JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Every day, on its masthead, The Star proudly blares beside a photo of starch-collared William Rockhill Nelson: “A Paper for the People.”

Well, what we saw yesterday in Kansas City was “A Victory for the People.”

Highwoods Properties, our mostly unwelcome, Country Club Plaza squatter from North Carolina, raised the white flag.

No skyscraper on the site of the Neptune Apartments at the northeast corner of 47th and Broadway.

I almost can’t believe it. Yes, the opponents, Friends of the Plaza, gathered the signatures of 18,000 registered voters, enough to force a referendum in November. And, yes, they waged a smart, ankle-biting fight against the Big Dog.

Neptune Apartments

But still, I know that at least one leader of the opposition was skeptical about the group’s chances of winning a citywide election. Highwoods seemed to be prepared to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into a campaign. And, really, I didn’t sense that the opposition was resonating widely outside the 4th Council District.

But it looks like Highwoods finally recognized that it had badly screwed up its introduction of the plan a year ago, with its roughshod proposal to raze the Balcony Building and plop a high-rise office tower right on the corner.

With that presumptuous and high-handed move, Highwoods put itself behind the eight ball and never recovered.

It appears that the thick heads and money grubbers in Highwoods’ home office in Raleigh, N.C., might have learned something:

That money and political influence don’t always carry the day; that the little guys, when they are pesky enough and ample enough in numbers, sometimes win.

Still up in the air, however, is the fate of the Neptune building, which has 96 units and opened in 1988. Anticipating victory, Highwoods gave all tenants notice months ago, and the building is empty.

In a front-page Kansas City Star story about the Highwoods decision today, development reporter Kevin Collison quoted a Highwoods lawyer as saying, “Highwoods is exploring its options, which could include refurbishing the building, demolishing it for a new apartment project or staying the course.”

***

Now, where to put the Polsinelli Shughart law firm?

I think another factor in the Highwoods decision was, simply, that they couldn’t stomach the prospect of losing the law firm and its 500 employees. The firm’s main office is now located in a high-rise on 47th West of Broadway — an area designated for taller buildings by the city’s 1989 Plaza Urban Design and Development Plan.

I had heard that, with the uncertainty about the Neptune site, Polsinelli Shughart was looking seriously at the glaringly vacant site of the former Mission Shopping Center.

Jim Polsinelli

It would have been crushing all around — still would be — if the firm left Kansas City. We just can’t have that. Jim Polsinelli, founder of the firm, is a diehard Kansas Citian (lives just off Ward Parkway), and I think he would vote to leave the city only as a last resort.

The obvious, most convenient spot for Polsinelli Shughart appears to be a site called Valencia II, which now is a vacant lot north of the Valencia Place high-rise. Valencia Place, which opened in 1999, houses Charles Schwab and Lockton Insurance, among other businesses.

Valencia II was originally included in the same TIF plan approved for Valencia Place.

In a sidebar to his main story this morning, Collison wrote:

“The site (Valencia II) is ready for development with perhaps some minor modification of its commercial zoning. It also has plenty of garage parking with the potential for more.”

On the down side, he noted that Polsinelli Shughart executives had earlier rejected Highwoods’ proposal to build at Valencia II because it was “too far removed from 47th Street and the core of the Plaza.”

Well, like Highwoods, maybe Polsinelli Shughart is ready to give some ground, too.

What the hell is the matter with being 100 yards from 47th Street? Those fat-cat lawyers need to get out of their fine leather chairs once in a while and take a walk down to where the common folks are. Then, they can huff and puff their way back up the hill; that’s where the exercise comes in.

In the meantime — while we wait for Highwoods and Polsinelli Shughart to come up with a reasonable plan (subject to veto by Friends of the Plaza) — hearty congratulations are in order to Dan Cofran, Vicki Noteis, Michael Koon and other key leaders of Friends of the Plaza, as well as each and every Kansas City voter who signed the petition.

It’s a kick-ass day for Kansas City.

While my esteemed colleague, Tony Botello, has written at length about how bad many things in Kansas City are, including the Power & Light District and The Star, I’ve always defended my beloved city and most of its institutions, including P&L and The Star.

But now, I’m reconsidering. Maybe the balance has tipped, ever so slightly, toward the negative.

I returned home Sunday evening from an overnight trip to Tulsa, where I took our son Charlie for his senior year at Tulsa University. I opened the Sunday morning paper and saw that three young people had been shot on the Plaza late Saturday night and that Mayor Sly James, who happened to be at the scene, was shoved to the ground by his bodyguards. (My sources also tell me he was violently tickled.)

