54 million Americans watched the NFL draft in Kansas City along with those big crowds downtown.
So why are so many local business owners unhappy this week?
We've had much busier days just from some random volleyball convention in town that we did with the NFL draft and didn't see that coming.
This week, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum announcing a big move to build a brand new baseball games, arms and the mayor is the one who was supposed to get all the attention.
So why is this city manager, Brian Platt, stealing all the headlines?
A new scandal, putting his job on the line?
Can he survive those stories and the rest of the week's news?
Straight ahead.
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Welcome.
I'm Nick Haines, and it's great to have you with us again on our journey through the week's most impactful, confusing and befuddling local news stories on the weekend review bus this week, KCUR news director Lisa Rodriguez and KCUR news host and political reporter Brian Ellison.
And from the Call newspaper, Eric Wesson and former star news titan Dave Helling.
Now, for some people, the most gigantic news story of the week is the official crowning of a new British king.
In fact, our program director just told me we are blowing up our entire weekend schedule to bring you the coronation live, including Sunday's concert from Windsor Castle.
While the world's eyes may be on that big celebration, we are still recovering from a little party of our own around here.
Welcome to Kansas City and the 2023 NFL draft blues as King Charles may get.
But according to the NFL, 54 million Americans watched or streamed the draft in Kansas City.
That's a lot of eyeballs on Union Station and the rest of the city.
And that doesn't count the 312,000 people who attended the three day event in person.
That may make our local tourism officials happy.
But downtown business owners, well, not so much.
They're now complaining Kansas City's big moment in the spotlight may actually have cost them money.
One coffeehouse complaining they had the slowest weekend in the store's history.
And a distillery in the crossroads says business was so bad, it will now consider closing its doors when the World Cup comes to town.
Some small business owners say these crowds didn't really venture outside of the main event.
We had much busier days just from some random volleyball convention in town than we did with the NFL.
Draft was kind of like we were expecting this huge boom and instead it was very flat.
We pretty much was like, Oh, okay, well, this is this is how this thing is going to go.
I think that we had some bigger expectations for how it was going to go for us.
And then a lot of the just the street traffic and foot traffic was not there.
He believes the issue was twofold.
First, security around the draft was tight.
And so when fans made it to the site, they stayed there and so there wasn't much sightseeing.
And secondly, he thinks the locals avoided the downtown area to stay away from the crowds.
We kind of bet on the wrong game, I think.
Well, Matt Lucas is pointing the finger of blame at the media for telling people to avoid downtown because they said it was going to be a zoo.
Well, we the culprits, Eric, know the design of the entire project by the NFL with security and things like that.
And the reporter was correct in saying that it got people inside the fence and it kept them in there and they didn't get an opportunity to get out of town to visit, spend money in other places.
People were sold.
The idea that there would be 300,000 people coming here and most people doubt that was going to be people from out of town.
But what we wound up doing was seeing recycle people coming in and out from the local area.
The hotels weren't filled to capacity.
People wouldn't.
I don't remember seeing a great deal of foot traffic on 1810 by you talked you talk about the numbers you know, 312,000.
But Brian, that was over the course of three days.
So you could have been counted two or three times during that if you went every day of the draft.
That's exactly right.
So I think the question, Nic, is, is maybe not about what the numbers were in attendance, but what the expectations were going into this event.
Some of the benefit of an event like bringing the draft Kansas City is about the downstream impact.
Union Station looking amazing.
Tourists watching on TV thinking.
Kansas City, That's a city I'd like to visit in a year or two.
I don't know that we fully know the results.
Having said that, that's that's small comfort to the business owners who are feeling like I have extra inventory and no money.
The idea that an out of town or an event will bring hundreds of millions of dollars to local businesses almost always fizzles, in part because, as someone has pointed out, a lot of local people just stay away.
They just go leave town or don't come downtown.
And in part because the people attending the event are there for the event.
They're not here to buy a pair of jeans or a t shirt or a cap or maybe even go out to dinner.
You go in, you watch the draft, you go back to your hotel room if you're from out of town.
You know, these studies that suggest some huge economic impact from isolated events almost always fall short of their goals.
And this was no exception.
Striking to me, though, Lisa, was the fact that this was pulled off, though remarkably with very few hiccups whatsoever.
Hardly any disruption.
I think the only published report I saw were of two people being arrested for stealing jerseys meant for the NFL draft picks.
I think that's I think that's exactly right.
