Click here to subscribe to Funk and Gloria's weekly newsletter.Today the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority considered 31 proposals for tax abatements for art galleries, studios and performing arts facilities that are facing large tax increases in the Crossroads Arts District. The plan is to assist these entities so that they can remain in the district and preserve the cultural vitality of the area.
Mayor Funkhouser submitted a letter to the PIEA in favor of these projects. To read the letter, click the link below.
Date: July 2, 2007
To: Mark Funkhouser, Mayor
Ed Wolf
Joe Miller
Mike Eglinski
From: Kendrick Blackwood
Subject: Arts discussion with Joan Israelite, president and CEO of the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City
I met recently with Joan Israelite of the Arts Council, and she had some insightful thoughts about the Arts in this town:
Mark could be the first Mayor to really look at how the City can strategically foster and promote the visual and performing arts, recognizing their importance as key assets for attracting business and the creative class and for downtown development, neighborhood development, youth development and cultural tourism.
To read the entire memo: Download joan_israelite.pdf
There's been a lot of talk lately, in the newspaper and on the radio and elsewhere, about taxes and the Crossroads Arts District and the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority, etc. Lost in the chatter, I think, is what the Crossroads is really about: a sense of place and community. I got a good dose of that last week, when I went with my wife to take in the sights of First Friday, when the galleries all open their doors late into the evening and the streets are full of people.
We wound up in the backroom of the Dolphin Gallery, where all the founding members of the storied arts district, it seems, were gathered for beer and wine and barbecue. I sat down on an old leather loveseat in the back of the room next to Jim Leedy and listened as a he spun tales of his time as an art student in New York in the 1950s, when the center of the art universe was shifting to lower Manhattan, and Leedy counted among his friends Willem de Kooning and other masters of the abstract expressionism movement. As he spoke, I let my eyes wander around the place. It was an eclectic crowd, from men in suits with loosened ties to shaggy sculptors in stained cargo pants. In the corner stood a refrigerator with every inch of its doors and sides covered with snap shots from previous parties.
The scene, it seemed to me, was distinctly Kansas Citian, not only because there were slabs of blackened ribs on the long table in the middle of the room, but because there was at once an air of cutting-edge creativity -- the presense of artists who could hold their own with those from the nation's largest metros -- and a refreshing lack of pretention. This despite the fact that our arts community has much to brag about, with a world-class art school, top-notch museums and a network of benefactors who are among the most generous in the nation. These contributions define our city in many ways, but the people who helped make them are just regular folks.
The conversations I had with folks at the party were, by and large, light and upbeat, full of creative energy and possibility. But on several occasions -- usually after I'd say, with a broad gesture across the room, "This is great" -- folks would look down and shake their heads and say, "It's a shame it's all going to end."
There is, in the Crossroads, even amid the festiveness of First Friday, a sense of impending doom.
It's still unclear what elected officials can do to save this delicate community that's sprung up in our urban core. Perhaps the already approved Crossroad's Arts PIEA is the answer, at least for the short term. And the Mayor's Office is planning a joint town hall meeting with the Jackson County Executive in hopes of finding solutions to the drastic tax increases that have been coming each year.
But for now, for the sake of this blog post, it seems worthwhile to at least acknowledge that we need places and communities like this, that are distinctly ours, that make Kansas City unlike any other city in the world. It seems that at least some of this sentiment ought to be present as we frame what is to be done.
-JM
Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders was on Steve Kraske's radio show Up To Date last week.
He had some interesting comments about tax assessments and how they're impacting property owners and businesses in the Crossroads Arts District and the River Market Area. At one point he said that property values had been "hyper-inflated" by the use of tax-breaks for high-end developments. He was seconded by one of the show's callers, Butch Rigby, a businessman who has owned property in the area for quite some time.
The Mayor's Office is working to put together a joint town hall meeting with Sander's office that we hope will occur in July in the Crossroads. More on that later. Meantime, the show is definitely worth a listen.
- JM
On Friday I met with David Hughes of the Charlotte Street Foundation. We talked about KC's art scene, and ways the city can support it. It was a great chat, and I'll write more about it in the future. Meantime, I want to post something he sent to me later that day. Turns out, local art leaders have already gotten together and laid out a plan for how Kansas City can become a national arts powerhouse. Check it out:
-JM