KC Confidential

They’ve got their work cut out for them…

It may sound like no big deal – other than the Nazi-like rules and regs about talking and texting – but when Alamo Drafthouse takes over the AMC Mainstreet later this week (after AMC gets kicked to the curb), there’s gonna need to be a whole lotta remodeling shaking going on.

That is if Alamo intends to sell enough upscale food and booze to its patrons at the downtown movieplex to make a profit.

Don’t believe me? Check out how roomy other Alamo theaters are in these crowd shots.

The Mainstreet has spacious seating, don’t get me wrong. But nearly 80 percent of its seats are downstairs where it’s not designed (and all but impossible) for servers to deliver the gourmet food and booze the Alamo must sell to survive.

Not without wreeking more movie havoc than merely peering into one’s purse to check a text.

Which, by the way, will get you kicked out of the Alamo quicker than you can say "Davy Crockett."

With no refund, no less. Here’s your coonskin cap, what’s your hurry?

There’s no problem serving food and drink in the Mainstreet’s three tiny screening rooms upstairs. Those theaters were designed for dining and drinking during movies, but they only hold 68 people in the "big" room and 23 in the two smaller ones.

It’s the 431 regular movie seats that are the problem.

And if Alamo hopes to make a profit at the Mainstreet – unlike AMC – it will need to fill those downstairs auditoriums which range in size from 283 seats for the largest to 74 seats for each of the two smaller theaters.

The trick is how to reconfigure the downstairs auditoriums without losing half the seats.

Or forcing patrons to slosh their way to and from their seats while balancing pitchers of beer and upscale food.

From the get go movie insiders were skeptical about AMC being able to make money after sinking $25 million into the Mainstreet with so few seats to sell. Even AMC honcho Gerry Lopez put it this way to the Star yesterday before his comments were taken down by the newspaper an hour later:

"…With six screens…there’s not enough oxygen in that fish bowl for all the fish to live."

It won’t make things any easier for the fish if Alamo has to remove rows of seats so the servers can swim past.

And with $25 million already sunk in the tiny movie money pit, how much more will Alamo have to spend to make the Mainstreet right?

Nobody bothered to ask those questions of Alamo, which has declined to discuss the matter thus far.

"For the time being, the Mainstreet will continue to operate business-as-usual on its own while signature Alamo Drafthouse touches are implemented," Alamo’s Web site teases. "Touches like our ad-free custom preshows, ironclad no-talking/no-texting policy, and the elimination of the traditional front row for a better viewing experience."

The $64 million question being, how many more rows may have to bite the dust before Alamo’s "signature touches" free up room for it to do its food and drink thing?

And after looking at the audience shots from other Alamo’s plexes I have another question.

Does Kansas City have enough movie geeks, dweebs and film snobs downtown to make Alamo’s Mainstreet pay off?

Tough one.

You know it’s an ugly divorce when the CEO gets nasty and goes public…

For months rumors have flown about a pending nasty split between KC-based movie giant AMC Entertainment and Cordish Company. According to a source heated-beyond-belief emails were exchanged between AMC honcho Gerry Lopez and the operator of the Power & Light District.

Extremely heated.

Which explains why rather than simply divvying things up – AMC’s Mainstreet and Midland by AMC – AMC was effectively kicked to the curb in favor of tiny Texas movie exhibitor Alamo Drafthouse. Embarrased in its home town no less (to the extent that the Chinese-owned firm ever gave a you-know-what about KC since the money lenders – including Bain Capital – took over a handful of years back.

How ugly did it get?

Check out the comments fed to the Star by Lopez that went up then quickly came down this afternoon:

"(Lopez) said today irreconcilable differences between the two companies over the operation of the Mainstreet, formerly the Empire Theater at 14th and Main street led to the divorce," it reads.

"When the operation came under distress, we’re not apt to cut corners and other folks had a different point of view," Lopez seethed. "It’s a stressful working environment with six screens. There’s not enough oxygen in that fish bowl for all the fish to live."

Hello, when you’re hemorrhaging red ink like the Mainstreet, there’s not enough oxygen for even one fish.

Another example of how ugly it got; AMC has until Wednesday to not let the door hit it in the butt before it gets the heck out.

Meaning movie titan AMC’s one-time pride and joy will almost instantly be disrobed, taken over and run by a small, control freak exhibitor out of San Antonio. 

