central city. The new electoral politics of bond issues were fully evident when St. Louis business and political leaders succeeded in putting a proposal for building an entirely new convention center on the ballot in March 1971. The result was an abject defeat, termed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “the worst defeat of a local capital improvement plan here in many years,” with the bonds managing just 36 percent of the vote. Even the predominantly African American wards, long the source of 75 and 80 percent margins for previous bond proposals, delivered just a 45 percent “yes” vote—far below the needed two-thirds.15
Plans for a new convention center in downtown Kansas City followed a very similar trajectory to those in St. Louis, with much the same outcome. By the 1960s, the Municipal Auditorium that was the great political triumph of the 1930s was showing its age, and as in Cleveland and Atlanta, local boosters were looking to compete with newer, bigger centers in other major cities. At a meeting of the board of directors in March 1964, the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce took up the question of the need for more exhibit space at the auditorium, noting “The increased competition for convention business.”16 That May, the chamber leaders moved that “a complete study be made of the possibility of new and expanded auditorium facilities in Kansas City … [with] suggestions for methods of financing the project.”17
The new convention center had to wait for passage of a county government priority, a new stadium, in mid-1967. But with passage of the stadium bond proposal, the chamber leaders again took up the question of more convention space. At the chamber board’s July 1967 meeting, president Robert Ingram said “that it would be necessary for revitalization of effort for the establishment of an Exhibition Hall,” noting that “Mayor [Ilus] Davis advised him that the cost today would be approximately twelve million dollars” and that “hotel interests are quite concerned with building new hotel facilities until they are assured that we can have more conventions.”18 Two months later, Ingram reported to the board that he had been in touch with the city council and “that they were attempting to work it into a capital program.”19 After the city manager and staff crafted a broad capital improvement effort, Mayor Davis reported to the chamber in January 1969 that a planned bond program would join the new convention center with bonds for street lighting, swimming pools, airport improvements, and remodeling of City Hall. The Mayor concluded by saying, “We will call on you when the time arises that we need your support on these various projects.”20
What the mayor and city council finally crafted was a package of 17 individual bond issues, for a total of more than $143 million, in keeping with the city’s historical pattern of comprehensive packages of bond proposals. The largest single item on the list was proposition number 3—$23.5 million for a new exhibition hall. The campaign for the December 16, 1969, bond election was bankrolled by the chamber, promoted as a “Program for Progress,” and sold vigorously by local media. The Kansas City Star ran a front page editorial on December 15, arguing that “The prime consideration at the polls tomorrow is whether Kansas City is to grow or retrench in the 1970s.”21 The campaign mirrored a host of past efforts. This time it did not work.
Each of the 17 bond issues was defeated, failing to win a two-thirds majority. Two, for police and fire, actually managed to top the 50 percent mark. But most did far worse, including the $23.5 million exhibition hall proposal. It managed just a 32.6 percent “yes” vote, placing it next to last in public appeal. The defeat was a stunning failure for both the city administration and the business leadership. Meeting with the chamber two weeks after the vote, Mayor Davis “explained that the Program was caught in the upgraft [sic] of feelings against taxes nation wide.”22 It was also clear that the mayor had little interest in returning to the voters quickly, as the city had in the past. The mayor said he had “no magic words or direction,” and that “all issues have to be passed and it is only a matter of when,” posing the question, “How do we do it?”23
By about 1970, the business and political leaders of both Kansas City and St. Louis faced the larger demographic and political realities that had confronted their counterparts in Cleveland, Atlanta, and a number of other cities. The bond programs that had so consistently garnered public support in the past were now far more problematic. And no single project demonstrated the public’s indifference or disdain more than the investment in a new convention center or exhibition hall. However appealing these major investments might be to hotel owners, downtown firms, and local business leaders, their appeal to an electorate concerned about things like property taxes, (often dwindling) basic city services, and neighborhood change was remarkably limited.
The answer to the question posed by Kansas City mayor Ilus Davis of “How do we do it” clearly had to be differently—with some fiscal or political change that held the promise of reversing (or avoiding) the public’s disinterest.
A Fiscal and Political Reformation
Kansas City
The plaint of Kansas City’s mayor was largely irrelevant to the city’s Chamber of Commerce leadership. The chamber had planned and bargained for a new convention facility for over half of the previous decade, and the group was unwilling to accept the December 1969 vote as the final verdict. Just four months after the defeat, in April 1970, Lester Siegel of the chamber’s Convention and Tourism Department reported on a series of meetings to consider financing alternatives. Siegel “advised they were going to approach the people who would reap direct benefits from a new facility to participate in at least partial financing of a large facility to supplement the present space.”24 Beyond the possibility of private backing, they were also “checking with other cities on how they were able to finance their facilities.”25 Behind the scenes, business leaders were pressing the city council to move ahead on some arrangement for a new convention center. But it was not until late June 1971 that council member Sal Capra was able to publicly announce a city study of financial alternatives.26
The decade of the 1960s had not been kind to the Kansas City central business district. New office construction in the suburbs had matched downtown development, and in the early 1970s would substantially exceed it. In terms of constant dollars, downtown retail sales had slipped from $157 million in 1963 to $137 million in 1967 and then $95 million in 1972. And the situation was getting worse, with one 1976 study reporting, “The Kansas City CBD experienced significant declines in all indices of economic vitality in the 1970–1975 period despite regional growth over the same time frame.” The city’s business leaders were desperate to boost downtown’s fortunes.27
Whatever the fiscal preferences of the city council, the chamber was insistent on a convention center soon. The group voted on June 28, 1971, to reaffirm its commitment to a new hall “at the earliest possible date,” calling for the expansion to “be in the close proximity or adjacent to the present facilities as far as possible and that it be in a downtown location.”28 Although the chamber clearly wanted a new convention hall, the financing alternatives of a business tax or a lease-purchase deal were less enticing. The group also “urged that the need for Convention and Exhibition Hall expansion be brought before the voters at the earliest possible date.”29
Mayor Charles Wheeler embraced the chamber position and called for a November vote on the convention center proposition alone. But council members wanted to either defer a vote, or provide for repaying the bonds with taxes on hotels, restaurants, and ultimately visitors, as a means of making the project more appealing to the voters. After one member proposed building the new center adjacent to the city’s old airport rather than downtown, the council leadership and the chamber met in September 1971 to reach a politically acceptable solution.
That solution was made public on September 22. The council agreed to finance the new facility with revenue bonds issued by a nonprofit corporation, in a variation on the lease-purchase scheme.30 They could thus avoid a public vote on the center proposal. Leaders from the hotel and restaurant business in turn agreed to a
