Editor’s Letter

When it comes to parking, I’m a cheapskate.

I spend money on plenty of things others might find frivolous, but given my suburban Midwest roots, I just can’t understand why I should have to pay money to leave my car anywhere that’s not Manhattan. When staying at a boutique hotel, I’ve been known to find a street spot in a dodgy area a few blocks away. There’s a quiet, shady street in Portland, Oregon, where the neighbors hung bootleg “no airport parking” signs after I helped popularize it as an ideal spot to leave your car and take the light rail to the airport. Which brings us to Kauffman Stadium, where they now want twenty American dollars to park your car in the endless asphalt ocean. My first time out to the ballpark this year, I paid. But by the second time, I was looking for an angle. I ended up calling restaurants, hotels and gas stations in the vicinity, only to be told I’d be towed. Then I found Jesus—specifically, a church across from the K that, in the spirit of goodwill to all men, lets you park for free during Royals games.

For Chiefs games, they do charge twenty bucks, which they use to fund outreach ministry. Destiny Life Center Ministries exemplifies the generosity and good vibes that make Kansas City such a wonderful place to live. As its senior pastor

Cynthia Kivett told me, the building has been a blessing to the church, and they’re happy to share that blessing with others. The church has a strong focus on helping people who’ve struggled, and its motto is that it’s a place

“where every child of God is destined for greatness, regardless of their past.” It’s a good reminder that oftentimes it’s those people who’ve walked the roughest road who are quickest to lend a hand to others—even if it’s just something small, like helping a family work a night at the ballpark into their budget. This year’s Best of KC package is full of people and places like Destiny Life Center— those doing their part to make this city a better, friendlier and more interesting place to live, from a soccer club that focuses on mentoring refugee children to a creative reuse center that serves as a thrift store for arts and crafts supplies. We’re proud to highlight these folks as Best of KC editors’ picks alongside the results of our readers choice poll, which drew a record 550,000 votes in the final round. Our annual Best of KC issue is a project we work on basically all year long, and we hope Martin Cizmar this year’s installment helps you celebrate the EDITOR IN CHIEF spirit of the city—and maybe saves you a few MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM bucks on parking along the way.

Sam Taylor

ILLUSTRATOR This month’s pinball-themed cover was drawn by London-based illustrator Sam Taylor, who has done work for Nike, Nickelodeon, Bloomberg, The Guardian and The New Yorker.

Evan Musil

EDITORIAL INTERN The news story on the future of bars in Johnson County was written by Evan Musil, an intern majoring in magazine journalism at the University of Missouri. He enjoys learning Spanish and misses going to concerts.

Susie Whitfield

WRITER The feature on the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon film was written by Susie Whitfield, a retired English teacher who has previously written about Mercury 13 astronaut candidate Sarah Ratley, tenant rights advocacy and the financial crisis facing caregivers for adults with disabilities for Kansas City magazine.

NUMBERS FROM THIS ISSUE

20 700 1821

Width of the Rock Island Railroad Bridge over the Kaw River in feet. It will be widened to forty-five feet as part of a bold redevelopment plan.

PAGE 23

Varieties of hot sauce made at Spicin Foods on Southwest Boulevard. PAGE 62

Year when Kansas City was inhabited by fur trader François Chouteau, subject of a new play by local playwright Philip blue owl Hooser.

PAGE 120

BONUS COVERAGE

Our most talked-about post from the past month was about local restaurateur Jasper Mirabile, who made an appearance on the Fox News morning show to discuss his troubles hiring staff in the post-pandemic economy. The show’s host pointed out that some restaurants are now “raiding” competitors’ kitchens by offering signing bonuses. “That’s unbelievable,” Mirabile said. “To come in and take one of our employees, that’s just not right. To give them a $2,500 signing bonus, some restaurants are offering. It’s unbelievable!” Here’s what readers had to say.

