We're supposed to be getting excited about the biggest event in Kansas City history.

So why all the negative headlines now over hotels?

With bookings running far below projections?

Another week brings plans for another big data center, this time in Johnson County.

Cue the pushback.

We want our voices heard.

So we're coming out in force to make sure that they understand that we don't want this here.

Where is that transformation on the country club Plaza?

Luxury jeweler Tiffany now announcing its closing.

Will there be anything left for our World Cup visitors to see another big amendment coming to a ballot box near you and Missouri, ratcheting up the speed limit to 75.

Those stories in the rest of the week's news straight ahead week in review is made possible through the generous support of Bob and Marley Gourley, the Francis Family Foundation, through the discretionary fund of David and Janice Francis, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Nick Haynes, and glad to have you back with us on our weekly journey through the Metro's most impactful, confusing, and downright head scratching local news stories.

Hopping on board the Weekend Review bus with us this week, Wahl news host and chief political analyst Brian Ellison from the prime time anchor desk at KMBC nine news, Chris Katz from Kshb TV, government accountability reporter Isabella Ladon, and former star staffer, now Mr.

Kansas City Stack on Substack Dave Helling.

Now we're supposed to be getting excited about the biggest event in Kansas City history.

So why just weeks before the World Cup is about to start, there were so many negative headlines.

Here's a quick snapshot from just the last three days from the New York Times.

Hotels in World Cup host cities claim underwhelming demand.

From NPR news.

Study finds hotel bookings running far below projections and from the star KC hotels faring worse than all other World Cup cities.

What is going on?

And is it too early, Chris Katz, to hit the panic button?

I'm still kind of a glass half full guy when it comes to this.

I think hotel bookings are probably down probably for a couple of reasons.

Number one being just the current geopolitical environment that we are in, the war in Iran, fuel prices, immigration policy.

Listen, visitors coming to the U.S.

from overseas, those numbers are down everywhere, even in a city like Las Vegas.

So I'm not surprised by the kind of reporting that we're seeing up to now.

I know there's still pushback coming from Visit Casey saying, we are standing by our 650,000 visitors.

There's more to this than these hotel bookings.

But you were out in or later doing reporting on this very issue.

But they also said in your report that they weren't expecting 650,000 people.

Exactly.

They said that they're bookings are strong for the summer, but it kind of matches what we typically see for summer travel in Johnson County, in the Kansas City metro.

Anyways, they were a little bit lower than what they had expected for the World Cup, but they certainly weren't expecting 650,000 people to come at any given time.

Now think about your own travel.

Aren't you just as likely to book an Airbnb as a hotel?

And according to add DNA and DNA, should I say which tracks the global Short-Term Rental Industry?

Kansas City is, quote, outpacing every other U.S.

World Cup city in demand and according to their numbers, Brian, the average available nightly rate during the group stage matches in Kansas City has surged from $191 from June of last year to $706 right now.

So can we relax again?

Well, I mean, I think you should relax for sure, but but I do think there is a couple of questions about that.

Number one is that that seems to be the rate that is being charged or being asked for, not necessarily the rate that's being paid in bookings.

Secondly, though, I do think this is a credit to some work that happened early on.

The city made a big deal about promoting the opportunity for short term rentals.

They granted these short term short term rental licenses for for people to make their homes available.

That way.

It seems to be paying off.

Now, whether that's good news for homeowners or not is maybe a good question, but whether it is seems to be bad news for the hotels that are reporting these low, how consequential is it the day that you hit those particular numbers?

If are 100,000 short, 200,000?

I mean, are taxpayers really on the hook for it?

Well, taxpayers are on the hook.

If one person shows up or 1 million.

I mean, we've invested as taxpayers.

My estimate is close to 200 million.

If you include the federal money, that's a lot of cash, a let alone the changes at Arrowhead and the other things that have to be done over time for police and, you know, hundreds of little details, but you hit on something important, Nick, which I think is this at this point, it is going to be what it is.

I mean, there's a it's hard to see anything the city or FIFA could do now that would dramatically change the attendance picture.

And so we're just going to have to sit and watch and see what happens.

I would say this as a reporter for many, many years, there was there were so many rosy projections early that there is a tendency to bounce back in the negative way as we get closer to the event, maybe a little bit overboard.

Just as a push back against the early rosy projections.

So take all these stories with a bit of a grain of salt.

I do think mayor, Quinton Lucas said something important this week, which is he thinks he does says something important every week.

Yeah.

We indeed.

And I try to repeat what I think is important from him.

But I think what he is saying is we need to do a better job of getting Kansas City and is excited about all of this and the Kansas City aspect of the party, rather than simply rely on foreigners to come in, which may or may not happen.

