Sprint Center is outstanding; Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums are exceptional sports venues; the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum is a thing of beauty; and the Art-Deco-Style Municipal Auditorium still offers the best basketball environment you can find.
But the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts? Spectacular…the biggest step ahead for Kansas City in who knows how long.
I know I’m a late comer to the awed-and-amazed party, but I didn’t get my first look at the center’s interior until last night, when my wife Patty and I and a group of friends went to a performance of the opera Turandot.
I’m sure I’m speaking for all the members of our group when I say it was truly an enchanted evening, and we came away not only uplifted but also proud to be Kansas City area residents. (I wish I could say we are all Kansas Citians, but you know how it goes with these suburbanites.)
We started the evening with dinner at the Nelson’s fabulous Rozzelle Court…From there, well, I hope the pictures will tell the story.
Our group, from left: John and Susan Parker, JimmyC and Patty, Dale Mutchler and wife Nancy Robinson, Dr. Carla King and husband Bart Strother
Partially obscured in the group photo, Bart gets (and deserves) his own space
Helga and Bruce, a couple we happened upon in the Kauffman Center parking garage
The glass curtain
Mary Leonard and son Tommy
The Muriel Kauffman Theatre
Ace KC Star courts reporter Mark Morris and his wife Carolyn Cupp
Humble blogger and wife Patty, business owner and personality nonpareil
Retired assistant city attorney John Ingraham and his wife Ileana
Afterglow
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Love Rozzelle Court and the art gallery, but haven’t been to the new Center yet. Thanks for the pictures. I’m sure it won’t be long.
I also note you haven’t been posting much lately. Hopefully your health and those in your family is OK.
Doing fine, John, thanks for checking up. I’ve just been preoccupied with other things and on vacation last week. Good to hear from you.
Great coverage and a wonderful story. Beautiful pictures too. Hope all is well.
Excited as we have season tickets for musicals.
Thank you for sending me JimmyCsays articles.
Thanks, Tom. Good to hear from you…Let’s get together on another Charlie Wheeler campaign. I think the great, old guy has a couple of more runs in him.
It looks like a great venue, but it’s not clear to me how this is “the biggest step ahead for Kc in who knows how long.” Its appeal is limited, as will be its impact, I predict. I hope I’m wrong.
That’s a fair challenge, Harwood; I should have elaborated. Just as Sprint Center has become one of the top three or four most successful arenas in the nation, I think the Kauffman Center will soon be one of the most successful — and best recognized — performing arts centers in the country. That means Kansas City’s profile will rise; the center will certainly boost our visitor and tourism business.
Pre-Kauffman, our arts organizations — symphony, opera, ballet and others — were good and moving up. Now, they have a venue that will allow them to grow (assuming revenue increases) by even greater increments. The Kauffman Center simply takes us to a new, much higher level on the cultural front.
Last month, on opening night at the new center, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill lauded the complex and said, “Do you think it will help Kansas City get over its inferiority complex?”
That comment really pissed me off, and it shows how out of touch she is with Kansas City. Yes, many years ago Kansas City had an inferiority complex — a bad one. It started lifting, in my opinion, on a sunny day in April 1991, when Emanuel Cleaver was sworn in as mayor on the steps of City Hall. He followed the steady but seldom-interesting Dick Berkley, and Cleaver’s enthusiastic promotion of Kansas City helped open Kansas Citians’ eyes to the many great things we had going for us.
“This is not some sleepy hamlet along I-70,” Cleaver would boom. “This is KANSAS CITY!”
We have never looked back.
Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy! All due respect and pats on the back all around for KPAC but this remains a project of, by and for THE SWELLS. Muriel Kauffman gets the I Have A Dream kudos but we all know where the money REALLY came from.
Nice for the local arts groups to get an upgrade from the MD80 to the DREAMLINER but THE GREAT WHITE WAY ain’t leaving the BIG APPLE for the KILLING STREETS of KCMO. Chicago isn’t going to change its monicker to THIRD CITY.
I really doubt that little musicians, singers and dancers are dreaming at night of making it BIG and scoring a gig with the KC Symphony, Lyric Opera or Ballet
Let’s not bestow more civic potential on steel, glass and concrete than it can deliver. In five years, KPAC will no longer be state-of-the-art. It will be back to Lotus Notes by then.