“My family has had a lot of really good memories at Jaspers. Now that I know not only will he not pay his employees a living wage but he gets mad when other people will, I can’t possibly eat there.” —Sean Kosednar “Jasper’s received almost half a million in PPP money for payroll AND his business is UP twenty-two percent since 2019.” —Danny Vandelay “This seems simple to me, I’m not sure what he doesn’t get. As a business owner also, if I am doing well and my business is up twenty-two percent, then my employees should be benefiting from that also. I have a sliding scale right now: The more I make, the more my assistant makes so we both stay motivated to hustle.” —Tara Green “Jasper’s been wilding on this for a while. Surely one of his many friends in local PR/media could mention that debasing the people you’re trying to hire on Fox & Friends is not a winning strategy.” —Liz Cook “Hold on, is this still a capitalist system or is he arguing for some sort of communism where he has his own employees who are assigned to work for him?” —isthattrulyneeded via Reddit “And $2,500 for a full-time time hourly position only equates to an extra $1.20/ hour for the first year of work. It’s not nothing, but not wild extravagance either.” —Jonathan Pinkerton “Imagine going on Fox News just to complain about paying your employees.” —Ellie Jackson

This is the last issue for associate editor Nicole Kinning, who has moved on to an editorial role at an international home and gardening website. We’ll miss her talent, work ethic and amiability immensely.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Extra shot from Nicole Kinning’s visit to the bridge over the Kaw for this month’s Loop.

CORRECTION

Our Top Dentists list incorrectly identified the practice area of Bruce C. Cummings, who specializes in prosthodontics.

CONTACT US Kansas City

P.O. Box 26823 Overland Park, KS 66225-6823 (913) 469-6700 EMAIL: editor@kansascitymag.com

I wanted my jeans to fit like Dwight Yoakam’s, and you cannot find those off the shelf.”

—RYAN MARTIN, FOUNDER OF W.H. RANCH DUNGAREES

LEADING THE CONVERSATION IN KANSAS CITY

KAW CROSSING

A century-old railroad bridge over the Kansas River is being developed into what may well become a signature tourism draw for the city.

BY NICOLE KINNING

Could the Rock Island Railroad Bridge become our version of New York’s famed High Line?

MICHAEL ZELLER’S APPRECIATION for Kansas City’s old bridges runs deep.

“I went to North Kansas City High School just across the river,” Zeller says. “As high school and college students in the early eighties, we would hang out on ASB Bridge on

Saturday nights with a case of Old Style beer and swing our legs and step onto freight trains.”

A few years ago, he was boating down the Kansas River when the Rock Island

Railroad Bridge came into view.

“It was just abandoned,” he says. “I said, ‘Man, somebody ought to do something with that. Maybe put a restaurant out there and call it Chicken on a Bridge.’ And it was just a joke, right? I then spent the next four or five years trying to persuade somebody, anybody, to do something fun on that bridge because I wanted to live in a town where I could drink a beer and eat chicken and listen to a concert on a bridge.”

The abandoned railroad bridge lies just over the Kansas state line—Missouri begins in the parking lot—and was built in 1905 to carry trains loaded with cattle across the river in the Stockyards District.

After years of coordinating inspections, feasibility studies and grants, Zeller started an LLC called Flying Truss and in May, KCK voted unanimously to invest in and grant a lease for Zeller’s proposal. The bridge project will break ground this winter for a St. Patrick’s Day 2023 opening.

One huge motivation behind the project, Zeller says, is getting people to interact with Kansas City’s rivers more.

“A big challenge has been bringing people to the river and helping them overcome local hand-me-down bias and fear and demonization of our own rivers,” he says. “We recognized that the bridge was sort of like found land. It was steel land that didn’t have an address but that was above a river in the middle of a major metropolitan area.”

Zeller worked with the same feasability consultants who helped plan New York City’s famed High Line, which is now one of the city’s most popular landmarks in a city with no shortage.

Here’s what you need to know about the bridge.

It’s Kansas. Although the bridge was acquired by KCMO in the 1980s, only to sit vacant, it’s technically in Kansas. The state line falls fifty feet from the bridge along the gravel space that separates it from American Royal Drive.