As long as we can get people here enthusiastic and will try, I think.

Dave, is it as as usual?

Put his finger right on the button.

I think this is going to be a much more of a of a of a domestically led event.

In fact, ticket sales up to now for the matches in Kansas City, depending on the match, 50 to 60% of those tickets are being bought by people in the good old USA outside of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

So, in 25 to 45% of those ticket purchases are coming from overseas.

Again, it's early.

Those things can change, especially the possibility of an Argentina Portugal quarterfinal at Arrowhead, which would be huge.

Well, it would be huge.

On the other hand, if it's an Algeria Iran quarterfinal at Arrowhead, that's where I think the hotel operators are going to say, oh, you may have a problem.

I think for hotel operators, if you're a restaurant owner, yes, you might be a little hypersensitive.

But remember, this is also a global television experience.

And I was looking at just some of the numbers from the last World Cup, even just a regular first round match, the average worldwide audience was 141 million for a quarter final.

The average quarterfinal was 291 million.

So if the whole point of this a city is to present itself to a global audience, to project Kansas City on that worldwide scene, won't they achieve it with those kind of numbers?

That's that's a huge amount.

I think that they would.

And I think that, maybe we may see these low numbers just because of the initial sticker shock to the ticket prices, hotel prices, prices in general.

But even if we don't get the numbers that we are expecting, I think that this puts Kansas City in a good position to, encourage people to come back, perhaps another summer.

It's the world Cup.

A lot of people are going to be here.

Maybe not the 650,000 that that Casey 2026 talked about two years ago.

But it's going to be good, by the way.

We're going to be separating the World Cup hype from the reality and the special event next week that we'd love for you to be to come to.

Oh yes, they do that.

It's being called the biggest event in Kansas City history, but all we really World Cup ready.

Hello, I'm Nick Heinz.

People I talk to either off the charts excited or deeply skeptical.

If you've got questions and concerns this is your chance.

We're bringing all the key decision makers in one room for World Cup.

Ready?

Join me at the Kansas City Plaza Library.

Tuesday, May 12th at 6 p.m.. Yes I know, yes indeed.

I look forward to seeing you that Tuesday night and other World Cup news, Kansas City's tournament transformation shifts into high gear this week.

Construction crews and heavy equipment have moved onto the grounds of the National World War One Museum as work begins on FIFA's expansive Fan Fest site.

This is also the week of the great World Cup cover up, where host stadiums have to remove or conceal their names and logos from the venues to satisfy FIFA rules.

This is the covering up of the Mercedes symbol at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

And here's the NRG Stadium in Houston.

Next up, Kansas City, Chris, they're calling it the clean venue makeover.

So no Arrowhead sign, no GE field, no Chiefs logos.

Thank you FIFA for all of that.

That's just how this works.

And getting back to FanFest as you mentioned earlier.

So far, in terms of people who are registering to go to Fan Fest, they're coming from 116 foreign countries.

All right.

That's what it looks like.

And all 50 states.

So again, getting back to visitors coming to Kansas City, that's kind of why I'm I'm still kind of a glass half full guy when it comes to the World Cup.

Yes.

And they're going to be calling the stadium Kansas City Stadium.

They're not even allowed to call it Arrowhead for the entire period of the World Cup.

Right.

And this is they're not picking on Kansas City, as you said.

This is true in every city in the country.

It's true in other countries.

When they've had the World Cup in the past, part of the standard policy.

Why is that?

I think it's, it always comes down to money, doesn't it?

The these are conflicting sponsors.

The the FIFA has sold its own naming rights to sponsorship rights logos that will appear on the sidelines.

They're the ones making the money, not Kansas City and not the owners of Arrowhead Stadium.

If you see how we can review, sign behind me.

Change during the World Cup.

Now, you know, that was about sponsorship rights.

Alrighty.

Now, just as the largest influx of international visitors arrive on our doorstep, Tiffany's, the luxury jeweler, announces it's closing its only area location on the country Club Plaza.

Will there be anything left on the plaza for visitors to go and see?

And, Dave, where are you now?

Going to do your shopping.

Well, I got a dozen these and I don't imagine a lot of tourists come and say, hey, let's go to the fan fest and let's go to Tiff.

Probably not know to buy some jewelry, but they certainly would be thinking they're going to be seeing things.

But but I think you raise an important point, which is you want visitors to go to places like the Plaza when they, experience Kansas City.

It's one of the great jewels to coin a phrase, in our community.

And it is changing dramatically.

And retail across the country is changing.

And so one hopes that to visitors will go down and eat at the restaurants, drink at the bars, experience it as a place to go for a stroll, rather than as a place to buy, trinkets at the jewelry.