We should recognize that the successes that happened here, which is that for for an event that drew so many people, there wasn't violence, there weren't any any, you know, scuffles that happened there.
It was organized.
People knew where to go.
There were a lot of eyes on Union Station.
So as far as an event goes itself, I think it went pretty smoothly.
But I think I agree with with my colleagues here that we really over promised a big economic benefit wider than this event.
And and on that we fell short.
And part of that is because it was totally closed off and it was where people in Kansas City were going instead of going elsewhere downtown.
Next year's draft, by the way, is going to be in Detroit.
And they sent a big delegation to Kansas City to learn lessons from how we did it.
And take a look at this.
There are three things they've already said they will definitely not do.
Haven't seen how Kansas City hosted the event and that includes not forcing fans to endure miles of walking just to get to the main stage.
Now, we've been following that Detroit delegation all day long today, and one thing they have noticed was, oh, the footprint is nice, but almost too big.
You've got all of these people walking blocks and blocks and miles and miles just to try to work to get to where they want to go.
And so many lines, something they hope to improve on in Detroit, the fan experience, making sure that there's an opportunity for the public to really engage in that, maybe moving it outside of the footprint so that when you're queuing, you're actually got an activity as opposed to just sort of waiting in line.
In Kansas City.
Everything is centered around the main stage and the fan experience, which is in a park, Detroit does not want to do that.
So local businesses see the impact like around here, the only way you can do anything is through like the the merchandise that's already set up in this park.
We're actively looking at how we include our native Detroiters that have businesses.
We want them to be able to reap the benefits of all the people coming in, not only just for the draft, but to show them everything that Detroit has fair criticisms.
Brian I think those are fair criticisms.
I'm not sure how many of those criticisms are should be directed at the Kansas City Sports Commission or the organizers here, or how many are at the NFL.
This event is almost entirely under the control of the NFL.
Good luck to the Detroit organizers.
Maybe they will have a different outcome, but it won't be just because that's what they want.
I love that because I've heard all well, when the World Cup, we're going to do it differently.
But if we thought that this was difficult and the NFL was in control, what's going to happen when FIFA is in charge?
The rules could be even higher.
I think you're exactly right.
I think there's a FIFA's a huge organization that's going to that's put on this event over and over and over again.
And they've got a set way of doing things.
Yes, lessons learned, but it's a totally different beast.
I've already learned a lesson before the World Cup happens, because if you saw in this one, Crown Santa was charging $50 to park in the crown Center parking lot, we were paying an off duty cop here to man our parking lot to make sure that we could get our guests in and out.
I should be out there when the World Cup comes out.
We could avoid a membership drive by me being out there charging $50, $75 for parking here.
You're absolutely correct.
And Nashville, Tennessee, their NFL draft attracted 600,000 people.
Over 600,000.
So what did they do that was different?
Was there anything else Kansas City did?
Right.
Kansas City really showed out.
Well, I mean, the pictures were incredible.
The crowds were incredible.
The energy was good.
All of that was good.
Some things you just do because they're fun, you know, they make culture.
Some money, but some things are just fun.
And I think the NFL draft was part of that.
Now, with so much else going on in Kansas City, this is a story I didn't expect this week.
Did you see this?
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is on the move.
The future of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum begins today as we prepare to build a brand new Negro Leagues baseball Museum.
See you see him.
Leader Bob Kendrick announcing the attraction has outgrown its space and is launching a $25 million campaign to launch a new museum just down the road at the corner of 18th and Street and the sale.
What is he hoping to be able to do, Eric, in these new digs that they simply can't do now?
He will get a lot of the archives that he has down in the basement of the museum, American Jazz Museum.
Get those out, put them on display, expand the displays that they have there, and probably expand the foot traffic because there will be more for people to come in and see and maybe spend four or 5 hours there in the museum.
We've talked he's talked to me about this probably about a year ago, that that was his ultimate vision and dream was to build a bigger museum.
There are several unanswered questions that I haven't seen in any story that I've read today.
First of all, what happens to the American Jazz Museum?
Do they expand into the space abandoned by the Negro Leagues Museum?
That is unclear.
They have their own financial struggles.
Kansas City spends one and a half million dollars a year roughly on maintenance, cooling, heating, the building, cleaning it, that type of thing.
Does that payment continue for just the Jazz museum or will Bob Kendrick expect some sort of city contribution to to maintain the new structure?
I have an even bigger question.
When you saw John Sherman, the head of the royals there, do you think he boy, what why wouldn't you just try to hock something up with the royals with their brand new downtown ballpark rather than do something by itself?
