The Kansas Aviation Museum has found a new director — Lon Smith, formerly sales and marketing director of the Museum of World Treasures. Smith’s promotions background is needed at the museum, which enjoys a loyal base of volunteer support but still struggles to attract broader public interest or corporate support.
Among other ideas, Smith hopes to pursue accreditation through the American Association of Museums, which could give the museum more credibility and access to resources.
It’s good to learn that the Mid-America All-Indian Center museum, which reopens June 27 after months of renovation, also may seek AAM accreditation.
In the city’s crowded museum field, both museums are wisely taking steps to stand out.
Some will grumble about the Wichita River Festival’s increasing reliance on gates at its top events — its latest effort to get festivalgoers to buy the $5 buttons that help fund the $2.7 million festival. Then there is the extra $10 admission charge to hear hot pop singer Colbie Caillat give the 2008 festival’s first concert Friday at the West Bank Stage. Would it be better if the festival could forgo the gates and even forget about buttons? Sure. But throwing this megaparty isn’t getting any less expensive, as corporate sponsorships become harder to find in uncertain economic times. The $5 price has been in place for three festivals (and the button price has risen only three times in 37 years). The two-thirds of festivalgoers who failed to buy buttons last year left planners with little choice. And especially if someone takes in several events, a $5 button remains an excellent value.
Cheers to the Wichita Downtown Development Corp. for its effective 30-second TV commercials portraying the city’s core as the lively, stylish place it now is. Backed by catchy original music by local performers Ken White, Fran Curtis and Shane Marler, the fast-moving spots snag attention and have viewers trying to name this or that shop or night spot. “We wanted to convey the energy and for people to kind of remember or maybe even discover new things they didn’t even realize were downtown,†Ann Keefer, vice president of marketing for the WDDC, told The Eagle editorial board.
Four spots in all will run through the holidays, and perhaps through 2008. People can watch them online, too.
Attempts to market Wichita as a happening place can seem forced. These ads don’t. “We kind of feel like a big city when we see them,†Keefer said.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Vestibules are made for walking through, but the one newly restored at the Orpheum Theatre is stopping people in their tracks. The gleaming, elegant entrance instantly transports you to the 85-year-old showplace’s glory days, while stirring anticipation of what the theater will look like whenever its loving, deliberative restoration is complete. How fortunate the community was to have had volunteers step in to save the Orpheum two decades ago, so that it could again be entertaining thousands of people each year with movies and performances. Now, the Orpheum deserves all the help it can get as it tackles the rest of the big job, including the full restoration of the Spanish garden-inspired auditorium.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Outgoing City Manager George Kolb was badly overstating the case in telling The Eagle that “if we don’t do something with Century II, it won’t be here in 10 to 15 years.†Obviously, the city-owned performing arts and convention center is not about to skip town or turn to dust. But Kolb’s point about the need to address Century II’s condition and future use is well-taken. On the first issue, the City Council would take a necessary step today by approving $1.3 million in spending on Century II’s heating and cooling systems and a new Expo Hall roof (including $249,000 in insurance money). But Wichita also needs a much-bigger debate about what it wants Century II to be. As either a performing arts showplace or a convention magnet, it’s falling short — an issue separate from the downtown arena, which has a different job to do.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Many Wichitans smartly put up their outdoor Christmas lights and decorations while the weather was warm. But would they mind waiting until after we celebrate Thanksgiving before turning the lights on? Especially when Thanksgiving is so early this year. It’s bad enough that some retailers put out Christmas items before Halloween, and that a Wichita radio station has already started playing Christmas carols.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Here’s something to talk about for those studying parking around Wichita’s downtown arena: During Garth Brooks’ nine-show run at the new 18,500-seat Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., the 1,000-spot parking garage across the street averaged only 200 cars a performance. Rather than pay $10 to park in the arena’s garage, concertgoers opted to park in surface lots. “People are parking and they’re walking,†Bruce Campbell, Kansas City’s manager of parking services, told the Kansas City Star. “The whole thing about people up in arms about having to walk to the Sprint Center just has not happened.†You suppose Wichitans likewise would vote with their feet against convenient but pricy parking?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
In his last official day in the office Thursday, departing Wichita Downtown Development Corp. president Ed Wolverton — a fount of creative revitalization ideas during his tenure here — revealed one of his biggest dreams for downtown: Build a new performing arts complex on the Orpheum Theatre block.
Wolverton argues the city should finish refurbishing the Orpheum (in photo, 1,300 seats), use the seriously underused and gorgeous Scottish Rite Temple theater next door (500 seats), and build a new 2,000-seat performing arts center to the north of those buildings. A parking deck could be built across the street, on the surface lot east of Topeka.
It would be a great fit for the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, Music Theatre of Wichita and other tenants of Century II, and possibly avoid having to expand the Expo Hall to the east, as some have suggested.
“The Orpheum is such a jewel,†Wolverton said. Why not use it as the focus of a new performing arts complex?
