Hearne: How Former Mayor Kay Barnes Screwed KC

There’s a dude in Westport who’s been itching for this…

And he’s far from alone, so get ready, here it comes.

Former Kansas City mayor Kay Barnes has taken her fair share of bows for helping now-deceased, under-the-table, political wheeler-dealer Steve Glorioso reverse engineer the T-Mobile Center and Power & Light District.

To their credit – for starters, anyway – both projects still exist and are popular, despite just about everything bad imaginable happening subsequent to their 2008 launches. That includes recessions, COVID, Black Lives Matter, urban unrest, you-name-it.

But lest Barnes bask too fully in that limelight, note that many of the promises made (or strongly implied during their selling stages) remain unrealized.

Things like Kansas City being on the verge of snagging the Nashville Predators NHL team that reportedly wanted to move to KC; an NBA expansion team; the near death of the once-mighty Kansas City Star; and former business section cheerleader Kevin Collison‘s imaginary “downtown ballpark.”

None of those ever materialized – just the bad stuff.

Yet 15 years after those sexy projects were unleashed, the average dude here is unaware that Kansas City is taking it up the shorts trying to pay off Barnes’ dreams.

Or as Wikipedia puts it, “While the (P&L) district was originally projected to generate enough tax revenue to pay for the bonds that were issued to finance it, the city has instead needed to rely on its general fund and refinancing to make debt payments.”

KC’s NFL Draft extravaganza was a point of pride for Chiefs fans and civic-minded types, but outside of hotels and downtown businesses, the consensus is most of the money never left downtown.

“Well, it was good for our image, but I don’t think it was good for our bank account,” Westport business leader Bill Nigro says. “Westport tried to get involved, but we were shut out. So it didn’t bring that much business to Westport – I didn’t hear anything. It was all designed to all be downtown. I mean, it was neat and all that – it was first class – but can we afford it right now? Heck, no.

“Kansas City has a (crap) load of issues right now,” Nigro continues. “Murders on on a record pace. We’re ahead of every year for murder right now. And most crimes are up in KC now.

“And a lot of the police have retired and got out of it and the recruits are minimal. They’re having a hard time filling positions. Police all over the country feel they’ve been disrespected the past couple years.”

Barnes helping to revive downtown worked in terms of more and younger people choosing an urban lifestyle. But at what cost?

“It costs the city $1.5 million every month, just to cover the loans for the P&L District,” Nigro says. “And former city manager Troy Schulte told me that will be the case until 2040 when the city pays off the bonds. And Kansas City gets no sales or earnings taxes from people that work there. Nor property tax from the people who live there, because the money goes to pay off the loans.

“Barnes was the one who gave it all away to build the Sprint Center and P&L District, and at the end, the Cordish Company of Baltimore gets to own it. Meanwhile the city pays Cordish to run it, too.”

Barnes and Glorioso were heralded for getting all this done and making Kansas City better, Nigro says.

“And lots of people have moved downtown, but it’s still costing the city over $2 million a month overall until 2040. It created property tax coming from other places, but still $24 million a year from 2008 until 2040, was that a good trade off? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.”

Barnes did not return calls to her home answering machine with a confused sounding message, and Glorioso died in 2017.