Editor’s Letter

I’m pretty much always planning a road trip. I just like to get out on the road—whether it’s driving up to Green Bay for a football game and then over to Minneapolis for a few spins around the ancient barrel-roofed ice arena where The Mighty Ducks was filmed, or going down to Florida for a few days of sugar sand beaches and a dip in a bright blue swimming hole.

I’ve done those trips just in the last three months—with visits to Tulsa and St. Louis beside. I know a lot of people who don’t love a long drive, but if I’ve got the Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast going and a few Starbucks Doubleshots in the cooler, I’m pretty much good to go. This is why our May issue, which always has a regional travel theme, is a personal favorite of mine. This year, I got to spend a great weekend in Tulsa. And if you have any doubt whatsoever about how great a weekend in Tulsa can be, I hope the story on page 56 conveys some of my excitement. But I didn’t even have space to get into some of my favorite moments from that weekend, which included a couple of drinks at the Saturn Room, a great Tiki bar and a slice of peanut butter pie for dinner at Antoinette Baking Co. From editing this magazine, I can tell you that there is more than enough going on in Kansas City for you to ever need to hop in the car. But, I usually find that these little getaways make me even more appreciative of the comforts of home and better attuned to all the things that make KC a great place to live. And, of course, among those things is the central location—this time of year a road warrior can get deep into the Rockies or down onto the Gulf in a day’s drive. The spots we picked are all a little closer: Omaha, Springfield, St. Louis, the Flint Hills and Excelsior Springs, where you can stay in the tree house on our cover. Associate Editor Mary Henn took those last two trips and was so impressed with the history and friendliness of the two towns that she’s planning a road trip to survey other charming little burgs in the area. I know that feeling all too well—roadtripping is addictive, especially if you end up staying in a great hotel. The more you get out, the more you want to get out. Because the hotel industry has been hammered by the pandemic, this year we’re making them the star of the show in our Great Stays package on page 54. We’ve profiled six great newish hotels and given you a few tips on what to do during a weekend stay at five (we figure you know your way around St. Louis). We hope that this feature helps point you to some great stays this month—in my personal opinion May is the queen of all Martin Cizmar road trip months since the weather is nice EDITOR IN CHIEF but cool and the summer crowds are still at MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM bay. Drive safe, and see you in June!

Josh Beecher

PHOTOGRAPHER The photos of the Hotel Vandivort were taken by Josh Beecher, a photographer and videographer based in Springfield.

Kayala Masisak

GRAPHIC DESIGNER The photos of the Night Claw hard seltzer at Nighthawk were taken by contributor Kayla Masisak, a graphic designer, photographer and allaround creative person from Kansas City. She loves smiley faces, dogs and bright colors.

Natalea Bonjour

GRAPHIC DESIGNER The portrait of Grace Ames of Colonial Gardens was taken by intern Natalea Bonjour, a Kansas City native and graduate of Pittsburg State University, where she majored in graphic communications with an emphasis in digital media.

NUMBERS FROM THIS ISSUE

4K+ Number of golf courses that closed across the country between 2017 and 2019 alone PAGE 21 29 9

Number of buildings on Ninth Street east of State Line. Twenty-four were saloons and liquor retailers during Prohibition.

PAGE 94

Number of farms and agricultural businesses along fifteen blocks of Woodland Avenue in KCMO

PAGE 68

MARKET BOOM

Our April issue was dedicated to the current real estate scene in KC—specifically, the eleven neighborhoods that have blown up the biggest in the last couple of years. And people had a lot to say about new developments cropping up, cute neighborhoods with favorite hangout spots and some more serious issues like gentrification, as well as supply and demand.