It’s an intriguing idea.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Congratulations and gratitude are due the community for stepping up to surpass the United Way of the Plains’ fall fundraising goal of $16.2 million. The record $16.35 million in pledges will help sustain the more than 90 nonprofit organizations funded by United Way, and touch thousands of lives in and around Wichita. The 2007 campaign tally also stands as the latest indication that the local economy has weathered the post-Sept. 11 gloom and is growing again.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
OK, we have to admit that we were taken aback by the winning name for Wichita’s new independent league baseball team — the Wingnuts.
Wingnuts? Isn’t this an image that Wichita is trying to shed?
But then we relaxed and saw the humor in it. How can you not like a team called the Wingnuts? Or forget the name?
“In the end we wanted a unique name and a look that would suggest fun, while still maintaining a tie-in to Wichita’s great history of aviation,†said Chris Presson, president of Wichita Pro Sports.
The offbeat, eye-catching name should help move team merchandise.
There’s a precedent for tongue-in-cheek names, too — take the Macon (Ga.) Whoopees, a minor league hockey team.
Need we say more?
Welcome, Wichita Wingnuts, to Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.
Let’s play ball.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Interesting to see an industry analyst quoted as saying the Wichita market just isn’t big enough for a theme park like Wild West World. Gary Slade, editor of Amusement Today magazine, recently told The Eagle that Wichita is better geared to a family-oriented, smaller-scaled amusement park. In fact, he said it made much better sense for someone to revive Joyland.
He might be right. Many Wichitans would love to see Joyland, with its local tradition and world-class wooden roller coaster, back in action. Are there any investors out there with deep pockets and — better — some actual experience running a park?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
It’s been a rough few days in a rough year for Park City, which saw the best chance for a reopening of Wild West World expire Friday and saw Wichita Greyhound Park close for good Saturday. Now, Thomas Etheredge’s failed theme park will be sold off in pieces, leaving creditors and the community to ponder an expert’s assessment that "there were just many, many poor decisions that went into the planning of that park." The 18-year-old dog track’s closing was only a matter of time once Sedgwick County voters failed to allow it to add slot machines. But don’t count out Park City, which has seen other kinds of new economic activity this year along the I-135 corridor.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s gross mismanagement of the Iraq war made him a poor choice to be keynote speaker at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting, a booking that proved short-lived. Now, Rumsfeld’s appointment as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University has generated an online protest petition signed by professors, staff members, students and alumni and stating, “We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed.” Ouch — but then you go into retirement with the reputation you have, not the reputation you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
After its strange and short-lived booking of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce has settling on former White House press secretary Tony Snow to be the keynote speaker at its Dec. 4 annual meeting. Those hoping for more bipartisanship among the chamber’s guests will be disappointed. But Snow, a former Fox News anchor, is a skilled communicator who has excelled in his profession, including his year and a half speaking for the president. And it was hard to be unmoved by Snow’s White House departure last week to spend more time with his family and improve his income as he continues to fight cancer. His “cheerful, people-loving spirit,” as columnist Clarence Page put it, has won admirers on the left and right.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It was strange enough that the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce chose former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be the star speaker at its Dec. 4 annual community meeting, given the bad management example he set in prosecuting the Iraq war. It is stranger still that the chamber has now canceled Rumsfeld’s appearance without explanation. You’d think an organization with 2,100-plus members and a high community profile would be more transparent, but for whatever reason, the change of heart is for the best. Let’s hope this lapse in judgment doesn’t end up costing the chamber a lot of cash, and that it will seek future speakers who are true leadership icons. (Alberto Gonzales need not apply.)
Posted by Rhonda Holman
As planemaker to the world, Wichita deserves a world-class air show. To be sure, it gets that at each McConnell Air Force Base open house, which again drew thousands of people last month with its fearless fliers and plane displays. But the community also needs to keep building its signature Wichita Flight Festival, which is back at Jabara Airport today through Sunday.
The festival’s mission isn’t just to entertain, though it does that with name aerobatic acts that treat the sky as their stage. It also celebrates a story unique to Wichita, how its aviation pioneers such as Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, Lloyd Stearman and Bill Lear built an industry. “The whole event is built on our history,” festival director Janet Wright recently told The Eagle editorial board.
That need “to honor and to educate,” as Wright also put it, rightly has kept city leaders committed to the festival, despite its unexpected $189,000 shortfall last year and past conflicts over its entertainment and former name. “We expect it’s going to grow,” Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer told the editorial board.
This year’s schedule highlights women pilots now and in the era of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and offers kids’ activities and more than 40 aircraft on display, along with tonight’s kickoff concert by the Commodores. “It provides something for everyone,” Brewer said.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Maybe it started out as some kind of prank, but a police officer could have been killed this week in Wichita. Fortunately, someone else with respect for the badge averted potential tragedy by alerting the officer to the object lodged in the patrol car’s gas tank — a fireworks mortar shell big enough to have destroyed the car if detonated. Realizing that someone in our community would do such an appalling thing is offset somewhat by knowing there are many more who’d act as the motorist did — to protect those who protect us.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Our editorial today raises a question that many people have been asking: Why don’t the Prairie Rose Wranglers start performing at Old Cowtown Museum? The Wranglers need a venue, because the Prairie Rose ranch is being auctioned off as part of Wild West World bankruptcy. And Old Cowtown needs visitors and, frankly, would provide a more interesting and convenient setting than the ranch near Benton. Seems like a great fit.
