Loco Motive

Turner White, the president and CEO of Union Station, caught the eye of a well-wisher before a Kansas City, Missouri, City Council meeting in January. White and the man shook hands and shared a moment delighting in a front-page headline from the previous day. A dinosaur, The Kansas City Star had reported, was moving into Science City.

Since opening inside a restored Union Station in 1999, Science City has struggled to capture headlines that don’t use the word disappointment or some variation on that theme. Visitors in 2002 numbered 214,422 — about one-fourth of the original forecasts for the museum’s third year. The prospective arrival of Lyle, a camarasaurus whose bones were discovered in Wyoming by University of Kansas paleontologists, was indeed reason for White to beam.

White was at City Hall to voice support for a tax abatement sought by developers of loft apartments near Union Station. In the coming weeks, White may approach government officials with a much grander request.

Lyle or no Lyle, Union Station needs money. Taxpayers’ money.

Union Station, White tells the Pitch, seeks not a rescue but a partner. “There is one thing about Union Station: It probably is one of the most recognized, if not revered, structures in town. It has been characterized by some people as being kind of Kansas City’s living room. The task we have is to manage it and maintain it as a civic asset and to get the financial footing underneath to give it financial security.”

White says a taxpayer-supported boost for Union Station could appear on a ballot this year, perhaps as a bistate sales tax. A property tax is more likely. Union Station leaders may choose to follow an example set in Cincinnati. Voters there will decide in March whether to impose a property-tax increase that would cost owners of a typical $100,000 home $5.89 a year to support a museum complex inside Union Terminal, which was renovated (with taxpayer help) and reopened in 1990.

Cincinnati and Kansas City have each found that restored train stations please eyes but vex bank accounts. Union Station operates at a deficit of between $5.2 million and $5.3 million, White says. The shortfall, he adds, is equivalent to the cost of operating the building, an enormous structure open to the public 18 hours a day, 362 days a year. (Maintenance and security contracts cost $1 million apiece in 2002, according to tax filings.)

White describes Union Station as a public building that operates without a public subsidy. Indeed, though taxpayers and donors spent $285 million on the project (including the pedestrian link to Crown Center), no money was set aside for operating expenses. Science City was supposed to generate a profit.

But before station officials approach voters, they hope to show that they’ve exhausted other options. The plan to consolidate IRS operations at the old Main Post Office, for instance, is expected to bring the station $2.5 million in new parking and rent money. Officials also want to find a new leader for Science City.

Science City sprang from the mind of David Ucko, an MIT-trained chemistry professor who worked at science centers in Chicago and Los Angeles before being recruited by the Kansas City Museum. “His credentials were far superior to anyone else’s,” says lawyer Ron Manka, a museum trustee in the 1990s.

Ucko was ambitious. He dreamed of a museum where science shattered glass partitions and cut through rope lines. He wanted to immerse visitors and reach their emotions as well as their senses — the vision was something like Galileo meets Walt Disney World.

But in attempting to meld a science center with a theme park, Ucko created neither. Science City is a museum with no discoveries to offer, a prop room masquerading as a playground. A few of the 55 exhibits, such as the tightrope-hugging bicycle, excite and inform. But most don’t.

Now some of those involved with Union Station’s rebirth regret not having posed a greater challenge to Ucko, who demanded much and yielded little. Sun Newspapers Chairman Steve Rose, who drummed up support for the first bistate tax in Kansas, recalls whispering doubts to lawyer Jack Craft, his Missouri counterpart. Rose says Craft told him, “We’re not in product development. We’re in marketing.”

Science City’s flaws in design and management were evident soon after its opening ceremonies. Ucko was demoted upon the arrival of White, a former marketing executive at Kansas City Power & Light. (Ucko departed eventually for a job with the federal government.) White concedes today that Science City’s “faux experience,” as he calls it, does not connect well enough with visitors. White wants to double attendance from last year’s total (a figure he estimates at 300,000).

In the future Union Station also hopes to offer more regional history and to embrace Union Station’s rail heritage. “That sort of aura and nostalgia and what Union Station was once in its historic form has got a lot of appeal in this area,” White says. “If we can figure out a way to get an interactive train ride on it, that would blow the lid off.”

Railroad enthusiasts have sought for years to have a greater presence at the station. In 2000, representatives from various railroad clubs met twice monthly at Union Station to discuss exhibit ideas, usually with a station representative. “That never happened, for some reason or other,” says John O’Brien of the Kansas City Lionel Club. “It’s just been kind of a mess down there.”

Train lovers are not alone in speaking of missed opportunities. Kansas City, Missouri, Councilman Charles Eddy says that in 2001 he steered a Shrine parade to the Hyatt after finding out that the station wanted $3,500 for rental, in addition to $24,000 for meals in its restaurants. Eddy says he has pushed White to be more aggressive at attracting events. “He’s doing a better job than what they did a few years ago, but there’s still a long way to go,” he says.

Four years into his job, White hopes the dinosaur helps stanch the red ink and lessen the disappointment that the station couldn’t save its planetarium, which closed in January. (White wants to convert the space into a new entrance.) Despite some changes, Science City continues to pursue mediocrity. The remote-controlled toys in the Astronaut Training Center, which opened last fall, will convince few visitors that the museum has turned a corner.

Rod Anderson, who owns an upscale restaurant and a coffee shop inside the station and manages the Union Station Café, would like to see more big splashes like the Titanic exhibit, which drew large crowds in 2001. Anderson believes the lack of foot traffic at the station puts pressure on Pierpont’s, his upscale eatery, to draw repeat business. “We have to wow them [customers],” he says. “We don’t get a second chance.”

Chronic budget deficits may help explain why Union Station officials have been unable to land a major new exhibit. A lack of money, however, does not explain why some details have been overlooked. An August 2000 Kansas City Business Journal article reported that new computer software would allow the station to track visitors’ places of origin, data seemingly precious to marketing efforts. But when the Pitch asked recently for such information, a spokeswoman said it was not collected.

White can at least lean on the fact that he stepped into a bad situation. One of his bosses, Mary Bloch, a Union Station Kansas City Inc. board member, has no such excuse. She helped make the mess.

Prior to merging in 2000, two boards controlled the station’s affairs: the Union Station Assistance Corporation, the station’s nonprofit owner, and the Kansas City Museum, developer of the science center. Bloch (her husband, Tom, is the H&R Block scion who left the family business to teach middle school math) was vice chairwoman of the museum board when critical decisions were made. She was David Ucko’s main ally on the museum board. The Pitch couldn’t reach Bloch for comment.

On the day before Science City opened, Bloch declared that Ucko would be the “envy of the industry.”

Instead, he fell on his face. Bloch, however, survived the ordeal. In the curious world of civic leadership, results bow to other considerations. Bloch was invited to serve on the merged board of directors, and today she chairs it.