Roaster’s Block Grand Opening Brews Fond Memories for Former Folger’s Workers
By Kevin Collison Shirley Rinard worked at the former Folger’s plant at Seventh and Broadway for 45 years, from 1952 to 1997, but never had the perks she saw last week touring its new incarnation as the Roaster’s Block apartments. “It’s remarkable,” she said. “They didn’t have a swimming pool when I was here.” Rinard…
Whatever Happened to Smaks?
The elephant on Johnson Drive stopped traffic. “My dad [Bill Fielder] had met a zookeeper and he asked him to bring over an elephant for the opening of Smaks,” Wes Fielder said. “You’d watch the cars out front and people would slam on their brakes to try to figure out what was going on.” The…
How Messing With Our Body Clocks Can Raise Alarms With Health
Research that helped discover the clocks running in every cell in our bodies earned three scientists a Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday. “With exquisite precision, our inner clock adapts our physiology to the dramatically different phases of the day,” the Nobel Prize committee wrote of the work of Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and…
City Takes Another Swing at Eventually Wooing Royals Downtown
By Kevin Collison Downtown baseball is back in the game with the city joining the Downtown Council and developer Jon Copaken in funding a $120,000 study intended to lay the groundwork for a full pitch to the Royals down the road. The Kansas City Star reported this week the ongoing study has identified four sites…
Oh The Cubanity & Other Weekend Possibilities
Oh the Cubanity, a night of Cuban cuisine and dancing, is at the City Market (20 E 5th St.) tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. The celebration of Cuban culture is being put on by The Bite, Taste of Brazil, and Cubanos Por Kansas City. They’ll have live music and dishes inspired by traditional Cuban…
Grand Boulevard Finally Gets New Stripes, but Bicyclists Believe Much More Needed
By Kevin Collison Several years after it was proposed, Grand Boulevard is finally going on a “road diet” promised to bicyclists who now hope it’s the beginning of realizing the much more ambitious “Making Grand Grand” plan. City Public Works crews have been painting new lanes on Grand in recent days that are reducing traffic…
Sympathetic Vibrations | Catch These Releases
Fall marks the beginning of the home stretch for the year. And while many KC residents are gearing up for sweater weather and pumpkin spiced what-have-yous, many of our favoritest local bands are feverishly prepping their social media pages for new releases — of which there will be plenty in the upcoming months. Look, we know…
Developer Pursuing Two Historic Apartment Projects in ‘Fringe’ Between Downtown and Midtown
By Kevin Collison A pair of historic buildings in what their developer calls the “fringe” area between downtown and midtown are on their way to new life as apartment developments. Caleb Buland and his Denver partner Ilan Salzberg recently took the first step to renovating the long-vacant Acme Cleaning Co. building at 3200 Gillham Rd….
Winning by Attrition
As its name suggests, University Academy was created to prepare students for college. By most measures, the charter school in Kansas City is a tremendous success. In 2016, University Academy received a 100 percent score on the state’s Annual Performance Report. All the graduating seniors received offers to attend a four-year college. The results look…
Order Up | The Bite’s Senor Chang
Order Up is a regular series that takes a layered look at drinks and eats across Kansas City. Got a dish you think we should feature? Drop us a note below or on Twitter @FlatlandKC.
Rethinking ‘Troublemakers’
Turn the Page KC, the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department and the mayor’s office convened school district leaders and community stakeholders in September to review city-wide suspension data. This data from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA showed in a 2015 study that Missouri suspended black elementary students,…
Port KC Considers Extending Streetcar to Riverfront ‘High Priority,’ Backs Words with Funding, ‘With or Without’ Fed
By Kevin Collison A proposed $30 million extension of the downtown streetcar to the Berkley Riverfront could substantially boost development opportunities and allow people to live and visit there without cars, according to the leader of Port KC. And Port KC, which receives a big part of its revenues from a long-term lease agreement with…
Tap List | Bizz & Weezy Creates Beer Caramel
Beer never tasted so sweet. Self-taught confectioner Jonathan Pitcher, who opened Bizz & Weezy Confections (1800 Baltimore) two years ago, has begun crafting and selling bite-sized, chocolate-dipped caramels ($2.25 per piece) made from local craft beer. Pitcher has made the soft, melt-in-your-mouth caramels with Double Shift’s Abby Royal Belgian Dubbel, King’s Vine American IPA and…
Kansas City’s First Membership-Only Dog Park Off and Running (and Barking) at West Terrace Park
Downtown Kansas City’s population boom has not only been people, many of the new residents are co-habitating with their favorite canines. That’s the impetus for the first membership-only dog park at West Terrace Park on the west edge of downtown near Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street. The 1.5-acre dog park opened July 30 and has…
‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ Backstory
Ruth Henning couldn’t find the one book she wanted to read. So, like a lot of writers before her, she wrote the book herself. That book, “The First Beverly Hillbilly: The Untold Story of the Creator of Rural TV Comedy,” is a newly published memoir of Henning’s husband, television producer Paul Henning, who grew up…