Because it’s in KCK, it’s getting more attention from officials there than it might on the other side of the state line. After Zeller signed a lease, the Unified Government of KCK, which is working to add more public exercise infrastructure, approached him.

“[Wyandotte has] one-twenty-seventh of the linear trails per person than Johnson County next door,” Zeller says. “So they came to us and said, ‘Hey, can we make a public-private partnership to make the bridge also have a public crossing?’”

At first, Zeller was resistant (“we imagined ten-speed bicycles zipping across it”), but the details were ironed out, meaning KCK will now have a connection to the metro trails network.

It’s already leased out. The bridge’s lower deck, which is two hundred and fifty-five feet long, will have a food hall with two commercial kitchens to be used by Slap’s BBQ and Buffalo State Pizza. Nick Carroll, owner of Replay Lounge in Lawrence, will own and operate the bars and manage the liquor license. The lower deck will also have an event space. The top deck will house another event space with a dance floor, bar and coffee shop plus an overlook facing the river.

It’s very sturdy. The bridge has been through a thorough engineering inspection. “They had told us what we had suspected: that it’s a battleship,” Zeller says. “It’s built to carry locomotives and fully loaded freight trains on the move. And, critically, it was never salted like an automobile bridge would have been. Salt is the enemy of steel.”

Right now, the bridge is twenty feet wide. It will be widened with steel beams to become forty-five feet wide.

There will be plenty to do. The Stockyards District has what Zeller calls “adjacent momentum” with the new outdoor music stage Lemonade Park and a new apartment complex going up next to the bridge. “Things are coming our way. And we want to be a good neighbor and a catalyst,” he says. “Think Quixotic up in the rafters on a Saturday night or the KC Symphony playing from a riverboat anchored at the center of the Kaw. We’ll have art fairs and craft beer festivals.”

Bikes will be available to rent to pedal up and down the levee, along with kayaks and canoes available to use in the Kaw.

REAL WILD

Kansas City’s long-standing reputation for reasonably priced real estate has been challenged by a topsy-turvy market. Here’s what you should know.

BY EVAN MUSIL

THE KANSAS CITY HOUSING MARKET IS INTENSE, with soaring prices and limited availability challenging the city’s reputation for affordability. Nationwide, record-low interest rates and rising demand are met with a depleted inventory. The result is dramatic price jumps and homes selling in days. According to the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors, the median price in May 2021 for an existing home in the KC area was $255,000, about a nineteen percent increase from the same time last year. The number of available properties has dropped by fifty-three percent compared with 2020.

How did we get here? And if you’re thinking about entering the market, what should you know? We asked some of the city’s most knowledgeable real estate agents. Covid didn’t start the crisis, but it did worsen it. “It’s always been a seller’s market,” says Sarah Montgomery, lead buyer specialist at Dani Beyer Real Estate. “However, it’s definitely intensified.” As people spent more time at home during the pandemic, they’ve recognized the need for more space and a comfortable home, says Sharon Barry, associate broker at ReeceNichols. And since the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near-zero in the first days of the pandemic, there’s been a stronger incentive for prospective owners to enter now.

It’s not ending soon, but it’s probably not a bubble. Despite the worrisome rise in prices, national experts don’t expect a crash. As prices continue to soar due to low inventory, demand should slow. But this won’t happen overnight. “I don’t foresee the buyer’s side changing much over the next two years,” says Trent Gallagher, a realtor at Compass Realty Group.

Don’t expect a huge increase in inventory. Steep lumber prices shouldn’t slow down construction, Montgomery says, but it’s one of the reasons new housing is so expensive. The median new house price in the KC metro has jumped nearly twenty-one percent from last year to $439,425. In 2021, the metro has already issued nearly twice as many new building permits as last year, but it takes time to build.

More existing homes might enter the market when the federal moratorium expires July 31 and foreclosures spike. But Gallagher doesn’t expect it to have a strong impact. “With buyer demand so high, they’d all be picked up, and we’d still be back where we are right now,” Gallagher says.