Well, I think that's a very good question.
I think the major leagues have woken up fairly recently to their their well-grounded history with Negro Leagues.
The Negro Leagues are really having a moment, historically speaking.
Bob Kendrick, It should take a lot of the credit for that.
Their presence in the video game.
MLB The show that's made a big difference in kind of raising their profile among a younger generation.
I think Bob Kendrick would not have been doing his job as the president of the museum if he hadn't tried to seize this moment and and and take a big step.
There is a historical reason to move to 18 from the Paseo to, of course, the YMCA.
There is is where the idea for the Negro Leagues was hatched in the first place.
So it does make some sense.
But why aren't they hooking up with where they may be but planning the next downtown ballpark?
Because as they remain a separate entity.
But if you're trying to get foot traffic, get as much attention as possible, is not creating a kind of they might get more synergy traffic than the royals are getting right now.
To your point, though, Nick, this is not well-known, but Buck O'Neil, who was instrumental in beginning the museum, wanted it to be built at Kauffman Stage.
He did not at 18th and Vine for the very reason you cite, which is you have more.
In fact, I interviewed him on this subject and he said, look, there are more people at the stadium than there would be at 18th and Vine.
But Buck O'Neil wanted it at the stage.
Now, when it comes to political life in Kansas City, the mayor is the one who was supposed to get all the attention.
So why is it city manager Brian Platt, stealing all the headlines this week?
Is a new scandal, putting his job on the line.
He's now facing a council no confidence vote after firing one of the most powerful black women at City hall.
Civil rights director Andrea Dortch says she was ousted from her job for blowing the whistle on minority hiring practices at the massive new metadata center being built in the Northland, which claims that when she tried to enforce the city's diversity rules on the project, Platte fired her.
Is the spat going to cost Platt his job?
Lisa It truly I don't know whether this will cost Platt his job, but certainly it adds fuel to the fire that has already been building at City Hall, where several city council members have expressed that they don't have confidence in Brian Platt as city manager.
Now, I do need to say the city vehemently denies that, that Dortch was fired over her raising whistleblowing on the Metta Project and says instead she was.
They were already investigating her for not living in Kansas City as all staff.
City staff.
In fact, I saw the choir report.
They paid at least like $10,000 or more to have a private surveillance firm.
Look at where she was living, didn't they?
They did.
They.
They hired a surveillance firm to follow her for two weeks to see how many trips she was making from City Hall to an address in Lee's Summit versus Kansas City.
And and they say that that was proof.
They say they do it every once in a while, too.
They have surveilled employees to establish residency and and they provided an invoice that that that I assume was to say, see, we were doing this before she raised issues about the matter.
And it was only just a few months ago.
The question and is the former communications director was filing a suit claiming he was removed from his job because he was being told by Brian Platt to lie to the media.
Is this just one new scandal?
Too many for Brian Platt and the honor we're about to see?
Perhaps after this election he is going out the door.
It might be after the election.
I think the vote of no confidence was put on hold.
I think.
Well, I know because I had a conversation.
They don't have enough votes.
She didn't have enough votes at this time because the mayor supposedly had talked to the other council members and said, hey, you know, this is going to be real divisive if we do this now.
So let's hold off.
But I think, well, Councilwoman Robinson wanted to set the stage so that people from the community could come in and voice their concerns about the performance of the city manager.
But again, it gets back to black women termination forced out the same pattern that was in New Jersey before he came.
Most of us know we're not focused on the sausage that is made at City Hall.
How it all works.
Why should we care what the city manager is doing in this case?
When we went, we were electing a man.
Yeah, but the city manager is the person in charge of actually running the day to day operations of city Hall and city government.
The mayor and the council are supposed to be more about the overview.
Nick, of of policy in the city.
I do think there's a little bit of reluctance to get rid of Platt, in part because you'd have to pay him a bunch of money and then you'd have to find somebody else.
It's not clear how that's going to work.
And remember, it takes nine votes if you don't have the mayor, it takes nine votes.
That's 75% of the council.
That's a pretty high bar.
The lack of minority and women hiring goals at this project is really interesting and unusual.
Typically in Kansas City, whenever there's a public subsidy of any kind involved, that's one of the first things that's figured out and settled and put in writing.
And this is part of the agreement.
And for some reason this may have been left out on the made a project and that's that will reverberate for some time.
I agree.
