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What will come next for the Sprint Center?
When I was a kid, I always wanted to know what we were going to do tomorrow. This used to drive my parents crazy. We’d be at an amusement park or having a picnic at Round-Up Lake or on our family vacation at some educational place like Gettysburg, and I’d inevitably say those words: “This is fine, but what are we going to do tomorrow?”
Today, the Big 12 championship game will be at the Sprint Center — Kansas vs. Texas for the third straight year — and it will be a wonderful scene. Kansas City is back. Downtown will be electric. The early version of the Power & Light District will be hopping. The arena will be packed, the basketball intense, the sound deafening. Kansas City is the epicenter of the Midwestern sport scene again, and it’s great.
But I can’t help but wonder, what are we going to do tomorrow?
Where the heck is our NBA or NHL team anyway?
•••
There are seven cars in the Kemper Arena parking lot, though one looks like it may have been abandoned here sometime in the early 1970s. Nobody walks around. The streets all around are lifeless. The only sign of movement here comes from a message board hanging over the entrance; it blares upcoming Kemper Arena events in red LED letters. The Pet Expo is coming. So is Dave Ramsey’s total money makeover.
The sign flashes to no one: “Welcome Big 12 Fans!”
I’ve been thinking about Kemper Arena a lot this Big 12 tournament week — I still have a soft spot in my heart for this place. This place was built on big dreams. And most of those dreams came true. For 20 straight years, the Big Eight basketball tournaments played here at Kemper; the first six Big 12 basketball tournaments played here, too. This is where Danny and the Miracles played (not to mention Paul McCartney and Wings). This is where Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan fought and scrapped for the Republican nomination for president.
And, yes, this is also where the Kings played NBA hoops, where the Scouts played something resembling NHL hockey — for a time in the 1970s, of course, Kansas City was one of only a handful of cities with all four major-league sports. This is where, for a time, indoor soccer was actually a major happening in town. A lot of amazing things happened in this place, before and after the roof caved in. This is where Kansas City, in so many ways, felt most alive.
“I can’t tell you just how big Kansas City felt,” says a friend of mine who grew up in a small place and used to come with her parents to the Big Eight tournament. “It sounds silly now, but it was like New York to us.”
Four years ago, Kansas City took another shot. With Kemper Arena ready for retirement and with a lot of people in town ready to make something big happen, Kansas City passed a hotel and rental car tax that built the Sprint Center. Now that’s up, encased in glass, utterly unique. It’s beautiful. Across the street, the Power & Light District is coming alive — you can already get a feel for how much fun that’s going to be.
And all week, Kansas City has felt alive again. The Big 12 is back! It has been wonderful, every bit of it, even the heavy traffic which tells you, hey, you are someplace. It’s so great to see all those people walking around Kansas City again in their Oklahoma State orange sweatshirts, the Iowa State gold jackets, their Kansas State purple hats. It’s great to see people, restaurants, to walk with big crowds downtown, to watch big-time college basketball here. This is what so many people had in mind. It’s amazing to be in an arena in Kansas City where the food is good, the concourses wide, the sound clear and the player locker rooms look like the lobby of the Ritz Carlton.
But I think most people who voted for the tax increase, who voted for the Sprint Center, expect more. We were promised more. We were promised NBA basketball or NHL hockey or, heck, both. We continue to be promised more. Tim Leiweke, Anschutz Entertainment Group president, says it’s inevitable that a team will come to Kansas City and play in the Sprint Center. He has said that a lot. It’s only a matter of time. But that time, he admits, is not next year. And it’s probably not the following year either.
“I hoped things would move more quickly,” he says. “But no teams have moved since we started on the building. It’s very competitive out there. Municipalities don’t want to lose their teams, eh? They fight hard for their teams.”
•••
They do fight. And the truth is that if Kansas City is going to get one of these NBA or NHL teams, the city will have to fight, too. Kansas City has not shown the stomach for that sort of fight so far.
Oklahoma City outmaneuvered and outspent Kansas City, and it now looks more and more likely that the Seattle SuperSonics will move there, maybe as soon as next year.