But what happened to that transformation on the plaza?

Well, I think we're just waiting to see what happens with the property owners and what happens with the tax breaks and the tax incentives.

As we've seen, there's been a lot of pushback, and I think a lot will depend on if the property owners are going to fulfill some of those promises of, you know, quote, bringing the plaza back, back to life.

But it was at the very beginning about bringing more upscale, types of luxury retailers.

And this would be the kind of one you think they would have one of kept.

Yeah, I think it, it remains to be seen what the future of the plaza looks like.

And this is total.

But, you know, I talked to people who live on the plaza, and they still seem to be reasonably optimistic about the future of the plaza and about the new owners plans for it.

Of course, this is a part of the city that is in need of hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure needs.

The investment by the city to make this thing work is going to be it does not make it harder, because there's a lot of tax incentives involved.

Now that Kansas City is moving fast on a new Royals ballpark at Crown Center.

Well, I think that that is the question.

You know, there have been a few openings at the plaza, but a lot of the concern that I'm hearing is from, local neighborhood folks and folks who are concerned about the feel of the Plaza.

And when you're talking about tax incentives and other, financial, benefits that are poured out often that's connected to big office buildings or the kinds of revenue generating space that goes beyond, walk in retail.

And so I think, yes.

Do you want the Plaza to make money and be successful?

But what kind of plaza do you want it to be?

And I don't think we know yet what it's going to be.

Could we still see a shift, though, of John Sherman saying we're actually moving to the Plaza?

Another little twist and turn of the stadium saga for years, getting to be more and more space there.

So maybe, maybe that will work.

They'll ask the symphony to step aside, to be away from the library.

Absolutely.

Well, animosity over data center seems to be reaching fever pitch in the metro after a big protest in independence and a new effort to recall a councilman who voted for a data center there.

The debate has shifted to Johnson County.

What?

A 16 building data center has been proposed in Gardner.

We want our voices heard.

So we're coming out in force to make sure that they understand that we don't want this here.

This data center can be put someplace else.

I cannot pick up my home.

These people cannot pick up their homes and move them someplace else.

My message is to listen to your constituents.

They're making their voices heard, and it's fairly unanimous.

But hold the presses.

Did the public finally claim a victory?

Apparently, the project is now being pulled.

Was that because the San Francisco developer behind the data center got spooked by the public pushback, or was it members of the city Council are worried if they said yes, they'd be turfed out of office.

Isabella.

I think it's less of the developers being scared of the public pushback, and more that the city of Gardner said that they would not be offering any tax incentives to the developers.

Often, with these data center proposals, we see a lot of incentives to bring them here, whether that's an abatement on property or sales tax.

And that's one of the big, issues of discourse that we've seen from a lot of communities is that they don't want their tax dollars going to these data centers.

So Gardner said they wouldn't be giving those tax incentives.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that that happened two weeks after we saw a recall petition for a councilmember who voted for those tax incentives and independence.

So several stories this week, including one in the New York Times report that at a time of great division in the United States, hatred of data centers is one of the few issues that brings Democrats and Republicans together.

And according to the report, this is the most bipartisan issue since.

Really?

Not only is it true that, the both the right and the left and sometimes the middle are opposed to these developments, but it happened so quickly.

I mean, it really has happened within the last 9 to 12 months that they were also gung ho.

I remember when they first opened, there wasn't that much pushback, of course, because it was going to reduce property tax burdens.

They were going to pay millions of dollars to cities and counties and schools and, and reduce the costs for homeowners and businesses.

But that, I think, has not completely turned out to be the case, or at least people don't perceive it.

But they're also worried about water and construction, disruptions and, the use of electricity and their electricity rates at the end of March, Bernie, Senator Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC as we referred to her, proposed a bill for a national moratorium on data centers.

Until some of these questions are answered.

Now, there is an overlay.

Quickly, Nick, about artificial intelligence itself and whether the data centers which feed AI, are disrupting jobs for people and costing people employment.

And so you stack that on top of the other environmental concerns.

And it's a tough time.

It does bring together interesting political bedfellows.

In your report, I see you had Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, and Bernie Sanders also now looking to regulate substantially data centers and leading the charge on that in Congress.

Right.

And, Nick, to your point, it's a very bipartisan issue that we're seeing in these political protests that we typically see.

You often find folks of the same political beliefs together, but in this instance, we've seen Republicans, Democrats, independents alike all coming together to protest data centers.

And I believe some of the community pushback.

Well, maybe that's where federal lawmakers are also coming together on that point.

