Greg Allen: A reasonable reuse plan for Kemper Arena

The Historic Kansas City Foundation has long supported saving Kemper Arena, which we have placed on our Most Endangered list of local landmarks.

Kemper is clearly an iconic structure in our community, is historically and architecturally significant, and is an economic opportunity for the city, including the emerging new urban community in the West Bottoms. The building has unrealized potential and is clearly re-usable.

We find it difficult to comprehend how better purposes are served by demolition when that leads to great expense for a cash-strapped city and results in dismantling a still usable building and hauling the remains to a landfill. All that when the Foutch Brothers development firm has advanced a reasonable, community-oriented plan at far less cost to the city.

There are other maintenance and repair issues at the American Royal complex, which should be the priority — not destroying Kemper.

Kemper Arena represents a civic vision in a bold design to last for the ages. It is a signature work of a world famous and distinguished architect in the early moments of his career. Kemper was the site of Kansas City’s last national political convention and is a place where 40 years of memories have been forged, hopefully with many more to come.

Kemper is part of that great building surge in Kansas City 40 years ago, when this community built KCI, the Truman Sports Complex, Crown Center and Kemper within a span of only a few years. We should preserve this great landmark and symbol of our city, reminder of a “prime time” in our history and an inspiration for our future with a practical and dynamic role to play.

The 1970s are dismissed by some as the “Me Decade.” It was a time of notable miseries, including Watergate, New York City on the brink of bankruptcy, energy crises and “stagflation” (among others). All this hard on the heels of the tumult of the 1960s.

Here in Kansas City, however, something else was going on. Visionaries were creating bold new facilities, which remain to this day part of the fabric and scenic vitality of our lives. It was the time we were also wakening to historic preservation. We saved the Folly Theater. We created in 1974, exactly 40 years ago, Historic Kansas City Foundation, to advance and cultivate understanding of the region’s history and enhance our sense of place.

We appreciate the time and effort public officials have devoted to consideration of Kemper’s future. We are satisfied that the facts compel pursuing the Foutch Brothers plan. We must be visionary again in Kansas City and save Kemper Arena.

This story was originally published October 7, 2014 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Greg Allen: A reasonable reuse plan for Kemper Arena."