I read the article on booming neighborhoods, which was really good, and wanted to challenge the comment that “there is no inventory” or “less inventory now than 2020.” Agreed, on a daily basis, it certainly feels like there is no inventory or that it has dropped significantly. But I did an MLS search on Residential Sales year over year and found that from March 2019–March 2020 41,683 properties sold, from March 2020–March 2021 45,128 properties sold, and from March 2021–March 2022 46,179 properties sold. According to NAR, 6.1 million existing homes sold in the United States in 2021, the most since 2006. The argument can be made that it’s just not an inventory problem, we have seen a glut of buyers enter the market that exceeds (what would be normal) supply, and the velocity of the market hampers inventory to keep up. Part of the inventory issue is because we are also woefully behind in new construction. Since the bubble burst in 2006–2009, we just haven’t kept pace on new construction to meet demand. The current market is crazy, and a perfect storm of many factors and much more complicated than just “no inventory.” —Alicia Holmes So there is one Kansas City area here, and it’s all lumped into one neighborhood. Westside isn’t Crossroads isn’t Union Hill isn’t Beacon Hill. And the major problem is that Beacon Hill is undergoing MASSIVE gentrification and has led to displacement of longtime residents, much the way Westside did in the 2000s. There’s a lot more to a real estate boom to unpack and it’s not all positive. —Courtney Lewis Interesting. Giant houses are being built non-stop here on the far West Side of Olathe too. —Lynne Hermansen We like living in Parkville... downtown is so cute, close and has several good places to eat and love the Farmers’ Market. —Linda Miller Magee

SHOUT OUT

Last month, we hosted our espresso martini festival in the West Bottoms, which we could not have done without the help of Josh Melgoza and the rest of the team at 9th & State. If you want to learn more about Melgoza we recorded a podcast episode with him.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Caleb Condit sets up his deer stand to get the perfect shot of the Robbers Roost Tree House in Excelsior Springs.

CONTACT US Kansas City

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

Get up high and set something on fire, and you’re going to get people’s attention.”

—RICHARD RENNER WHO RUNS THE LAWRENCE BUSKER FESTIVAL

LEADING THE CONVERSATION IN KANSAS CITY

NEW COUNTRY

The pandemic may have reversed the long decline of golf and given a new life to country clubs.

BY SUSIE WHITFIELD

After decades of decline, both golf and country clubs have bounced back in the pandemic era.

FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, most of Kansas City’s upscale neighborhoods have been built with golf courses as the main attraction. From Mission Hills to Loch Lloyd, a home on a golf course has been seen as the fulfillment of many an American Dream.

So when homeowners in Overland

Park’s Deer Creek development were told that their golf club would be closing on April 1, they reacted with understandable dismay.

Because of concerns regarding the condition of Deer Creek’s golf course, its owner, GreatLife KC, had proposed a plan to build a $65 million apartment complex that “would save the course and stabilize and mitigate the erosion issues on it.” The Overland

Park City Council denied the proposal, dooming the course.

Brett Klausman, president of Great-

Life KC, issued a statement that said although the company had worked hard to save the golf course, “the next phase for the land where the golf course sits is in development.”

Because golf courses are often located on prime real estate, developers lick their chops when courses have to close their doors. In 2004, Old Leawood Country Club was sold and, after a decade of planning, used for large new homes.

In 2014, Homestead Country Club underwent major renovations and sold part of its property to a residential developer. Meadowbrook Golf and Country Club in Prairie Village also closed in 2014, and its hundred-plus acres were developed into a park and a mix of residential and commercial property. Similar plans are being made for Brookridge Country Club in Overland Park.

According to the Pellucid Corporation, a market research company based in Illinois, the number of golfers in this country declined by nearly ten million between 2002 and 2016. Nationally, more than a thousand golf courses have closed since the sport’s peak in 2003 and more than four hundred closed between 2017 and 2019 alone. Trend watchers began to wonder: Were country clubs going the way of the buffalo? Then came the coronavirus. Golf became one of the few “safe” social activities. According to the National Golf Foundation, national golf course closings declined by half from a peak two years ago, and golfers played twenty-five million more rounds of golf. Although the average age of a golfer is fifty-four, Forbes reported that more women and young people had become interested in the sport, fueling a resurgence that could make Deer Creek an outlier. Kansas City called nine local country clubs, and almost all responded that membership was now at or near capacity, with some running a waitlist. Several said that Deer Creek’s corporate ownership—most country clubs are run by members— meant that a lot of money could be made by using the property for new construction in a booming housing market.