But we all want to have our phones and be able to track Uber drivers on our phones at a moment's notice and see exactly where they are.

And we want to be able to, cross-reference the different prices for TVs from 50 different stores or not a thousand stores or the price of cars.

So, you know what?

If we didn't have these data centers, what would actually happen?

We have to have the data centers.

There's there's no turning back on this.

No, it's not it's not just the growth of AI over the last couple of years, as you say, it is every Google search.

It is every time you call an Uber.

The world is now running on this data.

Now, maybe you can make them more efficient.

Maybe we can find a way some day that they use less electricity or less water.

Maybe there will be a change in the way and financial incentives are offered so that they aren't such a liability for politicians.

But the data centers, the use of technology is not going away and all of us are involved.

Everybody wants the data, but they don't want it where they live.

It's the classic Nimby, it really is.

And and it's Dave teams.

Right.

It's interesting how fast this movement, for lack of a better way of calling it, has developed.

And not just here but all over the country, people are rising up in opposition to these centers more and more as the demand for these centers is needed more and more.

You know, I was actually in, Florida myself about a few weeks ago visiting my son and the Uber driver says of all the questions they could ask, where you from is from Kansas City.

And the question to ask was, do you have data centers, which I thought was Texas thing to ask.

But clearly I said, yeah, yeah, you're right.

It's a huge issue.

So it was just an interesting thing, you know, of all the things you could talk about, you know, not the World Cup for, you know, the Royals or the Chiefs.

I got data centers.

But I see this is not all that I see now that the goddamn one is over.

Next week, there's a push to bring a data center to Edgerton right next door.

Right.

I don't think that we have seen the last of these proposals.

I think that there are still many more in the works for both Kansas and Missouri, all throughout the Kansas City metro.

It just really depends on how much, the community is pushing back and how much city leaders are going to be listening to their community members.

Well, Missouri lawmakers head home next week, but before they leave for the year, will they raise the speed limit to 75?

That pulling or putting their foot, should I say, on the gas pedal to make it happen?

Would that be a great gesture for all the people driving to Kansas City next month for the World Cup?

They could get to a quicker Bryan so they can speed and spend more money.

Actually, in our restaurants and our stores.

Well, they hear well, they could get there quicker, but not that much quicker.

I mean, from Saint Louis, I think the trip is reduced by ten minutes or something.

So so I think the what lawmakers are weighing in all seriousness is the very real statistic, demonstrable over decades, that for every five miles per hour you increase the speed limit, the number of highway deaths increases 8%.

So you just have to decide what's it worth to you.

I mean, we know it's not worth it to lower highway speeds to say, 35mph.

We've decided we're willing to embrace a certain level of UN safety, but how much are we willing to embrace?

Lawmakers are weighing it.

If you live in Kansas, if you cross I-70 on the turnpike going towards Colorado, much of that road is 75 already.

I mean, is it that much worse in Kansas?

And there are other states which have even higher speed limits.

I do think that one of the parts of this debate that we haven't heard a lot about is the price of gasoline.

You know, one of the reasons that the speed limit was reduced decades ago was because gas was so expensive and people worried about that cost.

And if you can get, you know, save ten minutes in your Saint Louis to Kansas City trip, but have to pay an extra $20 or whatever it would be for gasoline.

Maybe that's not a tradeoff you're willing to make.

So my guess is that may come up at some level.

You don't hear conservatives and Republicans talk too much about conserving gas in this context, but maybe given, again, 4 or $5 a gallon gas, it will come up by the way, eight states allow speeds of 80mph, and Texas has the highest speed limit on the of the country at 85mph.

So we could say that Missouri is actually being cautious here.

I can't drive 55.

I know that much.

But this is almost at the end of the session.

This is like they passed a budget.

They've already got the tax issue on the ballot where you look at eliminating the income tax.

The voters will decide in August and November.

What else has that left, Brian?

Well, I mean, it's always a lot of surprises in the last week of the session.

Sometimes they become very productive in ways you weren't expecting.

Sometimes, in the last few years, the Senate has adjourned a few days early because they couldn't get anything done.

I do think there's going to be conversation about property taxes and whether we whether we will see something get across the finish line and sent to the governor's desk.

But but a lot of the big ticket issues have already been dealt with.

As you said, there there was a bill passed, earlier this week, in the House that started as a fairly straightforward bill about drones, during the World Cup and added on, a few dozen amendments where a lot of other legislators were getting their bills that didn't make it through committee, attached to legislation that now has to move through the Senate.

And the governor, if it does go through at all, we will see what happens.

We don't really know.

But I wouldn't expect any big surprises in these last week.

So that means as soon as you leave the studio, a massive, massive thing is going to happen.

