urbanMSP

Anyone have any insight into what to check out in Kansas City? Especially any non-CBD business districts / neighborhoods? Going to be down there this summer and want to explore and meet up with some local activists or community/economic leaders.

This might be too late, but Arthur Bryant's barbecue. Kind of in the ghetto but that's where you want it to be.

Also, I've never been, but the Negro Leagues Basball Museum is on my to do list. I believe it's located, fittingly, in a traditionally black neighborhood. 17th and Vine or something.

Too late for thatchio, but for anyone else contemplating a trip to KC, I'll second Arthur Bryant's. Plan ahead: the lines get long as hell during lunchtime. My friends and I went there for lunch before a Twins/Royals game a few years ago. If we hadn't gotten there at 11am, we would've been screwed, as the line crawled out the door shortly after we arrived. I didn't really think it was "the ghetto" per se. Perhaps a below-average inner-city neighborhood, at a glance anyways. The bbq joint is world famous, I'm sure the neighborhood around it isn't completely terrible.

KCMO was really quite interesting. A few random notes:
- Their streetcar will start construction this fall and will run from River Market to their train station, about 2 miles through Downtown. It will be the beginning of a network.
- Their non-CBD business districts seem to have power lines down the streets. Just a different look, a less refined one.
- There's a weird underground office building that is in a hill about 10 floors under. Apparently the result of an old train tunnel that was abandoned and later turned into storage/office space. Not worth the visit but weird none the less.
- The Plaza is a great example of a huge outdoor mall with great architecture. The creek walk was pretty decent. But overall, just a big mall and a bit underwhelming to me.
- Crossroads Arts District was the most interesting place I visited. Westport is a smaller Uptown with fewer chains and a road that is in need of a serious diet.
- The river is separated from Downtown a ways and really hard to access by bike. But at least they have bike share. More interesting to bike through neighborhoods than the river.
- Crossroads had some nice renovation projects and a great food-driven bar with hydroponics and fish production in basement.

Did you visit the Power & Lights District? It's packed with chains (as is most of KC, it seems), but the premise at least is somewhat interesting. It seems like a more interesting version of Block E. That said, I've also heard that Power & Lights has underperformed as well and is highly subsidized.

KC streetcar carried more than 57,000 riders in first full week

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/business ... rylink=cpy

Pretty decent for a line that's only 2.2 miles long.

Judging any line off of first week totals is folly. But given what I know about Kansas City (not a whole lot), it does seem like the routing is just about perfect for a starter line.

I do love the fact that this line is free in perpetuity, though! Maybe we could get some philanthropist to permanently endow the operations of the Nicollet streetcar.