Now here’s the funny part…

The Star posted Lopez testy comments at 3:23 pm. but replaced the story an hour later at 4:24 p.m.

Minus the parts with Lopez fuming and dissing Cordish.

Like I said, this divorce was an ugly one.

Here’s what I’m talking about…

The Crown Center fountains controversy is a perfect example of what’s wrong with much of what passes for journalism today. Media organizations sending random, often rookie reporters to cover a story in which they have no background or history. They’re armed only with the intention of answering the very basic questions of who, what, where, when and – if we’re lucky – why.

The latter often being the most telling, but least told part of the news story.

Instead what viewers and readers get more often than not are a handful of inconsequential man-or-woman on the street takes and maybe a thin veneer of reasons and or answers with little to no followup or probing questions.

In short, news lite.

Now read automotive giant Bob Lutz‘ take on the practice of journalism today from his new book Car Guys:

"Then there’s the American media," the former chairman of General Motors begins. "With relatively rare exception, these men and women are well left of center, with over 70 percent of the profession cheerfully declaring themselves ‘liberal’ in surveys. Products of a higher education system that is itself riddled with professors who are anything but conservative, most journalists receive a massive dose of anti-free market, anti-big business programming in college…"

That of course, only speaks to the self-evident politics of reporting (which most print journalists naively but strongly deny).

Now here’s the money quote:

"A compounding factor is that, unlike in Europe, where an economics correspondent typically has a degree in economics, a journalism student in the United States merely learns journalism: how to write, how to interview, how to develope sources, journalistic ethics…..all good and legitimate skills when superimposed on some specific background in the area being covered. But that’s never the case here. And so we have people reasonably adept at writing and interviewing not only reporting but pontificating on corporate or financial matters of which they have only the most superficial understanding. What can one expect when reporters start on the society beat, move up to restaurant reviews and follow by a stint in crime reporting before suddenly being assigned to business reporting? How can sensible, accurate writing about such complex subjects possibly result?"

When I was a securities and commodities broker reporters from the Kansas City Business Journal and Star would conduct interviews with our research analysts and brokers who would laugh and ridicule their naivete after they departed.

They could tell them almost anything and they’d believe it!

Want examples?

When former Star food critic John Martellaro moved to Kansas City several years back he sought a position as news reporter but since there were no openings, he took the job as food critic in features. Martellaro later switched to the news side before having some reporting problems and departing the newspaper for the world of public relations.

Was Martellaro qualified to play the role of foodie? Well, he obviously knew how to eat and to write, so as far as the Star was concerned, the answer was yes.

He was later replaced by a copy editor – a dude responsible to cleaning up typos, spelling errors and the like in news reporters and columnist’s copy. A dude who then did the music and restaurant reviews for a time until he got busted for writing a scathing review of a restaurant after getting his food to go and transporting it to his home in Liberty to consume.

The restaurateur "made" the Star critic and called the FYI editor to complain after taking it up the you-know-what on the review. To be fair of course, the food should have been eaten at the restaurant at the time it was served. The FYI editor agreed and that journalist is now limited to reviewing concerts only.

After that his photographer wife was appointed to the food critic post at the Star, whereupon she violated every journalistic rule in the book by letting some of the restaurants know who she was and that their food was being reviewed.

I personally witnessed a series of chefs at Lydia’s downtown individually deliver and explain each course being reviewed. She got a wrist slap for that but continued the practice, albeit on a more dialed back basis.

Obviously, a restaurant critic should go in anonymously in order to sample the dining experience exactly as any local diner might. And not be custom-presented with courses specifically prepared with the idea that it was to be reviewed.

Another aspect of reporting that Lutz finds distasteful:

"Add to all of this the intense compeititive pressure for scoops," he writes. "With speed of the essence, quality and accuracy are relegated to the back of the bus."

I will say here that the Star is more often than not careful to a fault in this regard. Unless of course it’s somebody on the newspaper’s enemies list such as former KC mayor Mark Funkhouser.

Lutz bottom line:

"I naively grew up believing that the media existed to provide new facts and information and, in the case of controversial subjects, to confine the publication’s own opinions and bias to the editorial page."

Mainstream reporters and journalists will argue until they are blue in the face that their you-know-what don’t stink, but there’s absolutely no doubt that reporters – with rare exception – have views that tend to find their way into news stories.

