Might have been the air being let out of the tires at Kemper Arena and surrounding businesses left to ponder their futures in the wake of Elton John’s Sprint Center sendoff.
Smack in the middle of that $torm sits vaunted Kansas City steakhouse the Golden Ox.
So was there a sense of loss?
“You know, not really,” says owner Bill Teel. “No. 1, we’re getting some business tonight from people we know are going to the concert. When there’s stuff going on downtown, we usually get our share of it.”
The flip side of that cup half full: “If the concert were here we would be packed to the walls for an hour and a half and then it would be dead,” Teel says. “Our regulars would avoid us. Of course we’d do a lot of business in that hour and a half.”
Teel points to the positive side: “The American Royal seems to be taking more action to book things down here, so that’s good,” he says.
As for the cold, hard reality of a gloomy, empty stockyards on an otherwise gorgeous fall evening that would, before the Sprint Center, have been teeming with Cowtowners …
“I think everybody’s had a chance to get over it,” Teel says. “You know, it is what it is. We figure life will go on. We’ve been here 58 years and we hope we’ll be here another 58, Sprint Center or not. We went back through 2006 and looked at events at Kemper that, had there been a Sprint Center, we wouldn’t have picked up at Kemper. And there might have been 20 dates we would have lost. You know, major concerts, KU basketball games. You know, it’s a loss, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Future vision
Next up for the once glorious stockyards and its survivors?
“What the city needs to do is make sure that Kemper Arena and the American Royal in particular are sound and can move forward,” Teel says. “And they need to work on redevelopment down here. There is still interest in the area, but there are a lot of empty buildings.
“I think the city owes it to the area to make sure that it gets redeveloped, that it has a chance. You know, there’s a lot of money in this town, and they don’t seem willing to step up. I don’t know if the American Royal is not glamorous enough.”
Heard at the Sprint …
•Thanks but no thanks alert: Given the controversy over VIPs getting preferential ticket treatment at Sprint Center shows, AEG figured a way to make it up to the masses. Departees at Saturday’s Elton John concert were handed lanyards with souvenir faux $87 front-row tickets to Elton’s show in what was termed the “VIP” section, Row A, Seat 1.
“The holder of this ticket is hereby granted one admission to Sprint Center for the purpose of viewing the event indicated on the reverse of this ticket,” reads the ticket back. “If this ticket is lost, stolen or otherwise displaced, and the Holder does not present the ticket at Sprint Center at the time of the Event, the Holder will not be allowed to enter Sprint Center.” No biggie. They probably couldn’t have squeezed 16,000 people into that single seat anyway.
•What not to buy: About Sprint Center’s new QuikTrip. Let’s see there were sandwiches, fruit and salad cups, energy drinks, smoothies, coffee, cookies, pastries. Wait a minute. Any rolling papers? “No, we don’t,” deadpanned an ultra polite salesclerk.
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