I noted with some interest Sunday a line in Brent Wistrom’s piece about the Warren Old Town $6 million loan: “This is the first time Wichita has considered loaning taxpayer money to a business, finance officials and other observers say.”
I’ve got to take issue with that one: Anyone remember the Minnesota Guys? How about CORE?
The debate over whether the Wichita City Council should financially partner with downtown developers is a legitimate one. But again, I wonder why it’s just now surfacing when the city clearly has bought into other projects in the past. Admittedly, the terms of the city’s partnership with Warren are a little different, but beyond that …
And from where I sit, I don’t recall developers lining up to buy Wichita buildings and do downtown projects on their own. Cities partner with developers all the time, and a partnership with Bill Warren looks to me to be consistent with past precedent.
16 Comments
A vital downtown core is essential to the success of Wichita. The pieces are being put into place — Old Town, new arena, Waterwalk. Sometimes the city needs to pitch in and ease the way for investment.
Just how many over-priced bars can we support?
Waterwalk? How many years behind schedule is that project?
Couple of important distinctions, I think – first, the city’s refusal to fully fund WaterWalk five years ago is one of the big reasons why it’s not fully developed.
Second, the other high-profile city-funded projects involve more than just bars.
History tells us, I think, that downtown Wichita was dead in a free development market. So it’s difficult for me to fault the city for taking a proactive role helping downtown redevelop.
Bill Wilson is far more informed and interesting than I had realized before Business Casual. Reading his different perspective on Brent’s article gives value to them both, and the Eagle.
This issue isn’t new to the history of Wichita or to any major city in the United States. Downtown’s in every major city died beginning in the early 1980’s. The reason was suburban sprawl and shopping malls.
Cities left not knowing what to do with their cores deteriorating. After several decades they found the way, which is bringing entertainment and living, but they had to shell out the dough to do it. We are not alone and this isn’t nothing new.
KC, OKC, Dallas and the list goes on. They are all doing it. Public financing is crucial for the turn around.
I don’t think its predestined that all central business districts are eventually going to become dinosaurs. I think some do because many elected politicians think they have a “wonderful vision” that will save the business district. Perhaps they are right or wrong, who knows. But what is important is to obtain “buy-in” from the people who will pay the bill, the taxpayers. And I don’t mean a few minutes of listening at the water fountain, or doughnut shop or to the waitress at a local restaurant.
In Wichita, I have only seen one “politician” who would stand up and listen to some extent. That was School Superintendent Winston Brooks, now gone to Albuquerque. Unfortunately his assistants at headquarters have circled their wagons to block and resist public input.
If politicians don’t like to communicate with taxpayers, they should get out because they are contributing to failure. I suggest that our holdover Sedgwick county commissioners, Unruh, Winters and Norton are in this category. They are basically in it for the paycheck and not because they like to talk to the voters and taxpayers.
Also, I believe most of the present Wichita City Council are in the same non-communicative category.
Sitting behind their respective official barricades like tin horn judges doesn’t do it.
Wichita suffers from NO BUY-IN BY THE WICHITA VOTERS AND TAXPAYERS. No matter how glorious and glamorous the project, such as “old town,” the public won’t go for it if no initial buy-in.
I’m not particularly familiar with public financing of the downtowns of Oklahoma City and Dallas mentioned by WE Blogger “ictBest” above. But I believe there are many business districts that are successful without much if any public financing. Off hand, I’m thinking of the great Country Club Plaza, downtown Lawrence, Kansas, downtown Olathe, downtown Independence, Mo. I understand Eureka, California where I once worked for the U.S. Forest Service is going well. So is Panama City, Florida, and probably lots of other cities that I can’t think of right now.
But Wichita is continuing to run the wrong way at full speed by hiring a city manager who has never shown propensity to actually communicate with regular tax-paying citizens. Its going to be another case of unilaterally deciding what “we, the citizens” want and throwing millions of our hard-earned tax dollars at it.
THEN, AS USUAL, FLEEING WICHITA ON THE NEXT TRAIN.
I agree with a proactive approach to downtown development but I sarcastically ask, where is downtown?
Waterwalk/Hyatt/Century II is too far away from the proposed arena which is too far away from the Old Town/Warren theater area. Until those “dots” become easily connected (personally I would love to see something like a monorail downtown connecting all of this, along with Exploration Place, the Wichita Art Museum and VERY LARGE PARKING LOTS!) I unfortunately have a “divided we fall” mentality on all of it.
I don’t think it has to be too far away, Jerry, but knowing Wichita as a lifer, I suspect you’re probably right.
Wichitans aren’t going to walk anywhere, so you’d hope that the joint city-county arena redevelopment effort produces some sort of downtown mass transit.
It’s funny, actually, how allergic Wichitans are to walking. If you’ve ever been to a major sporting event, you know that the distances between the downtown attractions are a short walk compared to the stroll through a Super Bowl parking lot, for example.
When did “incentivize” become a word?
Oops, Merriam-Webster Online tells me: 1970. Still sounds odd to me.
And, back on the original topic…
I don’t think those things are outside of walking distance. I have walked from my office on Market St. over to the Old Mill for lunch and it took just a few minutes. It was a hot day and it was still pleasant. And I have walked a lot farther than that when visiting Chicago or New York. As mentioned about, we just need to get into the habit of walking more!
Until Wichita gets rid of the crack houses and someone makes affordable condos – out of the failed hotels – people only feel safe there when there are major events, riverfest, chilifest…
How about the arena costing more that 3x the $ in one year. Who did the estimating – another outside ‘consultant’ that doesn’t know the difference from Hilltop and Vickeridge, 9th and Grove, 21st and Broadway?
What happened to my well thought out, carefully expressed comments that I entered on this blog thread last night and this morning? Is the EAGLE practicing some sort of filtering of blogger comments? Perhaps my comments, as great as they were, did not fit into the prescribed filter established by EAGLE blog management? Are we seeing the future of journalism right here in River City?
Carl Brewer claimed that Gander Mountain is a success and is making money. Perhaps he should visit the investment site http://www.morningstar.com and check ticker GMTN. They are losing money big time.
Jerry, we’ve had some issues with legitimate blog comments being filtered out by our software. They are being addressed by the blog administrators.
If taxpayers had the choice, I would most would choose the historic old Broadview Hotel for subsidy rather than Bill Warren’s new Old Town theater.
Broadview Hotel was built sometime in the early 1920’s and owned for a time by Wichita’s greatest general contractor, George Siedhoff.
Broadview Hotel overlooked “Island Park” on its west, surrounded by the Arkansas River. The park contained an early wooden baseball stadium and even a roller coaster. On the east side of Waco was the Union Pacific Railroad Station which offered a direct connection to the Arkansas Valley Interurban (AVI) through the archway still visible on east side of the Broadview Hotel. AVI’s headquarters and trolley line center was on the west side of the Broadview.
Below the Broadview was a large restaurant said to contain some 200 seats. This is reputed to have been a “speakeasy” during the years of prohibition.
A coffee cup sign was on the south side of the Broadview advertising its coffee shop entrance which must have beckoned executives from the Koch Engineering Company located on the south side of Douglas in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
The top floor contained a roof gardens restaurant and ballroom. Imagine the 1940’s music of Glenn Miller, the notes of Stardust and String of Pearls, wafting over the streets of Wichita on a warm summer evening.
Which would you choose for help from your tax dollars?