Thai Town

he Kansas territorial Governor’s Meeting House (see review) was already a venerable 65 years old in 1919 — the same year the Western Union Building opened at Seventh Street and Walnut. At the time, downtown Kansas City was loaded with restaurants, nightclubs and theaters, including the Grand Opera House right across the street. The opera house hasn’t been a theater since 1921 (though Tower Properties recently purchased the building and is considering different options for it), and Western Union left the brown-brick building on the northeast corner in 1983.

But Ann Liberda, the petite, Thai-born restaurateur who turned Overland Park’s original Thai Place (9359 West 87th Street) into a miniempire, has big plans for that corner. When she and her youngest son, Ted, are finished overseeing construction at 100 East Seventh Street, the site will be “the happening place to gather in downtown Kansas City,” Ted says. “Especially for the after-work crowd.”

Ted, 26, wants to grab some of the happy-hour action that Kona Grill and McCormick & Schmick’s are enjoying on the Plaza. So when the newest Thai Place opens (tentatively in late November), it’ll be decked out with a long, granite-topped bar, lots of stainless steel, TV sets and special prices on Thai appetizers.

Ann Liberda wants to open the place early for Thai breakfasts, too. What’s a Thai breakfast? “A rice porridge with a hot omelet and lots of Thai coffee,” she says.

She and Ted will probably need all that caffeine to keep up with their fast-growing chain. Ted, who is built like a linebacker, commands the Missouri restaurants (the Thai Place at 4130 Pennsylvania in Westport and 732 N.W. Highway 7 in Blue Springs); Ann keeps her eye on the first location and the newest Overland Park venue at 11838 Quivira Road. Liberda’s daughter Kay owns the Thai Tradition restaurant in Wichita, and younger daughter, Chiara, operates the TupTim Thai in Topeka; another son, Michael, is in the process of turning a former Chinese buffet in the Metcalf South mall into an upscale Thai restaurant and nightclub to be called the Thailand Café, complete with “a full karaoke system,” Ann says.

“I don’t want people to think I want to control all the Thai restaurants in the city,” Ann says, smiling sweetly. “But I do want to own all the best ones.”