Even Kansas City’s Prince of Peace, Alvin Brooks, who also was at the scene, couldn’t quell the disturbance.

This comes on the heels of a rout of the Chiefs Friday night and a baseball game last week where the Royals managed to give up five runs in the ninth inning and lose, yet again, in incredibly creative fashion.

One more thing about the Chiefs…They are run by the three biggest dullards you could ever find in one organization — Clark Kent (I mean Clark Hunt), Scott Pioli and coach Todd Haley. (Haley has discovered that the best way to keep hopes low is to never change inflection and the only time it pays to shave is when he has a chance to get lucky.)

Then, there are (were) the Kansas City Wizards soccer team. I understand they’ve left town and changed their name. I’m looking for them out West, but I don’t know how far to go.

So, with things getting grim on several fronts, I think it’s time to consider alternate places to live.

A former editor at The Star, David Zeeck, used to be fond of saying,
“Don’t bring me problems; bring me solutions!”

Alright, then, here are some alternatives to Kansas City, if, like me, you’re thinking about lighting out.

Fortunately, as I said earlier, I went south this weekend, and I want to recommend three cities for our mutual consideration.

First, let’s look at Butler, Mo., which is about 65 miles south of Kansas City, just off U.S. 71.

Butler is called the “Electric City” because it was the first city west of the Mississippi to have electric power.

I pulled into Butler on Saturday afternoon, thinking about going to McDonald’s but not really wanting to. From the McDonald’s parking lot, I saw, behind the restaurant and across a parking lot, a Country Mart.

At the Country Mart deli counter, various meats and cheeses looked eye-poppingly fresh behind sparkling-clean glass cases. About five employees stood ready to take my order.

“Ham off the bone sandwich with swiss cheese and lettuce,” I said.

A couple of minutes later, the lady handed me the sandwich, perfectly wrapped, and said, “That’ll be $2.60.”

“What?” I said.

“Two sixty,” she repeated.

“The prices are right here in Butler,” I said.

“Like how much better?” she said.

“About $2, compared to Kansas City,” I said.

So, I filed it away, never thinking that Butler might crop up as an alternative place to pack up and move to.

***

Then, it was back on the road, next stop Joplin, at the juncture of 71 and Interstate 44.

Anxious to get a look at the town in the wake of the spring’s devastating tornado, I drove north on Range Line Road to a Braum’s restaurant and ice cream store. Along the way, I saw a few remnants of the tornado, such as trees down and a few bare plots where buildings used to be. But, all in all, the place looked good, and, judging by the laughing and happy talk I heard at Braum’s, morale is high.

I ordered two dips of chocolate in a cup, and the lady serving me came back with a four-inch-deep cup packed to the top.

“Two oh six,” she said.

“Huh?” I said.

“Two dollars and six cents,” she said.

Because I didn’t want to plant any seeds about raising prices, I didn’t tell the young lady that the same cup of ice cream would run about five bucks at Baskin Robbins.

I sat down at a booth and enjoyed some of the best ice cream I’ve had in a long time.

Little did I know when I left Joplin that just two days later I would be holding out Joplin — the city that about got blowed away a few months ago — as a possible residential destination for someone thinking about relocating.

***

The last stop, of course, was Tulsa, where everything happens on Tulsa Time, which runs a tad slower than in Kansas City..and even slower than Joplin in the wake of the tornado.

Charlie needed a bed, mattress and chest of drawers, so we went to a place called Affordable Furniture, Admiral and Harvard, where we’ve done business before. You know this stuff is affordable because a lot of it is set up outside the store, leaning against the walls, so you can shop from your car.

The impresario is a man named Malik, a friendly and accommodating sort, who just loves the college students. (His store is about half a mile from campus.)

We looked over Malik’s inventory and selected a pillow-top-type mattress (with box springs) and a chest of drawers that Malik contended was brand new, even though it had some scuff marks along the top left edge.

After some fierce negotiating, we settled on a price of $287, including tax…Why, I’ll bet that in Kansas City a deal like that couldn’t even be had on Truman Road!

So, there you have it. If you’re looking for an affordable place to live and you’re sick and tired of big-city prices and “flash mobs” running amok on the Plaza, I think Butler, Joplin and Tulsa all warrant look-sees.

A couple of more things about Lenexa, that God-forsaken city that is in line to get the EPA regional headquarters, along with its 600 employees.

I’ve read up on Lenexa a bit, and one thing I learned was that in 2009, Money magazine named it the 26th best small town in America.