It might be best to stay in the market. It sounds risky, but the future could be riskier. Interest rates won’t stay low forever. “I perceive the market’s going to continue to appreciate, and it’s a great time to buy,” Gallagher says.

There are limited ways for buyers to have leverage. Cash buyers typically move to the front of the list, Barry says, but that isn’t a realistic option for many people. She believes having good credit and placing a large down payment can help. Some people are rolling the dice by waiving inspections, but Montgomery recommends against it “unless they have a solid pre-inspector report from a reputable inspector,” she says.

Montgomery thinks the best advantage is finding the perfect agent. “Don’t hesitate to shop for agents and make sure you have a good fit,” she says. It can be a stressful process, but having someone friendly and knowledgeable can help you push through it.

BAR SOME

Will new laws open Johnson County to its first-ever nightlife district?

BY EVAN MUSIL

DRASTIC MEASURES’ OPENING was a gamble, and not because it opened in the middle of the pandemic last June. The downtown Shawnee speakeasy serves elegant hand-crafted cocktails but no food. Until November, Johnson County technically required establishments to make thirty percent of their earnings in food sales.

“We didn’t build a kitchen,” says co-owner Jay Sanders. “I’m not a chef, so trying to sell food would be a disservice to our customers.”

Thankfully for Sanders, a repeal of the food sales requirement passed with seventy-eight percent of the vote. In May, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly signed a measure allowing customers to grab alcohol to go after the pandemic. Together, these changes finally opened well-off and population-dense Johnson County to bars—real bars—for the first time. Now, the question: Will the bars come?

Kansas has a long history of constraining alcohol, dating back to Prohibition. It was the first state to ban alcohol in its constitution. Kansas is still by default a dry state, and counties must elect to allow alcohol sales if they choose. In Johnson County, alcohol wasn’t sold by the drink in public establishments until 1987. Then, the food sale rule remained as a restriction.

Which is why craft beer grew huge across the state line before catching on in Kansas. Before the repeal, spots like Red Crow Brewing Company in Olathe would hire food trucks and take orders inside their building, which would count as food sales for the brewery.

Limitless Brewing co-owner Emily Mobley, along with the help of other local breweries, started the campaign to place the repeal on the November ballot. She opened Lenexa’s Limitless to stay in Johnson County. “This is our home,” she says. “We didn’t want to be far from home.”

Mobley also believes customers in Johnson County would rather stay close than cross the state line for drinks. With the repeal, it might now be easier to open and operate a bar in Kansas than Missouri. “In Missouri, every server has to get training and a permit from the city,” says Mike McVey, lawyer and co-owner of Transport Brewery in Shawnee.

So could Johnson County build a bar culture to rival the Crossroads and Westport? Not in a rowdy, reliving-your-college-years kind of way, says Chris Roberts, head brewer at Red Crow. “If it’s gonna be anything, it would be more laid back, either with a little food still or a wine-type bar,” Roberts says.

But in Shawnee, where Drastic Measures now sits surrounded by three craft breweries, president of the Shawnee Chamber of Commerce Ann Smith-Tate hopes to transform the city’s historic downtown into a nightlife district that serves a slightly older and more casual crowd. She says the downtown district has seen fifty-seven million dollars in private investment in the last two years.

Sanders believes downtown Shawnee’s cheaper property values and authentic feel could help it become a bar hub for Johnson County. “I don’t want to see a craft cocktail bar in every neighborhood, but I want to see a good bar that pays livable wages and offers good ingredients in every neighborhood,” he says.

Although McVey sees potential in more bars popping up, he hasn’t seen any new ones yet. “These cities in Johnson County don’t want a problematic club-type atmosphere,” he says. “Instead of not having them, I think they’ll try to control them.”

Limitless, Transport and Red Crow still host food trucks at their breweries despite the repeal. Roberts says they keep customers from going elsewhere for food and prevent unwanted heavy drinking. “It slows down their consumption, which in the end is good for everyone,” he says.