‘Heartbreaking’: Kansas City’s Plaza shops reel from COVID-19 and now protest vandals
Already reeling from the COVID-19 shutdown, businesses in and around the Country Club Plaza have been hit by a second blow: vandalism in the wake of several nights of violent George Floyd protests spilling over from Mill Creek park.
Broken windows.
Parked cars torched.
The entire area cordoned off, closed to customers — again.
Profane graffiti, laced with the “F” word and lambasting the police, spray-painted across brick and stone, and the plywood protecting their windows.
And yet: Owners get it.
“I know it is just property,” said Dan McCall, owner of the Classic Cup Cafe, which had one large window broken Saturday night. “This thing is much bigger than a window.”
Plaza area business owners, indeed, insist they understand the rage fueling protests in Kansas City and nationwide. They just wish that what they see as legitimate anger and frustration at last week’s death of George Floyd — who was held beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer now charged with third degree murder — did not have to encompass businesses already hurt by weeks of COVID-19 restrictions.
“I am 100% percent in favor of a peaceful protest. And I understand exactly what it’s about,” said Christine Kemper, founder of Kemper & Co., 4550 Main St., part of a strip of retail and businesses that on Monday, following Sunday night’s protest, found itself awash in profane graffiti. “I’m really sorry it turned violent. So many small businesses, which have already been suffering for the last three months, now have to come to terms with a whole new kind of pain they have to deal with.”
Kemper’s business is located on the second floor, and largely protected, although vandals did break into the building. Businesses on the first floor, like Cafe Trio, and others were less fortunate.
“I mean, the salon downstairs, they have been closed. They just opened last week,” Kemper said. “Cafe Trio, owned by two of the nicest guys in the world, been there for years, they were shut down for three months. They were supposed to open this week.
“I find it heartbreaking that more victims were created by this. But I don’t, for a moment, discount the emotions that set it off.”
Nor does McCall.
“I think there is a reason for people to be upset,” he said. “People are angry. No one wants to listen or help out. People just reached their breaking point. It just took one event for thousands across the country to say they had enough.”
During the shutdown, Classic Cup Cafe, 301 W. 47th St., said it donated 35,000 meals to those in need through Operation BBQ Relief in a sponsorship with AT&T. That program ended Friday as Classic Cup Cup prepared to reopen Wednesday. McCall has pushed the reopening to Thursday, at the earliest.
“It’s disheartening,” he said. “You raise all of that for charity and the next day your window is shattered.”
“Our store front has been destroyed. Our property had been vandalized and graffitied,” said Shane Hendren, a part owner of The Salon, 4548 Main St., which was started by his father, Gene Hendren, 40 years ago.
The shop struggled to get federal aid to get through the two full months it was closed, from mid-March to May 16. Employees came back. “Things were going well, and now this,” he said.
But Hendren nonetheless makes the distinction between the protesters and those who smashed all of this windows Saturday night with rocks, marred the salon’s floor, painted graffiti all over the entryway.
“We’re big supporters of the peaceful protest,” he said. “And, honestly, we haven’t associated what happened with the peaceful protest. These weren’t protesters. These were looters and vandals that came after the protests were done.
“It was the middle of the night. They were taking advantage of a situation that is disturbing and emotional and passionate. We were super-emotional the next morning. It was hard. The violation was hard. But it was sadness. It wasn’t mad. And we really tried our best not to associate the two together.”
He said the support they received was overwhelming. “We had citizens find us on Facebook and send us videos at 2 o’clock in the morning.”
People, strangers, met at the shop on Sunday to help clean. “We had swarms of people from the community — black, white, everybody,” Hendren said.
Chris Youngers, co-owner of Cafe Trio at 4558 Main St., said he was just gearing up to reopen on Thursday, ordering meat and calling employees back to work. During the protest on Saturday, people broke the windows along the front facade of the restaurant and the front door. They broke in and stole liquor.
The landlord had a crew putting up plywood Sunday. Once the protests started, they were concerned and left. That night, vandals gained access the restaurant’s outdoor deck, overlooking Mill Creek Park. Youngers said video shows someone attempting to pry the plywood off the front of the restaurant, before a protester stopped him.
Youngers has now pushed his reopening to June 11, a week later than planned.
“It’s the right thing to do, but I’m not too happy about it,” he said.
Tyler Enders, a partner in Made in KC Marketplace, 306 W. 47th St., raised serious concerns. The buildings on the Plaza are old. He worries about the spread of fire. He sees the protests, and even the vandalism, from a larger perspective.
“It is a combination of people who are bored and want to cause trouble and people who don’t know how to be heard,” Enders said.
His store didn’t incur any damage. His windows were covered by plywood, which was covered with posters supporting the protests, including such messages as “Black Lives Matter” and “A riot is the language of the unheard” — a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I think that there have been so many efforts to right the wrongs in a peaceful manner that have gone unheard,” Enders said, “so we have a lot of pent-up frustration.”
Zach Sanders, an insurance producer at May Risk Consultants, was leaving work early Monday in preparation for the next wave of protests. A rock was hurled through the business’s window on Main, east of Mill Creek Park. Glass was still spread across some of the floor.
“A little dismayed at what happened, but what are you going to do?” he said. “Our plan coming forward is to just keep coming to work. Hopefully, this doesn’t last too long.”
His thoughts on the protests:
“I’m all for it,” he said. “I think most people are. We are. I just don’t like seeing the violence aspects of it. I think it’s too bad that people have to resort to that, instead of protesting peacefully to try to get their point across.”
This story was originally published June 1, 2020 at 5:29 PM.
