Always the Bridesmaid

With Kansas City’s downtown about to undergo a most ambitious face-lift, the Strip can’t help getting misty-eyed thinking about how this town is about to experience its own version of the American dream.

You know what this chuck steak is talking about.

The great belief that defines this worthy nation and its hardworking people.

The dream that says it doesn’t matter how tough times have been in the past. If you just work hard enough and grease the right palms and make the right connections, the government will take away someone else’s land and give it to you.

Ah, sweet land of liberty.

The Strip was reminded of this when it received a desperate-sounding call recently from Ben Penner.

Penner owns a couple of buildings on Main Street between 13th and 14th streets. One is transformed every October into the Main Street Morgue, one of this town’s many haunted houses.

Next door, Penner owns American Formal & Bridal, a tux shop that’s been around for decades.

Penner had called this meat patty in a panic because both buildings are soon going to be knocked flat by bulldozers.

No duh, this sarcastic sirloin thought.

Soon, Penner’s block and several others will be torn up and turned over to H&R Block for the company’s gleaming new national headquarters. In the grand new tradition of urban redevelopment, a city’s power of eminent domain — historically used to take land from private hands to build public facilities such as freeways or courthouses — will once again be used to hand over private property to a wealthy new owner for a profit-making venture.

H&R Block will be the anchor for a new entertainment district, with a minty-fresh arena just across the street. Soon, downtown KC will see tax preparers streaming out of their offices into a wonderland of nightlife options, and people from all over the region will drive into Kansas City to party with them.

But none of it can happen until the Penners get the hell out of the way so that heavy machinery can turn their buildings into rubble. Back in the spring, the Penners were moaning to The Kansas City Star that it would be cruel to kick them out before the lucrative summer months.

OK, so summer’s nearly over. What’s Penner bellyaching about now?

“We don’t want to hold up their project, but we need money enough to start another store,” Penner tells this slab. Penner hasn’t closed the deal on a new place for his tux shop, and he says the city is getting tough with him. “All we hear back from them is that they’re going to block off the streets and cut off our utilities.”

From Penner’s perspective, the city is screwing him. He hired an appraiser, who determined that his two buildings were worth about $1.4 million. Penner says he’s found a building he’d like to buy and move into at Gregory and Wornall. Its price tag, plus moving costs and needed repairs, comes to about $1 million.

The city, which initially offered a much lower amount, eventually agreed to hand over $750,000. Penner turned it down, saying it wasn’t enough. Then, in condemnation court, a three-person commission appointed by a judge found the value of Penner’s properties to be worth only $593,000.

Hey, but this meat patty found out that Andi Udris, chief executive officer of the Economic Development Corporation, which is handling the matter for the city, was willing to ignore that court decision and still pay the higher offer, $750,000.

“This project is not something the public hasn’t heard about for almost a year. We want to help him. We’ve not been unreasonable,” Udris told us recently.

That sounded downright decent to this brisket of boosterism. So last week, the Strip moseyed up a few blocks to Penner’s store to get a look at the doomed building itself and find out what was holding up the transaction.

Ben wasn’t around. But his son, 41-year-old Daryl, was.

The younger Penner gladly showed this curious cutlet around the place, which, despite its impending death, still seemed to be doing a brisk business. And in this part of downtown, that’s saying something.

The tux tailor explained that it’s been tough operating under condemnation for so long — for 30 years, the city’s been saying it wants to level the block. “Dad always wanted to stay. He always wanted to be on Main Street,” Daryl said as he led the Strip into the deeper recesses of the shop, which was filled to the rafters with tuxedos and dresses. “He roughed it out through the 1970s and 1980s, when all of the other businesses were leaving.”

When it became obvious that the H&R Block deal was the real thing, Daryl said, the Penners hoped they’d be a part of the downtown transformation. “We always wanted to renovate the building…. We never wanted to be in the way of redevelopment. We just wanted to be a part of the solution.

“Yesterday, Andi Udris came down here with some demolition experts,” Daryl added on the way to the third floor, which was filled with old artifacts from parties and weddings long past. “And Udris had six police officers with him, like we were going to get in their way.”

Daryl looked around the massive third floor and then told this sirloin his own version of the American dream. It sounded a lot like what Udris and his pals at the Economic Development Corporation dream of, too.

“My dream was to turn the third floor into a loft,” Daryl said. “After the downtown redevelopment, this would be a great place to live.”

The Strip grinned and nodded. A family that had held down a popular business in one of the most blighted parts of town thought it might actually be included in the city’s transformation. Might even enjoy a new place to live and take part in the city’s exciting new district.

Not a bad dream. Such naïvete is — sniff — touching.