Mark my words.

We'll talk about it in our next week's program.

All right.

Now, if you live in Missouri, be prepared to spend, by the way, several hours at your local polling station to get through what is set to be an historically long ballot.

And next year, and you may need a law degree also to make sense of it all.

This week, campaigners with a group called Respect Missouri Voters turned in more than 360,000 signatures for an amendment to stop lawmakers from overturning citizen approved ballot questions.

It also sounds like the start of legal chaos.

That's because there's already a measure on the November ballot that will make it tougher for citizen amendments to pass in the first place.

If approved, it will require citizen questions to get not only majority support, but support in at least five of the state's eight congressional districts, which will be the first place to do that.

Am I the only one confused?

And what happens if both passed?

Well, I think, one of the possibilities, Nick, given this latest petition, is that governor Mike Kehoe will put amendment four, which is the supermajority requirement on the August ballot, so that it would pass in August, presumably, and then make it more difficult in November for the citizen petition to become law.

That's at least one potential scenario.

And my understanding is the governor is weighing moving a lot of different things.

There's abortion on the ballot and a bunch of other proposals and trying to figure out which works in August and which works in November will be a major challenge for the governor.

Can you just refresh your memory?

So, Brian, you think about all the things that are being passed by citizens.

You know, everything from legalizing marijuana, medicaid expansion, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

If it had to pass all of those measures in five of the eight, districts in Missouri, the congressional districts, would any of them got approved?

No, not one of them would have passed, abortion rights.

The the anti puppy mill legislation.

There simply is not that level of unanimity across the eight congressional districts of Missouri.

So, you know, whether you find that undemocratic or not is a judgment you have to make.

But what you certainly are doing is allowing a relatively small percentage of Missouri voters, from, say, a rural area, to make decisions on behalf of the whole state.

But it's still more equitable than what's happening in Kansas, which doesn't allow any, of citizen efforts at all at this moment in time.

And those efforts have always been fought.

Now, when you put a program like this together every week, you can't get to every story grabbing the headlines.

What was the big local story we missed?

Just as Kansas City gears up for the largest wave of visitors in its history, KC airport loses its fifth busiest airline.

Thousands of local travelers scrambling to rebook trips this week as Spirit Airlines goes belly up $4.29 a gallon.

Rising gas prices fueling anxiety around the metro.

Yeah, it's taking food out of mouth.

Who knew going to the bank could be so harmful to your health?

The roof collapses on customers in the Drive-Thru lane at the central bank in Sugar Creek, and with less than 90 days till the primary election, another well-known name enters the race to be the next Jackson County Executive.

County Chair Marty Abarca becomes the seventh candidate to throw his hat in the ring, marking ten years of the streetcar in Kansas City this week, and the tracks are about to get longer.

This is a streetcar to the riverfront.

The media gets to try out the new extended line down to the riverfront.

It opens to the public may 18th.

Alrighty, Isabella, did you pick one of those stories or something completely different?

Something different that I'm tracking this week, legislator Manny Abarca in Jackson County has announced that he's going to be running for the county executive, so we'll be watching that to see how it shakes up the race even more than it has already been shaken up these last few weeks.

Absolutely, Chris, I'm with that Isabella on this one.

I think many of us are getting in the race probably isn't that big of a surprise, but this is going to be a wild primary in August.

That's for sure.

Brian, you alluded to it, Nick, but Missouri did pass.

The House and the Senate passed a budget this week, $50.7 billion, significant as much for what they're spending it on as where they're getting the money to spend it.

They have taken two point, $6 billion out of state surpluses, leaving less than a billion.

That works for this year, but no idea how they're going to pass a budget of this nature next year.

Dave Helling, a restaurant called Hollis Goes in Kansas City, Kansas, has announced that it's closing at the end of May after more than 65 years of service.

Some of us of a certain age, Nick will remember that one of the most notorious murders in Kansas City history took place in Police Coast parking lot.

A man named Chuck Thompson, who was the Democratic chairman in Wyandotte County, was gunned down a few days before Christmas in 1987, but no official explanation for that killing has ever been issued.

No one has ever been arrested or charged.

It remains unsolved.

Nearly 40 years after the events.

And on that, we will say a week has been reviewed courtesy of PBS's Isabella Le Don and Casey.

Was Brian Ellison from the anchor desk at KMBC, nine news, Chris cats and news icon and Mr.

Kansas City stack on Substack.

Dave Helling and I'm Nick Haines.

Don't forget to join us as we separate the hype from the reality of the World Cup next Tuesday at six at the Plaza Library.

Until then, from all of us here at Kansas City PBS, be well, keep calm and carry on.