Cowtown officials haven’t seemed particularly enthusiastic, noting that their visitor center isn’t big enough, and worrying that raising money for another building might siphon away funds needed for Cowtown operations. But what about contracting with a private operator to finance, build and operate the facility, which wouldn’t need to be fancy? As successful as the Prairie Rose was, I would think there would be several takers.
What do you bloggers think?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Area drivers are still seeing Wild West World touted by six brown traffic signs that cost the state about $18,000. "Right now, the thought is we’re going to leave them up," Lee Holmes, state traffic signing engineer, told The Eagle editorial board, adding hopefully that the bankrupt theme park could be sold and reopened. The Kansas Department of Transportation budgeted money for the signs based on state travel and tourism officials’ approval, he said. Asked about other instances of obsolete KDOT signage, he recalled the Kansas International Museum debacle in Topeka. "The intention is to not have that happen," he said.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
How sad to see the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper, and its cowboy movies and wagon and train rides, apparently brought down by Wild West World’s bankruptcy. As our editorial Tuesday noted, there are other ways to enjoy "lip smacking bar-b-que and great cowboy music," as a Prairie Rose billboard put it, but none quite so informal and entertaining as at the working ranch near Benton.
With the supper club now closed and up for auction Aug. 24, its many fans can only hope a buyer will step forward who is interested in reopening the Prairie Rose and keeping its tunes and food coming.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Congratulations to all those who worked so long and hard to finally place a fitting memorial on the site of the KC-135 tanker crash at 20th and Piatt — a place that project coordinator state Rep. Oletha Faust-Goudeau (in photo), D-Wichita, once likened to “an unmarked grave.” Their tenacity and generosity will ensure that Wichita knows and remembers the story and the names of the 30 victims of that tragedy on Jan. 16, 1965, providing an enduring place of healing and tribute.
(To better understand the horror and loss of that day, see The Eagle’s slide show.)
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is speaking at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual community meeting in December? Say it isn’t so.
Chamber marketing director Ryan Entz said that Rumsfeld’s remarks should be "pretty insightful" because he has "been such a large part of such . . . big-time world events." Well, yes, Rumsfeld has played a big role in history — by making Iraq an epic mess.
It’s clear to nearly everyone — including most who think the United States was correct to invade Iraq — that the prosecution of the war in Iraq has been disastrous. And much of that blame falls on Rumsfeld, who didn’t deploy enough troops to secure the country and then arrogantly refused to change course.
If the chamber wants to bring in other people who botched up, maybe next year it can book former FEMA director Michael Brown. Or, closer to home, how about former Westar CEO David Wittig?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Belated congratulations to the Wichita River Festival for its record 385,000 crowd and increased button sales. True, the May festival was fortune’s favorite this year, having booked rising star Chris Daughtry and enjoying near perfect weather. The unveiling of the Keeper of the Plains Plaza was another new draw and crowd-pleaser. But the 36th festival’s success also was a vote of public confidence in the community’s signature get-together. Here’s wishing it many more great years, as well as many more sponsors, events, volunteers, name acts.æ.æ.æ.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Even with the Wichita Wranglers’ days numbered, the gloom about the future of Lawrence-Dumont Stadium is lifting. Representatives of three independent baseball leagues have reacted positively to the facility and community, as city officials court a new team for the stadium and manager for the National Baseball Congress World Series in advance of a July 13 proposal deadline. It sounds like Wichita could fit easily into the 10-team American Association, the eight-team Northern League or the six-team United League. But Eagle columnist Bob Lutz may be right that the American Association is the best fit of all, given the involvement of Wichita Thunder hockey team owner Horn Chen and general manager Chris Presson. And the city is rightly looking out for the future of the NBC series. City Council member Paul Gray, who has met with the interested league officials in the past, is now on the sidelines as part of the proposal process. But Gray told The Eagle editorial board he’s optimistic about the prospects: “I think people are going to be very pleased with what happens.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Give city planners credit for pulling together the magnificent new Keeper of the Plains exhibit. But a reader raised a good question in a recent letter to the editor: Why is there no sign or plaque recognizing the statue’s creator, artist Blackbear Bosin?
It turns out the original plaque with Bosin information at the base of the Keeper was obscured when the statue was raised onto its new rock perch.
As my column today reports, city officials already realized their mistake in not having a new plaque. "A new one is in the works," lead project architect Kurt Skinner told me. One that will tell Bosin’s story and the Keeper’s.
Honoring Bosin and his vision will make the new Keeper site complete.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The Kansas Aviation Museum has found a new director — Lon Smith, formerly sales and marketing director of the Museum of World Treasures. Smith’s promotions background is needed at the museum, which enjoys a loyal base of volunteer support but still struggles to attract broader public interest or corporate support.