and the commitment to a downtown site. Indeed, the chamber went on to craft a plan under which it would obtain $1.25 million in private loans to finance architectural work on the center, and then promised that “if a reasonable amount of money is needed to complete the convention center, it will further undertake to obtain these funds through contributions from the business community of the Kansas City metropolitan area.”31
The deal to finance and build the new convention center was a political masterpiece. It enabled the chamber and the hospitality industry to achieve their goal of a quick start on the structure, while avoiding the potential for defeat and public embarrassment that might well have accompanied another vote. The council members were able to argue that business and visitors would pay, rather than local property owners. And they were thus able to free up part of the city’s property tax to support additional debt planned for a vote in 1972.
The political success of the convention center deal was nonetheless subject to a legal question, and in June 1972 a suit was filed that raised that question. The legal vulnerability of the planned center was mirrored by its fiscal problems. In July 1973, the Kansas City Star headlined “Convention Center Price Tag Rises Sharply.”32 The $19 million convention center was now estimated to cost $35 million, about the outer limits of the revenues from the hotel and restaurant taxes. But the legal problems won out—the Missouri Supreme Court in September decided against the city’s financing scheme, concluding that any commitment of city tax revenues required a public vote.33
If the 1971 deal for the new convention center was voided by the court decision, the timing was nonetheless fortuitous. Quite independently, the city had been developing a broad gauge capital improvement program scheduled to go before the voters on December 18, 1973. The city council quickly moved to add the convention center as the fourteenth separate bond proposal, with a total cost of $30 million. Thirteen of the bond proposals, including $22 million for street improvements and $10 million for urban renewal, were to be paid for by the city’s general revenues. But the new convention center was different—it could be sold as paid for by visitors, through the new hotel and restaurant taxes.
The chamber leadership did not simply trust to the public’s civic spirit in winning approval for the center bonds. In late March, the leaders behind the bond program had reported on a meeting “with principals of the KANSAS CITY STAR and they have pledged full support.”34 The Star provided substantial backing, both on its editorial pages and in news coverage. An extensive article on the Sunday before the vote announced, “Convention Center Dividends Paid in Business, Jobs” and described the competition the city faced for convention business, noting the successful results of new centers in Dallas, Atlanta, and Denver.35
The Chamber of Commerce, together with the city’s hospitality community, provided the bulk of campaign funds. And the campaign effort extended beyond traditional advertising and public relations. Mayor aide and political consultant Jerry Jette noted the need to bring ward political organizations into the bond campaign:
The existing effective political organizations in certain sections of the City must be pulled into the campaign in favor of the Bond Package …. The areas to which I refer are wards 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18. These are among the least affluent in the City and if we are to expect positive support at the precinct and on election day, certain monies must be made available…. Each precinct within each ward will be assigned a quota of 150 “yes” votes.36
The fiscal commitment of the Chamber of Commerce to an effective campaign, perhaps including “certain monies” as well as appeals to community improvement, proved vital.
Ten of the 14 bond issues on the December 1973 ballot failed to receive the required two-thirds majority. The proposals for police and fire protection passed, but urban renewal, street improvement, and parks bonds all failed. The $30 million convention center bond literally squeaked through, with a margin of 22 “yes” votes out of more than 46,000 cast.
The successful 1973 convention center vote gave Kansas City a brand-new convention center, which opened for business in 1976. It also marked the beginning of a new era in convention center financing. The commitment of new hotel and restaurant taxes to pay off the general obligation bonds sold for the center fundamentally changed the fiscal and political environment for convention center investment. The new H. Roe Bartle Exhibition Hall was built across the street from the Municipal Auditorium, where it would support the existing concentration of hotels and anchor the southwestern core of the central business district. The new center would be expanded and improved at substantial cost in subsequent years. But Kansas City voters would never again face a convention center bond issue proposal that required two-thirds majority support.
In 1988, when St. Louis business and political leaders turned to the Missouri state government for help in financing a new domed stadium for a potential National Football League team, Kansas City chamber leaders successfully lobbied to pair a state commitment for Bartle Hall expansion with the St. Louis proposal. In July 1989, Governor John Ashcroft signed legislation that both created a regional sports complex authority for St. Louis and offered Kansas City $2 million a year to help pay for expansion of the Bartle Hall facility.37
The commitment of state financing helped move the expansion effort ahead. Yet the state dollars could not pay the full cost of a major expansion, estimated at over $100 million. For that, Kansas City needed more local money. City leaders had imposed a set of hotel and restaurant taxes to pay for the bonds used to build Bartle in the 1970s. By raising those tax rates, it could provide a steady stream of revenue to retire new bonds for the expansion. At the same time, the tax increases would require voter approval, but only a simple majority.
By shifting to financing with a tax increase rather than a bond issue, Kansas City political leaders neatly reduced the size and scale of the electoral coalition needed to approve the expansion project. There was no need to propose a broad, all-inclusive package of public improvements for the entire city. But there was still a need to ensure the support of critical groups of voters. The result was a series of “side deals” to win council and community backing for the Bartle expansion. For the African American community, there was a commitment to neighborhood tourism projects that could include funding for a jazz hall of fame. Union leaders won a new contract for city employees.38
The hotel and restaurant tax increase was backed by the “Kansas City Jobs Committee” with a $337,000 campaign effort and the strong editorial backing of the city’s two daily newspapers. The result was a 61 percent “yes” vote, securing some $6 million in annual revenues that could both pay for the expansion, now pegged at $120 million, and support a “tourism development fund” for projects like the Jazz Museum. The city neatly avoided the state requirement for voter approval of bond issues by crafting a lease arrangement, with the debt actually issued by the “Kansas City Municipal Assistance Corporation,” a nonprofit entity created in 1984 to get around state debt restrictions, and overseen by a board that included the city manager, the city attorney, and the city’s director of finance.39
The expanded Bartle Convention Center formally opened in late September 1994, adding some 200,000 square feet of exhibit hall space to the earlier facility, at a cost of $144 million. Kansas City mayor Emanuel Cleaver termed the larger edifice a “majestic convention center that will set the standard for convention centers around the world.” The mayor added, “It makes a statement nationally that Kansas City is a big-league player when it comes to conventions.” The city’s convention and visitors’ bureau promised that 40 new conventions had already been booked for the expanded center through 2002. And there were promises of a boom in private hotel and restaurant development in the surrounding area.40
Yet, much as with its original completion in 1976, the expanded Bartle almost immediately faced growing competition from other cities. And in 2000, the consultant hired by the city council and the convention and visitors bureau, John Kaatz