Michael Stacks, general manager for Indian Hills Country Club for twenty years, believes that in past years, several golf clubs closed because of over-building. Indian Hills, however, will soon celebrate its hundredth anniversary.

Stacks says that because the pandemic allowed more people to have the option of working from home, a renewed interest in being active outdoors has created a high demand for tee times. “We used to see members leave and be replaced quickly,” Stacks says. “But now people aren’t leaving.”

Likewise, Milburn Country Club’s general manager James Nanson has also seen a widespread interest in club membership develop.

The irony that the Covid-19 pandemic would actually be the salvation of country clubs and the game of golf is not lost on Rob Sislowe, membership director for Nicklaus Golf Club at Lionsgate.

“Golf offers the perfect balance in these difficult times,” Sislowe says. “It combines social distancing with camaraderie and recreational activity.”

MAKING PEACE

A local group works with survivors of violence to break the cycle.

BY LAUREN FOX

ALMOST EVERY DAY, MARQUELL HARRIS VISITS TWO HOSPITALS: Research Medical Center and Truman. And almost every day, he sees new survivors of gunshot wounds, stabbings or blunt force trauma.

Harris is a hospital responder for the violence prevention program Aim4Peace. He’s tasked with visiting survivors of violence at the hospital, building rapport with them and letting them know that the group can help them break the cycle of violence—such as by helping them find a job or get counseling.

“It’s that whole same message, added on with, ‘What can we do for you not to be sitting here with a hole in you?’” Harris says.

Aim4Peace has existed in Kansas City since 2008, but with the rising homicide rates in recent years, the success of the violence prevention program has been called into question. The program does have a powerful advocate in Mayor Quinton Lucas, who believes in the program and is increasing its funding in his proposed budget.

Rashid Junaid, who manages Aim4Peace, says that violence spreads like a disease. The program, which is run by the health department, is based on an epidemiological model. Like transmittable diseases, people who have high exposure to violence are more likely to become violent.

“We have to reprogram their type of lifestyle and put them on a path of responsible living,” Junaid says. “Get them some alternative ways to resolve violent conflicts because right now, they resolve conflicts with violence.”

Aim4Peace tries to interrupt violence and then change the norm. To do that, the organization’s seven employees are tasked with community outreach that includes talking to survivors in the hospital.

Not all people Harris encounters in the hospitals are eager to talk, but Harris says consistency is key. Recently, he walked into a hospital room to see a teenager who had been shot and whose head was swollen to the size of a watermelon. The first time he talked to the teenager, the teenager just stared right back at him, offering no response.

“What I’ve learned is you can’t take that personal,” Harris says. “You just got to keep trying because maybe he wanted to talk, but man, I ain’t ever been shot in the head (knock on wood), so I don’t know what he was going through mentally or emotionally.”

When Harris followed up later that week, he was able to meet the teenager’s aunt in the hospital room and get in contact with the teenager’s mom. Now, the teenager is one of Aim4Peace’s clients.

Junaid says a lot of the work of Aim4Peace comes down to building relationships.

“It’s relationship-building over time,” he says. “People don’t want to know that you think you know everything. They want to know that you care.”

Harris says it’s important for their clients to know they are coming from a clinical approach, they are run by the health department, and they are not trying to get anyone locked up. “We just want to interrupt violence,” Harris says.

Aim4Peace works within the police department’s East Patrol District, in an area that runs roughly from 27th Street to Blue Parkway, between Wabash Avenue and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard.

The program used to have a street team that conducted mediations on-site. Although it is hard to measure things that don’t happen, Aim4Peace does point to statistics that show homicides in the area they work in escalated in years where the program had fewer street team members. For example, in 2014, when Aim4Peace had eighteen people on its street team, there were five homicides in the area they work, known by police as sector 330. In 2016, when Aim4Peace had nine people on its street team, there were twenty-seven homicides in sector 330.

