is wonderful in the City Market when, in fact, it isn’t,” Winslow says.

And Cascone is tired of what he calls Steele’s empty promises to build market attendance and his neglect of vendors. “This guy promised them the world and never gave them so much as a fart.”