Kansas City Star features writer Tim Engle is a great guy – charming, personable, quick witted – self-effacing and honest even…
The flip side of all that good stuff: He’s no pit bull.
Far from it, in fact. It’s just not Engle’s mission in life – nor in his skill set – to bowl folks over with deep, probing thought and iron clad logic. The sort of instincts it sometimes take to tackle an intricately reported, hard news story.
But when it was time for the newspaper to call on readers to offer up goofy-beyond-belief suggestions for how Kemper Arena could be repurposed, Engle was Johnny-on-the-spot.
Unfortunately, serving up a bunch of madcap ideas for Kemper is the last thing KC needs.
Oh sure, turn the historic, landmark into a multilevel go-kart complex. Hilarious. Or maybe a social services center? Deep. Indoor dog park, anyone? Why didn’t I think of that?
Here’s the deal…
With tens of millions of taxpayer dollars or more on the line and the red ink pouring in every year, Kemper Arena is no joking matter.
Far from it.
Because some of this town’s biggest bullies (and civic types who stand to benefit by tearing Kemper down and building a new, smaller American Royal facilities) have joined forces and have employed one of KC’s mightiest law firms to defend their realm against anybody with a concept for Kemper that doesn’t entail the big shots getting their way.
The bottom line being it doesn’t really matter how goofy or serious a plan might be, who wants to become the next Foutch Brothers?
The Foutch Brothers were the dudes who were well on their way to garnering widespread support for redeveloping Kemper as a youth sports Mecca. That is until the Foutch’s lawyers got a threatening, cease-and-desist letter from the American Royal lawyers, telling them where they could stick it and what might happen if they didn’t.
“We suggest your client (Foutch Brothers) put its financial partners and lenders on notice that the American Royal lease is in full effect and that my client (American Royal) will protect its rights under the lease if necessary.”
Get the picture?
The American Royal made it abundantly clear for all that it would not tolerate the city entertaining rival offers with 30 years remaining on the Royal’s lease.
Rendering all subsequent grand announcements about seeking outside offers and ideas to redevelop Kemper a moot point.
Somebody at City hall think the American Royal is bluffing?
Let’s see how fast anybody halfway real steps up with anywhere near the time, money and energy the Flotch’s did with a halfway viable plan for Kemper now that the legal gauntlet has been thrown.
You know, something besides sealing up all the windows and cracks and filling Kemper up with water to make it into a giant aquarium.
Now that’s really funny.
My idea- world’s largest vape lounge.
Don’t quit your day job…
Hey, I thought we were still in brainstorming time when nothing was judged.
Thanks Judgy McJudginspants.
I find it upsetting you positioned the Kemper as an old dude smoking a cigar. That’s a two fold insult to old dudes and cigars.
I thought you were writing for Sam Drucker’s paper down in Hooterville? Don’t they stick their seegars into the corncob pipe there?
Following the shootout in Waco, we await the next story on why the parking banditos stories went dark.
Notice when white people with guns riot there were no bullet-riddled bystanders?
Hey, use Kemper for a battle royal of gangs. Pay-per-view money AND free demolition.
It never rains in Hooterville.
Orphan, I do write for Sam’s paper as well as 23 other Hooterville’s, one state-wide alternative paper and, soon, looks like an essay in The New Yorker! I go from Hooterville to Hippieland to Ultimate Snobery! But, luckily, I keep all ownership and rights so I can comment when Waco biker gangs park their scooters in the No Parking zone at Twin Hooters.
When white biker gangs kill each other 190 people get arrested. When a town loots and burns its own businesses, they retreat!
I for one, am very deeply disturbed at the level of marksmanship I saw in the Twin Peaks shootout.
This “Race War” could prove to be a bridge too far. 9 killed, 18 wounded and no bystanders shot. Not one.
These white boys can shoot.
I am in conference with Al, Obama, Eric, Ms. Lynch, Jesse and the entire panoply of Race Industry CEO’s and at this point, the feeling is, that we should continue to whine about slavery, engage in low level violence and gorilla warfare (heh, heh…), threaten and intimidate with the usual demands and reap the benefits of a decaying, ethnomasochistic, self loathing culture that will pay us and give us room to destroy.
Thanks for the shout out Orphan. I see what you did there.
🙂
In Baltimore, there are 24 more murders so far this year and 64 more shootings to date. All over America, cops are being killed at twice the rate as in the past few years and this summer promises to be one big fat Hieronymus Bosch painting in the inner city abattoirs of America, but if we can keep the focus on 9 dead and 18 wounded in Waco, then no one will notice the 12,000 murders every year committed by blacks, mostly gang members in America that destabilizes and destroys this country from the inside out.
We shall overcome.
Louie Louie F, autopsies show 4 bikers were likely killed by cops. When that’s made official my hope is the white folk of Waco will burn the neighborhood to the ground like Janet Reno going bat $hit crazy on Camp Davidian! We can’t have cops killing innocent recreational motorcyclists who were simply trying to police their own problems. This demands reparations, through any means possible.
Step away from the mirror, Paul…
how about a holding pen for glazes girls.
It should fill that arena up pretty fast.
Instead of hot dogs…just put glaze there with his black leather
coat and watch it be a sellout.
Or just jjwlker/david from full house and the senior comic circuit
boys up on stage an laugh our asses off!
Yes harlinator. Full house guy doing scooby doo impersonations would fill kemper for 100, probably 200 years with doughy, nostalgic midwestern house fraus.
Nice article Hearne.
Will the new Streetcar run from the New Hotel to Kemper?
If our city fathers would just use their heads, they could see a golden opportunity when it falls right at their feet. We bring in terrorists from the Middle East by the hundreds of thousands every year. By turning Kemper into a Mosque, we could attract those folks here by the boatload. Why let Dearborn take the lead in the shift to Sharia Law, when we have a building almost as big as the Hagia Sophia to provide for out new friends?
Lets make it happen.
KC Mismanagement? Say it ain’t so. Perhaps Takata can buy it to build an emergency airbag factory. When Sprint was built, nobody gave it a second thought. Mayor Barnes said a professional basketball team or hockey team would come, neither of which we have seen, and now we’re building a downtown hotel with more city money. Perhaps Kemper should have been insured when weather tore the roof off, rather than extending the debt. It’s kind of like adding the auto loan to your mortgage, keeping you from getting rid of your 73 Impala because you still have 18 years left on the debt. Over the years, KC has lost the FFA, much of the Christian Atheletes, and other money makers to cities that tried harder. Now, we are left with the overhead but not the revenue. If we truely applied ourselves, we could find a purpose like getting the CNFR to Kansas City (College National Finals Rodeo). What we need are events that the public will support. I guess that’s the real problem.
Senator Rand Paul is standing for American freedom and liberty. Support his filibuster of the Patriot Act, because the Act is anything but patriotic. Don’t trade your freedoms because of fear. Stand with Rand.
YES!!! Random out of the blue comment. YES!