As for all the praise being heaped on the Sprint Center, I’d suggest you read the FINE PRINT. I’d also suggest you recall the raison d’etre for that facility as touted by Ribbon Cuttin’ Kay Barnes, Tim “The Liar” Leiweke and your former employer, among others, was the BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME siren song for the NBA and NHL. Then, now and well into the future, we of more than half a brain knew and know that wasn’t in the realm of possibility. EVER!
Our collective civic and community problems are wider, deeper and taller and not reparable by any architecture short of a BERLIN WALL running down Prospect…er, uh. I mean MLK Boulevard….I think.
I’m sure over its life the KPAC will have a ratio of 100 to 1 of chi-chi, my poop don’t stink, whites versus people of color in the audience(s).
From my seat in the peanut gallery the SHAM WOW, SLAP CHOP and OXY-CLEAN have made far greater contributions to mankind than these two buildings.
As always, Smartman, your point is well taken and you challenge conventional thinking. However, if you’ll look at the people photos I took Friday night, I can assure you that none of them — or us — were “swells.” (I don’t know for sure about Helga and Bruce, however, whose photo I took because I loved their outfits and demeanor. Just because a guy puts on a beautiful derby doesn’t mean he’s a swell.)
I saw a lot of seemingly regular people who were just thrilled to be part of the event and the new venue. True, I don’t expect to see a majority of crowd members at just about any event there consisting of members of minority groups. But everyone is certainly welcome and invited, and there are plenty of people within minority groups who have the wherewithal to buy a ticket.
So, I challenge you to tell us what you think the city should do — or what type of venues it should offer — to excite and appeal to members of minority groups.
This is your chance, my dear Smartman, to offer up some “big ideas,” a la Steve Jobs, to move our community to the next plateau.
Ay Ay Captain! Before I’d go spending one cent on performing arts centers I think I’d get the whole public safety, infrastructure and education issues sorted out.
I might also consider declaring war on the State of Kansas. Shouldn’t be a long battle. I’m thinking several hundred East Siders should be able to invade Overland Park and obtain a total state surrender within 72 hours.
We seem to feel it’s more important to make the lead crystal wine glasses before we’ve planted the grapes.
Again KPAC is a beautiful facility. World class for the moment no doubt. I just don’t think the Travelocity Roaming Gnome is going to route many tourists of domestic or international descent our way because of it.
Our cowtown is suffering from mad cow disease and we decide the best cure is a Glamour Shot. To quote Billy “Fernando Lamas” Cystal, “It is better to LOOK good than to FEEL good.”
Whether you a building a house or a great civilization you must begin with a rock solid foundation not an aspirational premise. It’s not like we’re even putting the cart before the horse. We’re putting the teepee before the cart.
All KPAC does at this moment in time is illustrate the chasm between black and white, rich and poor. It’s like the boss coming into work in a new Mercedes G-Wagon and laying off 100 people because things are tight.
I realize that this was a very private endeavor but I am absolutely confident that if MR. K were still with us today that he would not see this as the type of philanthropic investment as a Fanfare For The Common Man.
Jim, what an unexpected pleasure to find your blog. I came across it because Mark Morris and I are Facebook “friends.” It’s a William Jewell connection, although I’m a decade older than Mark and his wife. The pictures of you “swells” at KPAC are great. I was there that evening, but was up in the nosebleed section (which, I must say, isn’t too bad). I think that KPAC management will do their best to attract the comman wo/man, whoever that is. Most of us think of ourselves as common man, middle class types. Depends on one’s perspective, no doubt.
One of the many things I like about attending the Chicago Lyric Opera (my daughter lives there), is the diversity of the audience, at least along ethnic and national lines. Probably not so much along socio-economic lines, but still.
Drop me a line.
Great to hear from you, David. (I have to brag on you and tell the readers you were one very exceptional city employee, dedicated to the public interest, before you retired.)
I sure hope we can get some ethnic diversity at Lyric Opera performances, like the diversity you describe at our Chicago counterpart. No one, I hope, would want that fine facility to draw almost-exclusively lily-white audiences. It would reflect badly on us.
I’ll send you an e-mail.