I think that that it's alarming that that this project was giving given an exemption and it's alarming that it seems that that was an oversight and that the council didn't realize that they were given an exemption.
This is when you talk about how the sausage is made at City Hall, there are so many conversation lines about these levels.
Well, let's talk bit a little bit more about sausage.
In a sense, We have this this was supposed to be make it or break it week for the new Jackson County jail, seven months after Jackson County officials broke ground on a new 1200 bed detention facility, ballooning costs has forced officials to rethink the project.
It either has to get a lot smaller or they have to find a lot more money.
Some lawmakers even want to hit the pause button entirely, put the new jail to a public vote.
Now that the price tag has gone up by more than $45 million since they put their shovels in the ground, what happened this week?
Did construction grind to a halt once construction started?
It's an empty lot, for the most part, sitting there.
We don't really know what the future is.
Even after the deadline has come and gone, we're not really sure what the future of this project is.
I think that that itself may raise questions about the effectiveness of Jackson County governance at the moment, but it certainly raises questions about where that money is going to come from.
The idea that cost would go up at this facility was well known last year.
I mean, I wrote a story and I think October when I was still at the newspaper saying, hey, this thing that we're supposed to call cost 256 million is now up to 320 million and may go higher.
And there were members of the council.
It was a bit of an issue in the county legislator executive race last year.
So it's not a surprise.
The idea that you can solve this problem by shrinking the jail should be a nonstarter, in part because the only reason you're doing this is to provide yourself more beds.
And if you shrink it back to the size of the current jail, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Now, it's fun to talk about things like the draft and new museums on this program, but there are some other big things happening we want to make sure you're aware of.
It may not be getting a lot of attention, but we'll continue behind the scenes to add an abortion rights amendment to the Missouri ballot.
But will the effort come too late?
This week, Missouri lawmakers inched closer to changing the rules so it's tougher to alter the state constitution instead of a simple majority, legislators want to raise the number of votes required for passage to 57%.
Now, that really seems like an arbitrary number, Brian.
Why 57%?
Why 57%?
Could it be that 57% would have been more than the number of votes Medicaid expansion got more than the number of votes that legalizing recreational marijuana got?
I think it's a very high threshold for any measure in a state that's as divided as Missouri, but would have clearly thwarted the will of the majority in the state.
I think you're correct that this is not so much about those past votes.
It is about the future votes, the potential of an abortion rights measure getting on the ballot.
I'm also just as concerned, Nick, about the ballot language that has been suggested.
The ballot language will have a lot of voters not even realizing that they're actually raising the threshold.
The voters will be focused on the fact that it will require only U.S. citizens to be allowed to vote in Missouri, which of course, is already the case.
You've just mentioned that the idea of raising the threshold to 57% is, in its itself, a constitutional amendment and would require a mere 50% vote to become part of the Constitution.
There is some hypocrisy involved there.
This is something for Missourians particularly keep their eye on.
And it's also happening in a week where Missouri lawmakers or at least one Missouri lawmaker is talking about making having an abortion in Missouri tantamount to being murder, that you are killing the fetus as a human being.
But just because you propose something, Brian, doesn't mean it's going to happen.
What's the prospect of that?
Well, that's for sure.
I don't think it will pass, especially because we're now to the last week of the legislative session.
But the very fact that it's out there and the very fact that it is getting a serious debate, it got a hearing in a Senate committee tells you that the Republican control of the Missouri General Assembly is is absolute.
And I think voters to take away the voters ability to weigh in on legislation by increasing that threshold for initiatives is going to be an even further step to solidify that power.
Now, while the Missouri legislature won't wrap up until next week, as Brian points out, Kansas lawmakers are now home for the year.
The issue that seemed to dominate attention in Topeka more than any other.
The session was transgender restrictions, and there were certainly plenty of them.
Starting in July, transgender Kansans will now be required to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their sex at both.
They will also be prohibited from changing their name or gender on a driver's license or birth certificate.
Also, starting in July, transgender athletes will no longer be allowed to compete in girls sports.
What's the biggest change we will see as a result of their work in Topeka this year?
Is this the biggest one?
Well, I think I think you can make the argument that that together with kind of this just constellation of what you might call culture war issues, those are the things that the legislature spent the most time talking about.
When you look at some of the things that the governor, Laura Kelly, brought in, her proposed budget, things like funding for special education, things like accelerating the the decrease of the state sales tax on food.
Those things have gone by the wayside.
It's like all of the tax measures did.
Yes.
