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Artillery
guns are among the artifacts on display at the
National World War I Museum in Kansas City,
Missouri.
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KANSAS
CITY, Mo. - Every kid who ever touched a basketball has
lived this back-yard fantasy.
Final
five seconds of the national championship. Score tied.
The Kid brings the ball down, dribbles to the top of the
key. Nobody open underneath. He cuts to the right, picks
up a screen and gets off a shot. The ball arcs toward
the rim, the buzzer sounds. Nothing but net!
"Absolutely
amazing," screams the taped announcer at the
"Beat the Clock" court of the College
Basketball Experience, which adjoins the new Sprint
Center in downtown Kansas City.
A
construction binge in the works for several years is
beginning to pay dividends for this Midwest city, and
the early results are rewarding for history addicts, art
lovers and basketball junkies.
This city
is celebrating the opening of the National World War I
Museum at Liberty Memorial and the impressive addition
of the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art. And in the next several weeks, many of the
restaurants, bars and shops in the nine-block Kansas
City Power & Light District will be ready for
business in what is being billed as a world-class
entertainment district.
The
glass-encased Sprint Center, an 18,500-seat multipurpose
arena, debuted Oct. 13 with an Elton John concert that
brought crowds into a downtown that had been dormant
after dark for decades. A few days later, the College
Basketball Experience opened next door, and a sign
greeting visitors warned: "This is not a museum.
You may sweat."
The
dramatically lit National Collegiate Basketball Hall of
Fame is on the first floor, along with a TV stage where
you can read from a teleprompter and watch your own
newscast. But the perspiration starts once you enter the
elevator to go upstairs. The faces of players stare from
the elevator walls and an unseen coach gives his locker
room pep talk: "Lay it on the line. Don't leave
anything out there."
The door
opens and you walk through a tunnel lined by photos of
cheerleaders and screaming fans. At the end is a tip-off
circle, and beyond that a full basketball court with
bleachers where you can shoot hoops. To one side is a
three-on-three court for street ball. The other side has
a variety of skill games, including the "Shoot from
Downtown" court for three-pointers, "Step to
the Line," where you try to make free throws in
front of a hostile crowd, and the "Throw It
Down" slam-dunk rims of varying heights.
After
being humbled at the "Measure Up" feature,
where my size 8 foot was dwarfed inside an imprint of
Shaq's size 23, I retrieved a bit of self-esteem by
slamming in a shot and hanging on the rim in exaltation.
No matter that this was the 7-foot rim.
A local
TV news crew also was attending the opening and the
camera-toters were gone, leaving the sports anchor alone
with a ball at the "Beat the Clock" court. The
guy took off his sportcoat, loosened his tie and began
dribbling on the maple floor. He must have had a little
game in his background because he nailed several deep
shots, which the announcer proclaimed, "Absolutely
amazing."
Red in
the face and out of breath, but smiling, he retrieved
his coat and caught up with the camera crew downstairs.
"We've
been seeing a lot of that," said Reggie Hines, a
former fair-to-middling guard at Central Missouri State
who manages the basketball operations. "They come
in with a suit on, but see all this stuff.
"Put
a ball in their hand, they're ready to go. They're 17
again."
The Elton
John fans might have enjoyed a post-concert cocktail,
but much of the downtown area was closed for the night
after the office workers went home. No more. Cordish
Co., the Baltimore-based developer that will build
Ballpark Village in St. Louis, is putting the finishing
touches on the Kansas City Power & Light District -
an $850 million project on nine square blocks in the
midst of the downtown, with four underground parking
garages.
Jennifer
Brandt of Cordish led a hardhat tour of the area, which
eventually will include condo towers that will add up to
1,500 residents. "We'll have close to 50
restaurants and bars, a hipster bowling alley, a
brewery," she said. "The tenants are pushing
to open in time for the Big 12 basketball championships,
which will be held at the Sprint Center in
mid-March."
