Arts & Entertainment
No Joke, Car Punches Laugh-O-Gram Building
By Kevin Collison The driver of a black Dodge Charger crashed the renovation party underway at the historic Laugh-O-Gram building near 31st and Troost over the weekend, leaving a hole in the structure and the project budget. “The last thing we expected was someone running into the building, we’d been making good progress,” said Gary…
Photographer Wants to Brighten Downtown with Neon Museum
By Kevin Collison Well known Kansas City photographer, Nick Vedros, is on a quest to create a downtown museum for one of advertising’s more colorful tools, the vintage neon signs that once touted businesses. “In 2017, I noticed many neon signs were in decline,” Vedros said. “There’s nothing more a part of our urban fabric…
Rieger Plugging Electric Park Garden Bar into East Bottoms Destination
Two years after opening his destination distillery in the East Bottoms, Andy Rieger of J. Rieger & Co. is adding an outdoor patio bar and atrium called Electric Park Garden Bar this fall. The 11,000 square-foot facility is named after the long-gone Electric Park, an amusement park that entertained Kansas Citians arriving on streetcars in…
Building at 17th and Washington Slated to Become Foodie Destination
By Kevin Collison The former Screenland property at 17th and Washington is about to become a foodie oasis, its parking lot replaced with a landscaped courtyard and stage, and the surrounding level hosting a restaurant, bar and market. Denver developer Ken Wolf, who recently purchased several buildings in downtown and the West Bottoms, wants to…
Seiden’s Furs Envisioned as Artist Studios–If Price is Right
By Kevin Collison Artist Peregrine Honig envisions a new future for the crumbling, historic building that once housed Seiden’s Furs at 10th and Broadway, but she needs the owner to sell it for a reasonable price first. Honig, one of the city’s better known and nationally-exhibited artists, first fell for the brick building completed around…