Star Stuck

Turner White left his post running Union Station and Science City this week, but the effects of his lousy management will be felt for a long time. Here’s how the Strip knows.

Way back when this sermonizing sirloin was tenderizin’ itself in that great meat-packing plant known as graduate school, it found a really cool part-time job. For three years, the Strip worked as a planetarian.

For the uninitiated, that’s what you call the person behind the controls at a planetarium, twistin’ dials and flippin’ switches to make the stars come out at noon. Now, this particular sky theater, housed in a drab building in the back forty of an ugly community college, was a real challenge to operate, seein’ as how it had been built 30 years earlier and relied on technology that had been cutting-edge back in the Kennedy administration. Nothing was computer controlled; if something as simple as a moonrise was called for, this poor slab found itself twistin’ like an acrobat to turn dials and hit buttons on a console that looked like something out of Frankenstein‘s lab.

We’re talking really, really low-tech.

But it didn’t matter. Day in and day out, the place was jam-packed with school kids. At night, whole neighborhoods turned out to fill all 170 seats for a tour of the cosmos. The Strip was fortunate enough to work with some smart folks who knew how to get the most out of the wheezing star projector and the arcing dome, and the place’s reputation preceded itself. Schools for miles around knew that students sent down for a field trip would get not only a kickass show but also a head full of information about life, the universe and everything.

And that’s why this beefsteak knows for a fact that former Union Station honcho White didn’t have a clue what he was talkin’ about when he spun The Kansas City Star like a freakin’ top in January.

See, the Star asked White why Kansas City’s own major planetarium, a facility called City Dome that sits next to Science City, was closed, scheduled to reopen as a mere entryway into the failing museum.

White’s explanation for the theater’s demise? The planetarium never caught on with Kansas Citians because its technology wasn’t cutting-edge for 2004 and didn’t make use of digital equipment for projecting a night sky, he told the newspaper.

What a load of cow manure.

Last week, Mayor Kay Barnes announced that she’d appointed a new panel of civic leaders to investigate why Science City has been such a colossal flop. She wants to see the panel’s results before letting Kansas Citians vote on a tax increase that White said Union Station needed to stay open.

This crusading cutlet hopes the panel does some real investigatin’ into the matter. Which means talking to folks like Michael Bakich and Richard Hirsch, who told the Strip recently why the City Dome really failed.

Bakich is an editor at Astronomy magazine now, but back in the day, he was the dude running the tiny fifty-seat planetarium at the Kansas City Museum. So he was pretty stoked when, in 1994, he was asked to design the new planetarium that would open alongside Science City. For several years, he dreamed up the best theater that money would allow, splurging on some things and saving money on others. Some of the equipment wasn’t the latest in breakthrough technology, but Bakich knew that programming and staff creativity are a lot more important to a planetarium than how its stars are projected. Eventually, the City Dome was built to his exact specifications. But before the place even broke ground, Bakich says, he was dumped.

It was nothing personal, he was told. But for some reason, the suits in charge of Science City decided that the planetarium Bakich had designed wouldn’t need a director.

Bakich couldn’t believe his ears. Build a planetarium without a director?

“I asked many questions,” Bakich says. “Who’s going to install the shows?” Part-time staff would take care of that, he was told.

The response told Bakich everything he needed to know about his managers: They didn’t know what the hell they were doing.

Soon after the planetarium and the rest of Science City were supposed to open, for example, there would be a total lunar eclipse visible in Kansas City in January 2000. Bakich explained that a planetarium director would know how to make a special event like that translate into a huge boost for the museum. With help from the large number of local astronomy buffs in organizations such as the Astronomical Society of Kansas City, Bakich had used a previous eclipse to get 4,000 people out to the old museum — in the sketchy Northeast neighborhood! With even modest marketing, he says, he and the ASKC could have attracted 10,000 to 20,000 curious folks out to Union Station for the event.

Instead, he was sent packing. Bakich moved to El Paso, Texas, and the City Dome failed to take advantage of the eclipse.

“We had more people in my backyard in El Paso for that event than they had at Science City,” he says.

With no director and little advertising, the new City Dome immediately tanked. Part of the problem, says Richard Hirsch, a former show technician, was that for the entire first year of the planetarium’s existence, it had only one, pathetic astronomy program, an idiotic show called “Star Leap,” in which a family of frogs takes a trip through the solar system.

“It was full of flatulence jokes,” Hirsch says. “It was beyond infantile. People hated it.”

A whole year with one stupid show! No wonder the City Dome was a friggin’ flop.

Jeeezus. This meat patty’s antiquated sky theater, which probably had a fraction of the City Dome’s budget, managed to assemble a stable of a dozen different shows, including several that challenged kids and adults alike.

Eventually, Hirsch says, the planetarium crew put together some better shows, including one about Mars with narration by Patrick Stewart. But it’s not like anyone around town heard about it. “The marketing department never gave us ads,” Hirsch complains.

As late as last May, he says, the planetarium staff was still trying to raise the theater’s profile. For Astronomy Day 2003, he says, the ASKC planned to bring telescopes to the green space on the west side of Union Station. There would be booths, demonstrations, lectures. A special package of shows was scheduled in the City Dome.

“The ASKC has drawn thousands for events like this,” Hirsch says. And Union Station’s marketing department promised him that it would go all out. “But come May 10, only a few hundred people showed up, and very few at Science City. There had been no radio, television or newspaper advertising. There weren’t even fliers up at Union Station! So nobody showed up,” Hirsch says. When he confronted marketing managers about it, he says, “they looked stunned, like they were hurt.” He says they told him that a notice about the event had been put on Science City’s Web site, and a message had been put on the facility’s phone system. “They looked at me like they’d worked their fingers to the bone,” Hirsch says. A few months later, his position was terminated, and the planetarium was closed.

White announced then that the planetarium would be gutted and used as the grand entrance for Science City itself. But for now, the closed theater is no longer slated for demolition. “Eventually we are going to reprogram the dome,” says Union Station spokeswoman Jenny Hanna. “But that’s going to require investment.”

In other words, we’re all going to have to fork over more tax money to fix the mistakes White and other Union Station managers have made. Like the time they blew a golden opportunity, after the planetarium had flopped, to rescue it.

Bakich, after moving to El Paso, saw that the planetarium he designed had turned out to be a failure. So in 2001, he sent a proposal to the geniuses at Science City. Bakich offered to come back to Kansas City, take over the City Dome’s operations as an outside contractor and turn it into a moneymaker, splitting the profits with Union Station.

For six months, Bakich heard nothing in reply. Then he got a phone call — to let him know that White’s staff had lost his letter. He sent it again, and this time got an encouraging reply: an invitation to come to Kansas City to discuss his plans. Bakich says he met with several of White’s underlings. They all seemed excited by his plans. But once again, another six months went by with no word of a decision. Eventually, Bakich could wait no longer, and he took a job with the science magazine.

“They didn’t have just one chance to make the planetarium a go. They had two chances,” he says.

This patty figures it was time Turner White took a friggin’ star leap of his own.