I think that pretty much kills Kansas City’s NBA hopes — in part because Seattle will move to the front of the line, and in part because I don’t see how there will be two NBA teams in the Heartland drawing from the same general three- or four-state area. Leiweke disagrees, at least with the last part.
“That move doesn’t hurt Kansas City at all,” Leiweke says. “It is not lost on people in the NBA that, quite frankly, Kansas City is a much better market than Oklahoma City.”
Then there’s the NHL saga. First, there was that time when Kansas City willingly played the role of the fish that saved the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Penguins were in a lot of trouble — they had an ownership group that had lost all patience and the whole thing was a political mess — and Kansas City could have stomped a foot on Pittsburgh’s neck. Instead, we jumped in, played the patsy, offered a no-pressure deal that inspired Pittsburgh to finally get its act together and keep the Penguins.
Now, hey, I thought that was a classy move on the part of Kansas City and the right move — to me, the Penguins belong in Pittsburgh. But I’ll also admit that you don’t win a sports team by being sentimental. Baltimore officials may have felt queasy about taking the Cleveland Browns after the town had felt the sting of losing the Colts. But they did it, and the Super Bowl trophy might have coated that queasiness.
Anyway, it seemed like there would be numerous other chances. Remember when AEG trotted out Boots Del Biaggio, a venture capitalist from California, as the owner of a Kansas City hockey team? That was exciting. Boots was young and enthusiastic; he was going to bring hockey to Kansas City, no doubt about it. AEG even sent along Luc Robitaille, one of the greatest hockey scorers ever, to help build up an excitement level for hockey in Kansas City.
Then it looked like Kansas City would have a real shot at getting the Nashville Predators almost immediately. The Predators did not have anything close to the history of the Penguins, they had numerous problems, the business community there did not seem to care much about the Predators. Yes, it seemed like a good fit. Nashville was scrambling, trying desperately to keep the team in town, and you couldn’t blame them, but it looked to be in vain.
And then Boots jumped ship and became a part owner of the Predators — yes, Boots helped save the Nashville Predators. I couldn’t even begin to explain how or why this happened. It was a classy move, but how many classy moves equal getting a team for Kansas City? Those Boots really were made for walking.
Again, Leiweke disagrees. He thinks Nashville is very much in play.
“In two years, you’re going to see that a decision has to be made in Nashville,” he says. “I’ve always thought that’s the most obvious team (for Kansas City). They have a friendly owner, the franchise is not hitting minimum standards, the market is not nearly as good or as big as Kansas City, the building is not enjoying anywhere near the Sprint Center success. I’ve always looked at that situation and thought that it’s going to happen. I still think that’s the most likely scenario.”
Tim does seem to see things a lot more positively than I do at the moment. Then again, he’s the guy running AEG, and I’m the guy who would have to pay $100 for Celine Dion tickets. Fortunately, I don’t like Celine Dion.
Leiweke is quick to say that there’s no real pressure right now — the building is doing boffo business. He says the arena will have 150 events this year, way more than expected in the first year. He says the Sprint Center is having such overwhelming success that for the next year or two, it will make all sorts of money even without an anchor tenant. He says that AEG concerts are selling out the Sprint Center faster than anyplace else in the country.
“Believe me, that doesn’t hurt,” he adds. “Everyone is well aware how the arena has done.”
“So,” I ask him, “we’re not getting a team anytime soon, are we?”
“It’s going to happen,” he says helpfully. “It’s just going to take time.”
•••
When I was a kid, I was very impatient. I never liked when people said, “It’s going to take time.” I haven’t changed much. Kansas City spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build the Sprint Center. You would hope that AEG and the mayor — when he’s not busy trying to destroy our zoo — and others involved will fight hard to bring Kansas City a big-time winter sports team.
And they should fight for a team without any doubts: This city can support a winter sports team. Will support it. Enough people are ready.
But, realistically, no way around it, getting an NHL or NBA team will take time. In the meantime, today will be the most exciting sports day in downtown Kansas City in a long time. I should remember what my parents always told me. Enjoy it. You can always worry about tomorrow tomorrow.