Quinton Lucas, City Council allies bet big on Canadian firm in KCI concessions battle

It was a day of chaos and frustration Wednesday at City Hall. Two City Council members walked out of a committee hearing, Mayor Quinton Lucas Zoomed in an emergency vote, boos and applause echoed alternately through the council chamber.

There was smoke. But at the end, though, there was clarity: The full council will vote next week on the hotly debated Kansas City International Airport concessions contract with Vantage Airport Group and its partners.

It’s hard to overstate the bitterness in the airport concessions fight. Council members — and reporters — have been deluged for weeks with allegations of secrecy, misleading claims, suggested conflicts of interest and general skulduggery.

“We think this should be an open and transparent process,” attorney Roxsen Koch said Wednesday, on behalf of a losing vendor. “It has not been that.”

What it has been is reminiscent of the fight between Edgemoor, Burns & McDonnell and AECOM over the original airport development deal.

And we can say this: The Vantage proposal may or may not be the best deal of the five on the table. But it’s clearly the riskiest deal. It rejects proven airport concession operators in favor of a hazier business model and a developer with more limited experience.

“The (developer) model doesn’t work,” airport concessionaire Elliott Threatt told the committee Wednesday.

It’s a big gamble. Like all gambles, it may pay off. Or Vantage could struggle, and voters (and travelers) will know whom to blame.

Three members of the City Council’s transportation committee voted Wednesday to move the Vantage proposal forward: Kevin O’Neill, Eric Bunch and Melissa Robinson. Two members, Teresa Loar and Katheryn Shields, walked out of the meeting, trying to deny Vantage supporters a quorum and delay the vote.

Paging Quinton Lucas! An emergency call was made to the out-of-town mayor, who quickly Zoomed in to provide a quorum and the crucial fourth vote to send the Vantage plan to the full council.

“This issue deserves a public vote,” Lucas said. “I do not like defeating a quorum as a way to try to avoid our responsibility.”

Skeptics insist the Vantage plan promises things it can’t deliver: millions of extra dollars to the Aviation Department, robust inclusion of minority shops and restaurants, and a full opening when the new terminal begins operations.

Some of Vantage’s local vendors are struggling financially now, even before the airport opens.

Even Vantage supporters concede its plan won’t survive intact. “Somebody’s going to fail,” said Kim Randolph of the Heartland Black Chamber of Commerce, referring to local airport vendors. Vantage, she said, is trying to prevent that.

Kansas City will know the general results of all this in March 2023, when the new terminal opens. Assuming Vantage is picked, its initial promises will have to be met, or not, in the next 18 months.

That’s just a few weeks before Bunch, O’Neill and Robinson face reelection. If terminal shops aren’t open, if minority participation is poor, if financing is a mess — if airport concessions are a debacle — voters will be able to hold them responsible.

No one is risking more than Lucas. He was the deciding vote Wednesday. He has pushed Vantage for some time. He appointed Councilman Dan Fowler to the concessions selection committee, and defended him against conflict of interest concerns.

In the past, we’ve accused Lucas of taking both sides on any issue. In 2021, though, Lucas has picked just one side, on police funding in May and now on the biggest contract for the biggest project in Kansas City.

The airport concessions contract is on him, and voters can and should judge him accordingly.

This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.