Call it the human condition.

And don’t think news editors don’t have a heavy hand in this game either.

When Nebraska Furniture Mart first hit town a number of established local players in the audio/video and furniture games felt the company was practicing predatory pricing to eliminate the local competition.

Anybody remember a KC institution called BrandsMart?

I aired many of those grievances in my column in the FYI section. That is until the company head came to town and met with Star editor Mark Zieman. Needless to say, Nebraska Furniture Mart was a HUGE advertiser in the newspaper and remains one of the largest today.

Was I invited to sit in on that meeting? Of course not.

However, from that day forward I was ordered not to write anything more about the company.

Funny game, journalism…

Funny how everybody with a keyboard becomes an expert when a news story breaks…

Take Crown Center closing its fountains this week to public bathing. On one hand you’ve got a local blogger claiming a "TKC exclusive" because he says he was first to "break" the news. Hello. When a large, local corporation makes a grand announcement and sends out press releases that’s not a scoop.

Then there local TV stations to whom capturing a live body on location comes first. To the point that a nearby snowcone truck sales dude’s opinion of what the fountain’s closing means to KC got front-and-center treatment.

Ridiculously, Fox 4 News even managed to get a local lawyer to say that if a "kid was running around there and slipped and bumped their head I probably would not take the case."

The idea being, why would Crown Center close its fountain over of minor liability worries?

However, in the wide world of clear, intelligent thinking, while the attorney probably wouldn’t take the case if a kid scraped his knee either…

What if he fell while playing in the fountain and was paralyized from the neck down?

So of course we got some meaningful TV reporting there.

Finally, a Kansas City Star columnist with a nose for uninteresting news finally found a topic she could get some traction on and penned a very well-written column. Unfortunately it was based on the faulty premise that "behavior by a few ruined Crown Center fountain."

Quite the opposite.

It was behavior by the many that "ruined" public use of the fountain. Too many people were going, hanging out and racing about while probably going to the bathroom while in it. More kids were going – not fewer – according to Crown Center, because of its new Lego and aquarium kiddie magnets.

So great column, but not very great thinking.

Hats off however to said columnist however for noting that – unlike virtually every swimming pool in the town – there are no bathrooms near the fountains. And to my knowledge, no clearly posted signs directing people to where such distant bathrooms might be found.

So of course the kiddies were gonna go…just like the birds overhead.

In response to my reporting update from 1998 in which the KC Health Deptartment said it had no jurisdiction over the fountain because it was not a swimming pool, Fox 4 fired back: "The Health Department says Crown Center has always passed water inspections."

Au contraire.

Always is a pretty long time – 40 years in this case. And as far as Health Department spokesman Jeff Hershberger knows, "always" at Crown Center began in 2008 after "some pretty big changes when the pool ordinances were expanded to include spray grounds and Crown Center started applying for permits to have (the fountain) as a spray ground," he says. "And they do have a water filtration system in place that is similar to what swimming pools have."

That’s the good news. Now the bad.

"It’s very difficult for any spray ground to keep the chemicals perfectly in line because there’s so many people running through them, playing and sitting on the nozzles," Hershberger says. "I mean, it’s difficult enough for pools."

And again, not because there are so "few," but rather because there are so many using it.

With everything else the faraway bathrooms couldn’t have helped, Hershberger says.

"When I was a little kid you had to go through the bathroom and take a shower before you could get in the pool," he says. "That’s not the case at Crown Center, and it’s hard to collect the water (to treat it properly) on a spray ground. And while people today have swim diapers, they don’t necessarily change diapers properly."

In 1998 now-deceased Health Department honcho E.J. Olomiye told me, no way he’d let his kids go in the water at Crown Center Country Club.

Raising the question, would Hershberger?

"With the system they have now, I’d be more comfortable," he hedges. "But would I put my face in that water? No. I have enough problem putting my face in the private pools where I know how the water is being kept up."

Hershberger’s take on why Crown Center came to its senses so suddenly and decided to close the fountain to the public?

"I think at the heart of it is it’s because of what the national trends are for spray grounds," he says. "And that is to have a secondary water treatment system in place rather than just a regular system like you would see in a pool. But I don’t know if they’re looking ahead or if they’re looking at the liability or what."