And essentially they had a surplus of over $2.2 billion.
We were supposed to be possibly getting tax rebates.
We were going to have the flat tax, none of those things.
How they did not in Republican majority is supermajorities in both Missouri and Kansas.
And yet it looks like Missouri will not get to a tax cut in the tax cut passed in Kansas did not survive the veto from the governor.
And I know medical marijuana, all recreational marijuana.
No, no medical marijuana, No recreational marijuana.
I think what we saw was a huge amount of oxygen in the session in Kansas and in Missouri going exactly to what Brian said.
These culture war issues, these things they're going to be able to campaign on and not some of these changes that might actually affect the majority of senators wider.
I 70 and Missouri.
Yes, that's true.
And possibly all the way across Missouri, thanks to sort of last last minute change on sports betting, which we've talked about a lot.
And so Lisa is so right next to the oxygen just really got sucked out of anything other than these cultural things.
It really in both states, abortion, transgender rights and the things that might make a difference when you go to the grocery store or you pick up your check every other week, fell apart, fell apart at the end.
And the libraries, the libraries are still going to get some change, but there's still a week left of the legislature, so anything could still happen, right, Brian?
That's exactly right.
All right.
When you put a program like this together every week, you can't get to every story making the headlines.
What was the big local story We missed?
The mayor finally gets around to appointing the city's new reparations commission.
They've been given 12 months to come up with ideas for paying black residents for slavery and segregation.
It's taking shape.
The grandstands now installed inside the KC Curran's new Riverfront Stadium.
It opens next year.
They say it'll bring 4000 new jobs to our area.
Now signs of progress as a massive Panasonic electric vehicle battery plant finally goes vertical in Johnson County.
Another retail chain bites the dust Tuesday morning, closing its five area stores.
Is this the week it'll finally happened with ten games under their belt, Sporting KC still looking for its first win this season, he helped Kansas City win the World Series.
Now Lorenzo Cain returning home after five years with the Brewers.
He will sign a one day contract and retire as a member of the Kansas City Royals in an on field ceremony this weekend.
And move aside for the graduates.
It's cap and gown time this weekend for a number of local schools.
It's also the official start of festival season from Cinco de Mayo to the Brookside Art Fair, now underway through Sunday.
All righty.
Lee said.
Did you pick one of those stories or something completely different?
I think we'll need to keep a close eye on construction at Panasonic, but for this week, I picked the Reparations Commission.
We've been waiting for this.
Yes, for a long time.
I'm really curious to see what this group comes up with in terms of how the city will both acknowledge past wrongs and acknowledge how how harms continue to be done to black Americans in Kansas City and what possible solutions they might have.
So, Eric, I said the charter review Commission as well.
What specific issue are you concerned about moving the elections to have them all in November on government, governor or presidential election years?
Those ballots could be six pages long and the city issue wouldn't get to him.
Well, wouldn't you get more people going to the polls if you did that?
Not necessarily.
Not necessarily.
That would be overwhelming to read six pages of a ballot request and the city issues would be at the end.
So by the time I got to them, I would just be checking anything if I checked anything at all.
Thank you, Brian.
I'll go a little more lighthearted direction and say, What's it like to be okay?
What's important from the retirement of Lorenzo Cain is a great story.
I mean, if there was a face who was more a face of the royals during the 2014 League Championship 2015 World Series, it was Lorenzo Cain, all star Gold Glove winner to sign a contract for one day to come back here to retire as a royal.
I mean, he loves the city.
He lives now in Oklahoma.
I think we can't do much better than to celebrate Lorenzo Cain, especially in a year when we're not having much else to celebrate with the royals.
Very good.
And Dave, great ballplayer, by the way.
Let's stay with baseball for a minute.
This is the first week in May.
The deadline is May 30th for putting something on the August ballot in Kansas City or Jackson County.
That means if something doesn't happen in the next three weeks, which is always a possibility, the idea of voting on downtown baseball in August is off the table, and that suggests that they might move it to November or maybe even more likely, 2024.
But that's for Jackson County.
How about moving it to north Kansas City to Clay County?
Have you seen that proposed?
Yes, but still Missouri still May 30th deadline.
So if it's going to happen up there, it has to happen in the next three weeks.
And on that, we will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of Lisa Rodriguez and Bryan Allison of KCUR, who's always on call from the Kansas City Call newspaper, Eric Wesson and formerly of the Kansas City Star news icon Dave Helling.
And I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City, PBS.
Be well, keep calm and carry on.