Many of
the bars and restaurants are clustered around two
central features - a European-style piazza with a
water-and-fire fountain in the middle, and KC Live!,
which has four tiers of restaurants with outdoor dining
around an open-air stage under a canopy. "The back
of the stage will be a waterfall that, when the stage is
not in use, will flow over the stage into a moat,"
Brandt said. "We will have free events going on
throughout the week, especially Thursday through
Sunday."
Visitors
will encounter a row of retail boutiques, a strip of
white-tablecloth restaurants and a block of family
friendly dining. An ultra high-end nightclub will allow
VIPs to enter through a glass elevator, while the rest
of us take the steps. Also planned is a Flying Saucer
Draught Emporium, which will offer beers from around the
world, and a Maker's Mark Bourbon Lounge, where you can
sip whiskey.
"With
the residential towers, we feel it will be more of a
neighborhood than just a destination spot," Brandt
said. "Even though it's got modern elements, we
tried to make it feel like it fit into the
downtown."
The
public initially was bemused when the $94 million Bloch
Building resembled a prefab structure added to the
classic Beaux Arts facade of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art. But architecture critics loved the addition, and
public sentiment was won over when the lights were
turned on and the translucent glass walls glowed like a
firefly at night.
And once
inside, the interior space with its curving ceilings and
frequent windows offering generous peeks outside created
a fresh experience, even in the administration areas
where artwork was absent.
Curator
Gaylord Torrence, who led a tour of the new building,
said public sentiment began changing with the
landscaping that joined the addition's five large boxes,
which architect Steven Holl calls "lenses."
"At
night, people were dazzled," Torrence said.
"The industrial quality that people complained
about fell away once these buildings were sited on the
landscaping. The glass is like water. The light changes
outside as clouds go over, and the experience in the
building changes, moment to moment."
The
slender, elongated building gave the museum 165,000
square feet of space in descending galleries that hold
African art, contemporary art, photography, the Isamu
Noguchi Sculpture Court and featured exhibitions. The
improvements extended next door where major renovations
were made to the original 1933 building, and permanent
galleries underwent a complete reinstallation.
"The
exterior of the building was cleaned, Kirkwood Hall was
brought back to its original state and all of the
galleries on the first floor are new, with the exception
of ancient," Torrence said.
Torrence
is the museum's curator of American Indian Art, and his
specialty will receive a major boost in the renovation
of the original building. A new gallery will create a
300 percent increase in space devoted to American Indian
Art, establishing the Nelson as one of the pre-eminent
art museums in this field.
The
National World War I Museum finally got its tank.
The
museum, which opened in December, has the country's
largest collection of memorabilia from the "Great
War" that America entered in 1917. On display are
posters, uniforms, rifles, helmets, bayonets, artillery
guns, mess kits - more than 50,000 objects used to fight
the war.
Many now
are displayed in a $26.5 million museum designed by
Ralph Appelbaum, who also designed the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Clinton presidential
library. The WWI museum was created in 30,000 square
feet of space excavated beneath the Liberty Memorial,
which was dedicated in 1921 and features a 217-foot
obelisk-like tower on a plaza overlooking the Kansas
City skyline, with two stone sphinxes standing guard.
Once
inside the museum, visitors walk from the lobby into the
main exhibit hall over a glass bridge, with a field of
9,000 red silk poppies below. Each flower represents
1,000 soldiers killed in the war from all nations.
Through videos and displays, the museum tells the story
of how America was drawn into the war, and the horror
that followed on both sides.
Among the
most compelling displays is a trench where visitors can
eavesdrop on the conversations of soldiers, a 15-minute
wide-screen movie with bombs flashing over a
debris-filled battlefield and a walk into a giant crater
that shows the destruction of the industrial-strength
weapons used in the war.
But the
smallest of the artifacts also tell a poignant story. A
favorite is a German helmet with eight 5-cent stamps
pasted to the outside. For 40 cents' postage, a soldier
sent this war souvenir back home with a tag attached
that said: Miss Lois Hodges, 640 Schaeffer Avenue,
Kansas City, Mo.
