Wow Now, Cow Town

It was a silence more than awkward. It was an agonizing, brutal, deafening dumbness.

Your Kansas City Strippers hurried down to the most recent meeting of the Great Downtown Development Authority a couple of weeks ago, eager to see what the development attorneys, real estate moguls and other in-the-loop experts anointed by Mayor Kay Barnes would do with the $16 million in bond money Kansas Citians had generously handed them in the November 5 election. Lots of other people were just as interested as we were — the room was filled with far more onlookers than actual GDDA members. There were also lots of cookies, it being an especially festive occasion — until that excruciating silence.

Midway through the proceedings, some upstart had the audacity to raise his hand and ask whether anyone present actually lived downtown.

We all waited, and then one lonely man (who looked like he could have been a newspaper reporter) sitting against the back wall raised his hand.

Barnes, clearly sensing the need to break the dead hush, finally piped up and said, “I’m about as close as you can get!”

Actually, Her Honor lives across the Broadway Bridge, past the downtown airport, beyond a scenic oxbow in the Missouri River and on the far side of Highway 169’s Parkville exit. But we can’t blame her for seizing the opportunity to put in a plug for her luxurious Briarcliff West neighborhood. It is a short commute in light traffic. But come on. The agitator — a young staffer at a prominent business organization who assured us later he was speaking only for himself — had a point about the brave adventurers who are renting out all of those lofts south of the river, despite a dearth of dry cleaners, Sun Freshes and Berbiglia’s. “I wasn’t trying to stir it up too much, just make an observation,” the guy told us later. “My whole point was, if you want to become a 24-7 downtown, then you need to have input from the people who are there 24-7.” It sounded like the gripe we aired last spring, when we noted that even though artists and entertainers were among the few pioneers sparking any real interest in downtown, the mayor hadn’t named a one of them to the GDDA (“Art of the Deal,” May 9).

At any rate, the mayor’s drive to work will undoubtedly be more interesting once downtown planners get to work on one of the ideas they unveiled that day: “Wow streets.” These extra-special roads — we’re talking about Broadway, Main, Grand and Charlotte — would have “prominent architecture, generous sidewalks and exciting streetscapes,” says Wayne Feuerborn, director of urban design and planning for HNTB Corporation and frequent sidekick to city planning director Vicki Noteis. “We want to have the big wow, so when you arrive, you know it’s exciting, you feel like it’s exciting to be there,” Feuerborn tells us.

We find this all pretty thrilling, especially because most people driving down Kansas City’s streets say a different kind of wow as they’re lurching over all those potholes and metal plates.

And in the we-always-support-a-good-idea category: To up the wow factor, let’s remember one of last year’s Best Of award winners. In 2001, we praised then-Star Magazine editor Doug Worgul for his proposal to rename Kansas City’s major streets after local jazz greats. After all, Worgul noted, every town has a Broadway and a Main. Instead of those boring old everywhere street names, we ought to have a Count Basie Street and a Charlie Parker Avenue, a Big Joe Turner Way and a road named after Jay McShann.

“I really, sincerely mean it with all my heart. I think it ought to happen,” Worgul tells us. “Kansas City’s cultural heroes have been neglected by their hometown. Other cities know how great [these artists] are — we could at least honor them by street names.” Worgul says “probably a half dozen readers were like, ‘Right on, brother.'” But, he tells us mournfully, no one from City Hall called him. Anticipating what happens to most grand but simple ideas in this town, we named Worgul’s proposal “Best Great Idea that Won’t Go Anywhere.”

But think how much easier it would be for certain people to remember the local geography if they’re driving on roads that, by their very names, sing goin’ to Kansas City.