(Liberty, by the way, was named the 29th best small town.)

Really raises your estimation of Lenexa (and Liberty), eh?

Well, do you have any idea how those goofy “best of” cities are selected?

I’ll tell you…

A Money reporter is sitting around with his feet up on his desk reading The New Yorker, and an editor comes along and says, “Hey, Ernie, I’ve got an assignment for you…You’ve got a week to put together a cover story on ‘America’s best small towns.’ Let’s get cracking!”

As the reporter puts his head in his hands, elbows on his desk, his first thought is, “I wonder if it’s too late to go to barber college.”

Then he stews around a while, goes to lunch with some colleagues and complains about the “stupid assignment” he just got. The other reporters commiserate with him because they, too, have had their share of make-work assignments.

Back at his desk, barber school no longer an option, the reporter warms up to the task. He looks at past “best of” stories and starts running through some cities in Wikipedia. Then, he gets down to the real reporting: he goes around, asking fellow reporters about small cities they’ve visited.

“Hey, Julia,” he says, “aren’t you from Kansas? What’s a decent small town there?”

Julia says, “Well, I’m actually from Kansas City, Missouri, but there’s this town over there named Lenexa that I’ve heard is supposed to be the spinach capital of the world.”

Our irrepressible reporter jumps onto Google and, sure enough, finds that September 2009 will mark the 25th anniversary of the Lenexa Spinach Festival, commemorating the town’s 1930s status as the “spinach capital of the world.”

Bingo! One down, 99 to go.

(You might be wondering how Liberty made the list…Probably went something like this: “Hey, Larry, don’t you have a good friend who lives in Missouri? You know anything about small cities there?”

(“Well,” replies Larry, “my buddy tells me there’s a motel in Liberty, Missouri, a little north of Kansas City, and friends of his who stayed there said it was the best continental breakfast they ever had.”)

When Money magazine published its 2009 list, then, the opening sentence in the accompanying three-paragraph story on Lenexa went like this:

“Popeye would be proud of this town 12 miles southwest of Kansas City…”

The next paragraph says: “But Lenexa doesn’t get its strength just from spinach. It’s home to the headquarters of restaurant chain Applebee’s, plus a J.C. Penney distribution center that employs several hundred people.”

Ooooops! Fifty percent of that equation recently changed, with Applebee’s announcing in May that it was leaving 112th and Renner (future home of the EPA) and taking its 390 employees to an office building on Ward Parkway in Kansas City.

That reduces Lenexa’s claims to fame to Popeye and the Penney’s distribution center. In case you want to visit the distribution center, it’s east of Renner, at about 107th.

You might want to MapQuest it before you start out, though.

As you would expect, the Government Services Administration dotted all its i’s and crossed all its t’s before it made the controversial move of announcing that it had decided to move the regional Environmental Protection Agency headquarters from downtown KCK to lifeless and languid Lenexa.

That much became clear with Monday’s announcement that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had rejected an appeal by the current EPA landlord that the GSA’s decision was incorrect.

Lenexa…I can hardly imagine a worse place to live, work or visit.

I know a woman who lives there, and she has no concept of what urban living is like and seldom leaves the suburbs. She might as well be living outside Lawrence…Also, she can’t get any dates, even though she’s a Merengue instructor.

I know another woman who lives there — might be gone now — and after she got divorced, she couldn’t get any dates, either.

I know another woman who lives there, and she’s across the street from a cemetery. Must be great fun on Halloween. (She doesn’t need any dates; she’s elderly and has a nice husband.)

By the way, the second woman — the divorcee — I actually dated her (as well as her sister)…before she got married and moved to Lenexa. And the Merengue instructor…I would consider dating her, if I wasn’t married and if she didn’t live in Lenexa. (Neither qualification appears likely to go away.)

Oh, and another thing. There’s a cop out there, a guy named Michael Bussell, who’s the biggest law enforcement jerk I’ve ever run across.

Here’s the story on him, briefly: In the course of writing a blog about Zach Myers, the 16-year-old Lenexa youth who was killed in an auto crash in Olathe last year, I called Zach’s parents and interviewed them. They later regretted having talked to me, so they called the Lenexa cops. Officer Bussell called me and told me that if I attempted to contact the Myers family again, I could be charged with harassment.

As I continued my reporting on the case, I ran into a young man who also had had a run-in with Bussell. At my mention of Bussell’s name, the young man shook his head and said, “What a dick.”

So, as you can see, I don’t particularly care for Lenexa. What a backwater.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, the GAO has ruled in favor of the GSA, and the EPA will probably be moving to the former Applebee’s world headquarters building at 112th Street and Renner Road next summer.