Denise
Rendina, marketing director for the museum, said it will
greet about 160,000 visitors in its first year, well
beyond projections. "People are spending a minimum
of 2 ½ hours, and a lot are spending five to six
hours," she said. "Some say, `I need to come
back, I've absorbed what I can for one day.'"
And
Rendina said the museum's collection is growing as old
soldiers and their families offer their coveted relics.
"We're receiving things from all over the
country," she said. "Beautiful tunics,
helmets, a handwritten letter that Gen. Pershing wrote
as he was leaving Europe."
The
museum had left open a space for a tank, and announced
early this month that it had purchased from a Montana
collector a French-made tank that had seen action on the
Western Front during World War I.
So what's
the going rate for a battle-tested tank: $225,000.
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IF YOU
GO:
Where to
stay: In the downtown, Aladdin Holiday Inn
1-816-421-8888 and www.hialaddin.com, Hilton President
1-816-221-9490 and www.hilton.com, Hotel Phillips
1-800-433-1426 and www.hotelphillips.com, Marriott
1-800-228-9290 and www.marriott.com/mcidt,
Crowne
Plaza 1-800-227-6963 and www.crowneplaza.com. Outside of
downtown, The Raphael 1-800-821-5343 and
www.raphaelkc.com is a boutique hotel across from
Country Club Plaza.
Where to
eat: JP Wine Bar at 1526 Walnut Street and
www.jpwinebar.com offers wine flights and small dishes.
The seared scallops and tuna tartare were excellent,
with a sampling of Malbec reds. I know, I know - whites
with fish. Michael Smith at 1900 Main Street and 5/8
www.michaelsmithkc.com is located in the heart of the
Crossroads Art District. Smith, a James Beard
award-winning chef, delivers elegant American cuisine.
Grinders at 417 East 18th Street has wings with three
choices of hot sauce, Wimpy, Molten and Absolutely
Insane. The decor is vintage garage, with a concert
stage in the field out back. The South Philly cheese
steak with Cheeze Wiz was delicious and $4.99 for a
half, which was plenty.
College
Basketball Experience: Admission is $10 for ages 18 and
older; $7 for 6-17; free for 5 and under. Open 10 a.m.
to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday. At 1401 Grand Boulevard, 1-816-949-7500 and
www.collegebasketballexperience.com.
Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art: Admission is free. At 45th and Oak
streets, three blocks east of Country Club Plaza. Hours
are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday; 10
a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
1-816-751-1278 and www.nelson-atkins.org.
Kansas
City Power & Light District: Among the tenants are
AMC Mainstreet Theatre, Angel's Rock Bar, Bristol
Seafood Grill, ChinaBar, Chipotle Mexican Grill,
Cosentino's Downtown Gourmet Market, Famous Dave's
Barbecue, Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, GNC, Gordon
Biersch Brewery & Restaurant, Howl at the Moon, Jos.
A. Bank, Latteland Espresso & Tea, Lucky Strike
Lanes, Maker's Mark Bourbon House & Lounge,
McFadden's Sports Saloon, Mosaic Lounge, Plaza Ford
Ideal, Polished Nail Salon, the Fudgery, Ted's Montana
Grill and Vinino. McFadden's and Vivino opened in
November, the rest are scheduled to open in the spring.
At www.powerandlightdistrict.com.
National
World War I Museum: Admission is $8 for those 12-64, $7
for seniors, $4 for children 6-11 and free for 5 and
under. Military members admitted free with ID or
uniform. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.
At 100 West 26th Street, 1-816-784-1918 and
www.nww1.org.
For more
information: The Convention The Convention &
Visitors Association: Call 1-800-767-7700 or visit www.visitkc.com.
Our complete "If you go" listing can be found
online at www.stltoday.com/trave.