Junaid says that Aim4Peace has had to scale back its staff due to the conclusion of federal grants in 2021. However, the mayor’s proposed budget would solve that problem. Part of the increased funding would go to six new positions for the program.

For Harris, the work is all about building others up. He says Aim4Peace gave him the platform to do it professionally.

“I always felt like a leader, and this actually just gave me more backing to pull people to this side,” he says. “Pull people out of the streets and help people just start to live life.”

WRIGHT OR WRONG

Nick Wright of Fox Sports Network is America’s loudest Chiefs fan.

BY MARTIN CIZMAR

A LOT OF PUBLIC PERSONALITIES LIVE IN DEATHLY FEAR of the @OldTakesExposed Twitter account. Not Nick Wright.

“If you’re afraid of showing up on it, you’re going to mute your opinion,” says Wright, the Kansas City native who co-hosts Fox Sports 1’s morning show, First Things First. “The keys to success in this business: You have to be authentic, you have to be honest, you have to be consistent, you have to be your true self and you also have to be unafraid of being wrong.”

Wright grew up in south Kansas City, where his dad worked as a firefighter and president of the local firefighters union.

“My dad will tell you there was a moment when I was a little kid where I finally realized I was not going to be a professional basketball player,” Wright says. “And from that moment on, I always just wanted to talk about sports for a living.”

That’s a big, hazy dream, but it started to become more clear when Wright attended a benefit dinner with his mother and met the emcee, legendary sports broadcaster Bob Costas.

“I walked over to him and introduced myself and asked him where he went to school and what he did, and he told me he went to Syracuse and worked at WAER, and from that moment forward I decided that’s what I was going to do,” Wright says. “I bought a Syracuse flag and put it above my bed. It was the only school I applied to.”

Today, Wright lives in a Harlem brownstone and, for now, still records his show from his living room—for our Zoom interview, the blue wooden backdrop you see on TV was off-kilter in the background. His day starts at 5 am when he gets up and readies himself for his show’s morning meeting. He records his show, then, a few days a week does a podcast with his twenty-three-year-old son. After family time, meals and napping, he settles in to watch sports until midnight or so.

And when he’s watching, he’s not trying to mute his rooting interests. “I felt it was important to not pretend I’m not a fan—I’m still a fan,” he says. “I don’t think it’s my job to be unbiased. It’s my job to be honest about the biases I have. Being a Chiefs fan on TV was a little easier when Wright began his TV career—the team went from 1993 to 2015 without winning a playoff game. That kid Patrick Mahomes was still at Texas Tech. So Wright began talking about the Chiefs on TV.

Wright’s fortunes rose with the team. He’s had a number of viral clips related to the Chiefs—including a few that aged poorly during the slow start to the 2021 season. Wright had argued after Mahomes’ week one win over pick-tossing Baker Mayfield that it was time to “seriously consider” whether the Chiefs might go 20-0, as former receiver Tyreek Hill had predicted.

“People were enjoying clowning me when they were 3-4 and people thought they were going to miss the playoffs,” he says. “I enjoyed being someone who never abandoned ship, and I was totally right that Mahomes was going to get it together and turn it around.”

Wright has of late been beefing with Kevin Durant on Twitter (full disclosure: I have also beefed with @easymoneysniper) and continues to be bullish about the Chiefs even with Hill headed to Miami.

“I trust Mahomes enough that I think the offense is going to be an A-minus offense at worst and probably an A-level offense almost no matter who’s around him,” he says. “The offense will be fine.”

But, then again, he might be wrong.

“Nobody actually claims they can see the future, so all of our predictions are just that: predictions,” he says. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

FAVORITE SPOTS

Anthony’s Restaurant on Grand “I kinda grew up there. It’s not blood family that owns it, but it’s family.”

Arthur Bryant’s “The best barbecue in the world. Jack Stack is also really spectacular, but it’s almost in a different category.”

Bo Ling’s “I’ve lived all over, I’ve traveled a lot, and I live in New York City. I have yet to have a Chinese food dinner that’s better than Bo Ling’s.”