West Plaza bar the Point moves past its history, ancient and recent

A saloon ages the way some relationships do: in stages. This is so new and fun decelerates into Remember when this was new and fun? before giving way to When did things get boring?

Of course, for old lovers as well as for old bars, nostalgia exerts a powerful force. We haven’t been there in ages. Maybe we’ve been mising out.

That’s just the kind of mistiness Jennifer Tucker and Melissa Redman are able to capitalize on at the Point Bar & Grill, the 37-year-old West Plaza institution they purchased together in 2012.

“We had looked at so many different venues when we were looking for a place to buy,” Redman says. “This location has a lot going for it. It’s not in Westport, it’s not on the Plaza, but it has longtime regulars that are devoted to the place. We have patrons who come in, like clockwork, every day.”

Tucker adds, “I had a phone call one afternoon from a guy who told me that he had been one of the original bartenders at the Point and had tended bar from 1978 to 1981. He asked me if the same regulars were still coming in from those days. I told him that it could be the case, but I wouldn’t know. In 1978, I was 6 years old.”

But the business partners have also been trying to update the place’s identity — especially since last September. That’s when 20-year-old Neká Gleason was shot and killed in the area. Two Jackson County Sheriff’s Department deputies, working as off-duty security at the Point, called police to report having heard gunfire; when Kansas City police arrived, they discovered Gleason’s body in the parking lot of the bank across the street.

After that news broke, neighbors complained to the media that the September 8 shooting wasn’t a surprise, that there had often been loud fights outside the bar at closing time.

“We thought we were buying a very beloved neighborhood bar with a long and positive history,” Tucker says. This wasn’t what either woman expected to contend with. “It was time for rebranding the Point,” says Redman, who, like Tucker, has a long history in the restaurant business.

The Point’s past has actually been no more checkered than any other tavern’s. For much of its heyday, in fact, it was devoutly (blessedly) unexciting, known chiefly for jazz singer Ida McBeth’s long tenure as the featured weekend performer in the 1980s and ’90s. (She hasn’t performed at the venue in years.)

Tucker, a 12-year veteran of the KC Hopps restaurant group, says she was shaken by Gleason’s death but insists that no venue in the metro can be firmly identified as a “safe place.”

“There was a shooting in Westport the same night as our tragedy,” she says “They may even be connected. The case was never solved. When liquor is involved, things can get ugly. I was sitting at Harry’s in Westport a couple of years ago. It was after midnight, and a car slowed down and someone started shooting. This city has changed a lot over the last few years.”

To keep their patrons safer, Tucker says, they now close at 1:30 a.m. “People just go home now. We don’t get a rush of people coming in from the other bars with 1:30 licenses who can get rowdy at our place. In fact, we’re not even seeing small arguments anymore. If you want changes at your place, you have to change what you’re doing. It’s that simple.”

The other major change that Redman and Tucker have implemented is the recent introduction of a new menu, one with the de rigueur sophisticated spin on traditional bar favorites: Parmesan truffle fries, Angus burgers on Farm to Market buns, a Cubano. The kitchen is open from 4 to 10 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.

“The Point has a long history of diversity,” Tucker says. “It’s always attracted an eclectic audience of young and old, gay and straight, midtowners and tourists. That part will never change.”

Corrections: The Point did not give up its 3 a.m. license, as The Pitch first reported. It changed its closing time without altering its license. This story has also been changed to correct an error; Gleason’s body was discovered not in a parking lot of the Point’s but on the property of Country Club Bank, at 4343 Belleview.