American Royal Barbecue may hold the key to Kemper Arena’s future

Raze or renovate 19,000-seat Kemper Arena? The decision may hinge on one question above all:

How might the choice affect one of Kansas City’s signature events, the American Royal’s World Series of Barbecue?

The 35th edition of what promoters say is the largest contest of its kind on the planet fires up on Friday, when tens of thousands will pour into the American Royal Complex to attend private parties as contestants get ready for Saturday’s competition.

As it is, the American Royal Barbecue is busting its britches. It would have space to grow if the decision were to tear down Kemper and replace the underused, money-losing behemoth with a smaller arena more suited to the Royal’s current needs.

The alternative: Force some hard choices by building that new arena, instead, across the parking lot from a refurbished Kemper, which a private developer would turn into a youth sports complex that would be a boon for entire West Bottoms.

But that alternative would, according to officials at the American Royal, force them to cut by 25 percent the number of contestants in an event that sustains their other activities.

“What keeps us afloat, quite frankly, is the barbecue contest,” says Bob Petersen, president and CEO of the American Royal Association.

As the City Council moves closer to making its decision on Kemper’s fate — possibly as early as this month — the barbecue is now seen as a linchpin issue.

“The American Royal has made it real clear that building what they want and keeping Kemper would destroy the barbecue,” said Councilman Ed Ford, who leads the committee weighing the options.

The developer behind the sports complex proposal dismisses the Royal’s contention as so much hyperbole. There’s plenty of room in the neighborhood, Foutch Brothers says, for the barbecue to expand should Kemper remain standing alongside a new arena.

That the American Royal has been unwilling to concede that point and broker a compromise irks Foutch and some neighbors.

“It appears to me that a few of the American Royal’s supporters seem to be obsessed with tearing Kemper Arena down,” says Bill Haw Sr., a former Royal committee member who owns the Livestock Exchange Building and other real estate in the bottoms.

Smaller footprint

Forty years ago this month, then-Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz came to the West Bottoms to dedicate Kemper, pronouncing it “magnificent.”

Built in part to hold some of the American Royal’s premier events, it would primarily become home to the type of sporting and entertainment events that gravitated to the Sprint Center after it opened in 2007.

As attendance, too, began to dwindle at the rodeo and other events the Royal held at Kemper a couple of weeks a year, the nonprofit agricultural organization began searching for alternatives.

The plan, announced three years ago, was to replace Kemper with a 5,000-seat arena for staging events that couldn’t be accommodated at Hale Arena in the American Royal Center Building.

That $50 million arena’s smaller footprint would leave more room for outdoor events and festivals throughout the year. Plus it would have a side benefit of providing more room to expand the barbecue contest.

Space maxed out at 560 contestants this year. If barbecue planners could shoehorn more into the American Royal Complex’s 54 acres and some adjoining land now being used, they would.

But this year, the Royal had to turn away 40 teams.

“Every year we look around,” Petersen says, “and wish we had more space.”

The latest iteration of the Royal’s plan would have the city providing about half of the $60 million it would cost to tear down Kemper, build the new arena and make fixes to other city-owned buildings in the Royal complex.

The rest would come from private donations, as well as state and federal taxpayers.

Initially, city officials scoffed at the plan when so many other civic needs were going unmet. But negotiations became more serious after the American Royal reminded them of their obligations under terms of a 50-year lease that gives the Royal some say over what happens to Kemper. Kansas City concedes it’s as much as $25 million behind in required upkeep and improvements to Kemper and the American Royal complex, although some say the amount is far less.

“They have worked with us,” says Oscar McGaskey, the city’s executive director of convention and entertainment facilities, “not to force us to do this massive amount of improvements that they probably could push us to to do if they really wanted to.”

Alternate plan

City officials were weighing their options when along came a competing plan.

Foutch Brothers offered to buy Kemper for a small fee, then spend $22 million turning it into a youth sports complex that Foutch says would draw 1,000 people a night to the West Bottoms.

Foutch believes the revamped Kemper could also accommodate the horse and livestock shows that go on there now, although the Royal doesn’t think so.

But if the American Royal were to persuade the city to build that smaller arena, Foutch says, there’d be plenty of room for it across the parking lot.

Ford saw it as one of those “win-wins” that elected officials like to embrace. But after concerns about the barbecue arose, he’s had to reassess.

“I’m less optimistic about that than I was going in,” he says.

Under the Foutch plan, the second arena would eliminate 150 of the 3,500 parking spaces the city controls.

According to the Royal, that would mean losing space for 128 barbecue teams, as well the entry fees they pay, at a time when the Royal would like to have more space and not less.

Developer Steve Foutch, however, says that’s a problem easily solved. Plenty of land elsewhere in the West Bottoms, as well as streets to the north of Kemper, could accommodate barbecue contestants.

Haw, for instance, has several acres along the floodwall that now are used for parking cars on barbecue weekend.

“Everybody’s willing to cooperate,” Foutch says, even if it means fewer parking spaces for cars on barbecue weekend. After all, Foutch says, shuttle buses already ferry thousands of visitors to the area on barbecue weekends.

But American Royal officials say that some contestants are already a long way from the contest judging area and that extending the boundaries of the contest any further would be a hardship.

Carolyn Wells agrees.

“I think it’s about at its limits for walking,” says Wells, executive director of the Kansas City Barbeque Society, which is the main sanctioning body for the barbecue contests.

Another possibility that’s been kicked around is moving the barbecue to a less-confined space, such as the Truman Sports Complex parking lot or Kansas Speedway.

True, that is a possibility, says Petersen, but not one that anyone at the American Royal would like to contemplate.

The barbecue may date to 1980, but the Royal has been in the bottoms since its founding in 1899.

“We think the old West Bottoms is the place for it,” Petersen says.

This story was originally published October 1, 2014 at 3:59 PM with the headline "American Royal Barbecue may hold the key to Kemper Arena’s future."