The current EPA building

KCK still has one last chance, however. Recently, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., filed a lawsuit alleging that the proposal of UrbanAmerica, the EPA’s current landlord, was superior to that of the company that owns the Lenexa building. I don’t expect the UG to win that one, but it could delay the EPA’s move for months.

So, I thought you’d like to see what the new building looks like…Here it is, then, in all its glory.

I’d like to show you what’s around it but, unfortunately, there’s nothing to photograph.

Good luck, EPA!

A few musings while waiting for the Tour de France winner to be crowned tomorrow in Par-eee.

***

About that tour…This is the first year I’ve really paid close attention to it, watching several stages on Versus, starting at 7 a.m. every day except for days of rest.

Much of it has been amazing, like Thursday’s and Friday’s stages in the Alps, with the cyclists pedaling up steep grades for an hour or more at a time, often racing wheel to wheel. It’s an incredible exhibition of human willpower and strength.

And yet, the way the race finishes strikes me as incredibly dull and anticlimactic. Today, for example, the riders are engaging in time trials, where they start individually at two-minute intervals and ride/race along a 26-mile route.

Watching these riders proceed individually, even though they are extremely fast and powerful, is about as exciting as watching cyclists cruise along the Trolley Trail.

Then, tomorrow, the race culminates with a 59-mile, ceremonial ride into Paris, along the Champs Elysees. In nearly every other sport, the finish is designed to be the most exciting part of the event, but not the Tour. My wife Patty explains it this way, “It’s French!”

Come to think of it, the only exciting finishes in France are when the sexual affairs and escapades of powerful politicians and others (see Dominique Strauss-Kahn) are exposed and turn ugly.

***

I see in today’s sports section of The Star that columnist Sam Mellingers has worked himself into a tizzy over the failure of Los Angeles-based AEG to corral an NBA or NHL team for Kansas City.

“If you still hold out any hope for a team coming to the Sprint Center, you should know the company that bragged about making it all happen for us is no longer motivated to work on our behalf,” Mellinger wrote.

I say…so what? Last I heard, Sprint Center was one of the top three or four most successful arenas in the country. In tandem with the Power & Light District, the Sprint Center literally saved our downtown. We’re back as a destination city, competing for conventions, concerts and other events, and offering facilities and entertainment venues that we should all be very proud of.

As for pro hockey and basketball…Come on! Those are the worst of the four major sports. The NBA amounts to watching mostly uneducated, overpaid, heavily tattooed individuals showing off for a couple of hours, while the NHL is often little more than boxing on ice. And, of course, both events are ridiculously overpriced.

Here’s my suggestion for making hockey a decent “game” and taking the boxing out of it: Anyone who starts or engages in a fight is thrown out of the game and is suspended for the following game. That would essentially put an end to it.

Here’s my suggestion for making NBA basketball a decent game….Let all the players go to Turkey, where they can show off for Istanbul’s 13 million people every night.

***

Some things never change at City Hall. One is the firefighters getting their way.

The headline on today’s lead editorial in today’s Star says, “Taxpayers simply got burned by pay pact.”

On Thursday, the City Council, under terms of an agreement reached with Local 42 two years ago, approved raises averaging 4.2 percent by next April 30. Lower-paid firefighters will get increases as high as 18 percent, while the highest-paid firefighters will get raises of 2.5 percent.

Backed into a corner by the overly generous 2009 agreement, some council members blamed former City Manager Wayne Cauthen for the situation.

Fourth District Councilwoman Jan Marcason, who has been on the council since 2007, was paraphrased in a Thursday Star story as saying the council would be more cautious in future negotiations with Local 42.

“We’re a little wiser,” she said.

Uh, huh. Sure…Here’s the deal with Local 42. Their leadership, i.e. Louie Wright, stays the same year after year after year. And they never waver from their goal of improving the lot of their members. They’re in it for the long haul, and their willpower and political clout is phenomenal.

Unlike many citizens, they understand the significance of elections and the importance of each and every  vote.

City officials, on the other hand, come and go, and many just can’t match the endurance and tenacity of the firefighters. Cauthen’s long gone, and seven members of the current council were not around when the council approved the 2009 agreement.

Coupled with that, the council members who are most likely to win seats are those supported by Local 42. Aren’t they inclined, then, to give the union what it wants when they get in office? Of course, it’s all part of city politics and has been for at least 40 years.

So, for Marcason to say, “We’re a little wiser” is downright laughable.