As most of you know, I would like to see a new, single terminal at Kansas City International Airport.
I say get rid of the gloomy, impractical terminals and let’s get a modern structure, where all passengers funnel through a common security point and then spread out into grid-like concourses.
But you know what? I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna get what I want. I’ve been around politics long enough to know that you can’t force an idea on a resistant majority.
I was the right side of that truism last fall, when Kansas City voters defeated a bizarre, business-backed proposal to give three medical institutions (St. Luke’s, Children’s Mercy and UMKC Med School) $1 billion of taxpayer money over 20 years. The proposed half-cent sales tax for translational medical research went down to an 84-16 percent defeat. I headed one of three campaign committees that worked against the proposal.
On another big issue, though, I’m on the minority side. It’s clear from the letters to the editor and the first of four public hearings on the future of KCI that the vast majority of Kansas Citians want to keep KCI pretty much like it is now. Maybe they will tolerate some improvements, but they won’t vote for a wholesale makover. And nothing significant is going to happen unless voters approve revenue bonds to pay for improvements.
Most members of the business community — some of the same folks who pushed for the medical-research tax — favor radical change at the airport. But the public has on its side the airline executives, who don’t want a new terminal because it would force them to raise fares to cover higher fees that would help pay for the improvements.
Our beloved locknut- and washer-shaped airline terminals
On Tuesday morning, representatives of a transportation consulting firm hired by the city shed little new light on the subject. The consulting firm told the KCI Terminal Advisory Committee that the airport had flexibility to increase revenue without big fare increases, but it didn’t unequivocally recommend construction of a new terminal.
So, everyone keeps pushing the ball up and down the court, with no one hitting a three-pointer.
The most interesting thing, to me, that came out of the consultant’s report is that KCI concession revenue ranked last among 20 airports that the consulting firm compared with KCI.
Now, just about everybody could have predicted that, but it’s nice to have solid proof that KCI is a damned wasteland as far as restaurants and retail are concerned. To me, that’s almost reason enough to trash the existing, pathetic terminals.
Again, however, I understand the power of a big wave of sentiment.
The Star’s Dave Helling expressed it very well, I thought, in a Nov. 15 column. He said that big changes require broad public support. As an example, he pointed to a one-vote margin by which a citizens task force recommended keeping KCPD under state control, instead of switching to local control. Even had it been a one-vote margin in the other direction — changing to local control — Helling suggested that wouldn’t have been enough to move ahead with such a significant change.
Applying the same reasoning to KCI, Helling said: “The only chance for a new terminal at KCI rests with an enthusiastic, grass-roots consensus on the need for such a project, assembled over many months, not on divided task forces…”
Now, here’s the twist to that column…As I scoured through The Star’s electronic library, looking for that particular column (which I distinctly remembered), I came across a Jan. 6 column that Helling wrote about KCI.
In that column, he said:
“Like lots of people, I spent time at our international airport over the holidays, picking up friends and family or dropping them off. I was struck by how uncrowded the airport seemed…and how its condition, either by accident or design, seems in decline.”
So, here’s the sad fact, fellow Kansas Citians and world travelers: We have a shitty airport, and a big majority of people just love it…Love it! Wouldn’t have it any other way!
And the way things are going we’ll be stuck with this blue-ribbon pig for a long, long time.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I’m hardly a conspiracy theorist, but it does appear that there is a deliberate effort underway by airport management to let the place go and increasingly appear to be run down. My cynicism increases when you go to the Travel and Convention website and they report the city is “moving forward” with the replacement project.
Could be, could be…I agree with Yael Abouhalkah that aviation director Mark Van Loh should be fired; he got this whole thing off on the wrong foot. If he had handled it better (specifically by not proposing, initially, that a new terminal be built several miles south of the existing site), it would have been much easier to work toward a consensus.
Jim,
Unless this has changed recently, the fixtures and paper towel dispensers dated back to the opening of KCI. Van Loh is part of the problem, when he should be part of the solution. And our leaders should lead, progress with this idea, one way or another…I have been in many airports, some new and some not as new, but they are full. I agree Fitz, KCI needs leaders to improve it. I am cautious about the cost in these slow economic times, but there are times when you have to spend cash to make cash.
I think politicians want it to deteriorate to the point where more money is to be spent, so they can steal more.
If they don’t build it, they can’t steal from it.