Convention Center Follies. Heywood T. Sanders
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leadership. The chamber had planned and bargained for a new convention facility for over half of the previous decade, and the group was unwilling to accept the December 1969 vote as the final verdict. Just four months after the defeat, in April 1970, Lester Siegel of the chamber’s Convention and Tourism Department reported on a series of meetings to consider financing alternatives. Siegel “advised they were going to approach the people who would reap direct benefits from a new facility to participate in at least partial financing of a large facility to supplement the present space.”24 Beyond the possibility of private backing, they were also “checking with other cities on how they were able to finance their facilities.”25 Behind the scenes, business leaders were pressing the city council to move ahead on some arrangement for a new convention center. But it was not until late June 1971 that council member Sal Capra was able to publicly announce a city study of financial alternatives.26
The decade of the 1960s had not been kind to the Kansas City central business district. New office construction in the suburbs had matched downtown development, and in the early 1970s would substantially exceed it. In terms of constant dollars, downtown retail sales had slipped from $157 million in 1963 to $137 million in 1967 and then $95 million in 1972. And the situation was getting worse, with one 1976 study reporting, “The Kansas City CBD experienced significant declines in all indices of economic vitality in the 1970–1975 period despite regional growth over the same time frame.” The city’s business leaders were desperate to boost downtown’s fortunes.27
Whatever the fiscal preferences of the city council, the chamber was insistent on a convention center soon. The group voted on June 28, 1971, to reaffirm its commitment to a new hall “at the earliest possible date,” calling for the expansion to “be in the close proximity or adjacent to the present facilities as far as possible and that it be in a downtown location.”28 Although the chamber clearly wanted a new convention hall, the financing alternatives of a business tax or a lease-purchase deal were less enticing. The group also “urged that the need for Convention and Exhibition Hall expansion be brought before the voters at the earliest possible date.”29
Mayor Charles Wheeler embraced the chamber position and called for a November vote on the convention center proposition alone. But council members wanted to either defer a vote, or provide for repaying the bonds with taxes on hotels, restaurants, and ultimately visitors, as a means of making the project more appealing to the voters. After one member proposed building the new center adjacent to the city’s old airport rather than downtown, the council leadership and the chamber met in September 1971 to reach a politically acceptable solution.
That solution was made public on September 22. The council agreed to finance the new facility with revenue bonds issued by a nonprofit corporation, in a variation on the lease-purchase scheme.30 They could thus avoid a public vote on the center proposal. Leaders from the hotel and restaurant business in turn agreed to a set of new taxes, and the chamber Board of Directors approved both the financing arrangement and the commitment to a downtown site. Indeed, the chamber went on to craft a plan under which it would obtain $1.25 million in private loans to finance architectural work on the center, and then promised that “if a reasonable amount of money is needed to complete the convention center, it will further undertake to obtain these funds through contributions from the business community of the Kansas City metropolitan area.”31
The deal to finance and build the new convention center was a political masterpiece. It enabled the chamber and the hospitality industry to achieve their goal of a quick start on the structure, while avoiding the potential for defeat and public embarrassment that might well have accompanied another vote. The council members were able to argue that business and visitors would pay, rather than local property owners. And they were thus able to free up part of the city’s property tax to support additional debt planned for a vote in 1972.
The political success of the convention center deal was nonetheless subject to a legal question, and in June 1972 a suit was filed that raised that question. The legal vulnerability of the planned center was mirrored by its fiscal problems. In July 1973, the Kansas City Star headlined “Convention Center Price Tag Rises Sharply.”32 The $19 million convention center was now estimated to cost $35 million, about the outer limits of the revenues from the hotel and restaurant taxes. But the legal problems won out—the Missouri Supreme Court in September decided against the city’s financing scheme, concluding that any commitment of city tax revenues required a public vote.33
If the 1971 deal for the new convention center was voided by the court decision, the timing was nonetheless fortuitous. Quite independently, the city had been developing a broad gauge capital improvement program scheduled to go before the voters on December 18, 1973. The city council quickly moved to add the convention center as the fourteenth separate bond proposal, with a total cost of $30 million. Thirteen of the bond proposals, including $22 million for street improvements and $10 million for urban renewal, were to be paid for by the city’s general revenues. But the new convention center was different—it could be sold as paid for by visitors, through the new hotel and restaurant taxes.
The chamber leadership did not simply trust to the public’s civic spirit in winning approval for the center bonds. In late March, the leaders behind the bond program had reported on a meeting “with principals of the KANSAS CITY STAR and they have pledged full support.”34 The Star provided substantial backing, both on its editorial pages and in news coverage. An extensive article on the Sunday before the vote announced, “Convention Center Dividends Paid in Business, Jobs” and described the competition the city faced for convention business, noting the successful results of new centers in Dallas, Atlanta, and Denver.35
The Chamber of Commerce, together with the city’s hospitality community, provided the bulk of campaign funds. And the campaign effort extended beyond traditional advertising and public relations. Mayor aide and political consultant Jerry Jette noted the need to bring ward political organizations into the bond campaign:
The existing effective political organizations in certain sections of the City must be pulled into the campaign in favor of the Bond Package …. The areas to which I refer are wards 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18. These are among the least affluent in the City and if we are to expect positive support at the precinct and on election day, certain monies must be made available…. Each precinct within each ward will be assigned a quota of 150 “yes” votes.36
The fiscal commitment of the Chamber of Commerce to an effective campaign, perhaps including “certain monies” as well as appeals to community improvement, proved vital.
Ten of the 14 bond issues on the December 1973 ballot failed to receive the required two-thirds majority. The proposals for police and fire protection passed, but urban renewal, street improvement, and parks bonds all failed. The $30 million convention center bond literally squeaked through, with a margin of 22 “yes” votes out of more than 46,000 cast.
The successful 1973 convention center vote gave Kansas City a brand-new convention center, which opened for business in 1976. It also marked the beginning of a new era in convention center financing. The commitment of new hotel and restaurant taxes to pay off the general obligation bonds sold for the center fundamentally changed the fiscal and political environment for convention center investment. The new H. Roe Bartle Exhibition Hall was built across the street from the Municipal Auditorium, where it would support the existing concentration of hotels and anchor the southwestern core of the central business district. The new center would be expanded and improved at substantial cost in subsequent years. But Kansas City voters would never again face a convention center bond issue proposal that required two-thirds majority support.
In 1988, when St. Louis business and political leaders turned to the Missouri state government for help in financing a new domed stadium for a potential National Football League team, Kansas City chamber leaders successfully lobbied to pair a state commitment for Bartle Hall expansion with the St. Louis proposal. In July 1989, Governor John Ashcroft signed legislation that both created a regional sports complex authority for St. Louis and offered Kansas City $2 million a year to help pay for expansion of the Bartle Hall facility.37
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