It only took Crown Center 14 years to get a clue….

Because it was back in the summer of ‘98 that the Kansas City Health Department cautioned the Hallmark-owned upscale shopping center about allowing “swimmers” in its fountains.

Actually, I was the one who called attention to the matter after learning that Hallmarkers were derisively referring to the outdoor fountain as the “Crown Center Country Club,” owing to it’s popularity as an inner city kiddie magnet.

Funny thing was, after years of doing everything it could to shoo kids and urban teens away from its movie theaters, the last thing Crown Center wanted was throngs of urban youth and their parents publically bathing right outside its front door.

However rather than be party-poopers and possibly appear racist, Crown Center chose to put up with the practice all these years.

Until yesterday…

That’s when Crown Center declared the fountains off limits to the swimsuit crowd

See, according to Crown Center, suddenly there are safety issues and health issues because the water has tested positive for unsafe bacteria recently. So new signs are going up warning waders to steer clear.

So why the controversy now?

This deal would have probably been shut down 20 years ago except the Health Department didn’t have jurisdiction because it’s a fountain, not a swimming pool. The Health Department told me as much.

“In an open fountain like that, there can be contamination from different sources – animals, birds, little children in diapers and defecation,” former Health Dept. industrial hygiene and safety manager E.J. Olomiye cautioned. “I wouldn’t allow my kids to swim in that type of system that was not designed for swimming because there are many possibilities that they could get some type of contamination.”

Crown Center’s defense: it had signs even back then forbidding frolicking in the fountains.

And it conceded the fountains weren’t designed for bathing.

Now let’s take the gloves off and call it like it is.

None of the Crown Center merchants I’ve spoken with over the years have been supportive of public use of the fountains by swimmers. They know full well that dripping wet kids in baby speedos aren’t likely to pop into upscale stores and drop a bunch of dough. Let alone the Crown Center Country Club set.

Nor do they want them to.

Upscale shopping centers want upscale shoppers, not soaking wet, underage kids who look like they just got busted by the fashion police at Oceans of Fun.

Check out Kandace’s comment, for instance, on the Star’s version of this story:

“I’m saddened that this will be a loss for those who like free water park attractions, but if it discourages the great unwashed from loitering, I may go back to Crown Center and spend some money! Plus, I have been very put off (by) the fountain area due to the obvious way the fountain was being treated as an urban lakefront. Not so great to see the toddlers running around with sodden diapers or, even worse, totally bare butt in that fountain. Not to mention the barely clad adults.”

And this isn’t the first time – nor likely the last – Crown Center has battled urban teens and kiddies.

Oh and don’t assume that just because grandparents.com placed the fountain on its list of “101 things to do in Kansas City,” that the kids are all clean-cut types just because they’re young.

Allow me to share with you recently retired Kansas City police officer Jan Zimmerman’s take on some of the movie-going kiddies at Crown Center a handful of years back.

"The shocking thing is these little kids are just rude and nasty and they use lots of profanity," she told me. "I mean, Jiminy Christmas. They weren’t overturning police cars or setting anything on fire or
anything like that. They just were causing a disturbance and refusing to leave.”

Another officer’s take:

"It started at the movie theaters, then they went out into the foyer, then it spilled outside by the fountains and the skating rink," she said. "Once we spread ’em out they were running. They were just wild, running, screaming, pushing each other. Then they’d get on top of the bus shelter and kind of bang on it…

“I really commend our officers for being patient and using a lot of self-restraint. I mean, it’s hard enough to take that from adults – but children – especially when you have a 6-year-old calling us assholes. My question is, where are the parents?"

Where indeed.

Make no mistake, Crown Center doesn’t want to babysit people’s kids, they want to sell them stuff.

Legos and fish toys, to name two. But it sure as heck doesn’t wants urban kids hanging out and loitering any more than the Plaza, Westport or Power & Light does.

It’s really very simple.

The only puzzling part of this jigsaw puzzle is why Hallmark put up with all this country club stuff in the first place – let alone for all these years. Why didn’t it simply enlist the Health Department to test the water long ago, when it was obvious it was probably unsafe?

And exactly who did the testing this time out anyway? Somehow the investigative reporters at the newspaper and TV stations forgot to ask that question.

So let me guess; the swimming pool engineers and health experts on the payroll at Crown Center?