Not everyone has been happy with Science City since it opened at Union Station in 1999.
Earlier this summer the engineering firm of Burns and McDonnell gave more than a million dollars to reinvigorate the family friendly science center.
They also launched Battle of the Brains a chance for area students to design a new permanent exhibit for Science City and with it a $50,000 prize for their school. The winner?
Olathe North High School’s winning entry explores how mechanical power is transformed into energy by running in giant hamster wheels to generate electricity. They call it Unplugged.
Burns & McDonnell CEO Greg Graves and Union Station CEO George Guastello discuss the Battle of the Brains competition which had schools across the metro competing to design the new Science City exhibit.
Last week, the National Council on Educating Black Children (NCEBC) hosted their annual convention at the Westin Crown Center Hotel. The NCEBC is a non-profit organization whose mission is to reinstate academic rigor and relevant teaching, improve the assessment of such instruction, and prepare the African-American learner for effective participation in a competitive global society.
Approximately 600 educators from across the United States and over 250 middle and high school students from Greater Kansas City attended the NCEBC Convention. The event featured discussions by both local and national education experts.
The Local Show shares some excerpts from the panel discussion: “Creating a Sense of Urgency to Increase Black Male Achievement: A Call to Action.” Among others, the panel included Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro and the Council of Chief State School Officers Executive Director Gene Wilhoit. The NCEBC also recognized high achieving urban schools and individuals who have made significant contributions to urban education, and amongst the distinguished awardees was University Academy, founded by Tom Bloch, Lynn Brown, and Barnett and Shirley Helzberg.
While we were busy with the KCPT membership drive last week, Kansas City Mayor Sly James was busy saving America’s urban cities.
More than a dozen U.S. Mayors rolled into town along with political and thought leaders from around the country. They were convening at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts for the CityAge Summit on The New American City.
Kansas City is only the third place, and the first U.S. city, where CityAge has held a summit. The first two have been in Canada.
The Kansas City event wound up attracting more than 550 people from 259 organizations and 73 cities. Producer Justin Bond eavesdropped on some of the sights and sounds of the two-day convention that included a nod to Kansas City’s musical heritage.
A recent front page story in the Kansas City Star says momentum now seems unstoppable for a new Kansas City airport to be built four miles south of its current location. The problem, the story reports, is the three terminal design of the current facility which is outmoded, expensive to maintain and requires according to the story just as many security screeners as all of three New York City airports combined
Nick Haines sits down with Mark VanLoh, Director of Aviation for the Kansas City Aviation Department, to discuss potential changes at the airport and to preview what travelers should expect this holiday.
Ryan Maybee is a restaurateur with expertise in the fields of wine, spirits and mixology. To him, the craft of bartending is more than just making a drink. Rather, he believes bartending is a true skill akin to the professionalism of chefs and their culinary educations. This belief in bartending as an art form has been the basis for his career and educational pursuits in the beverage industry.
In 2007, Maybee turned his vast knowledge and experience into a comprehensive consulting business. He launched RoundTable Marketing and Consulting, which specializes in wine list and cocktail menu development, staff training, and restaurant and bar consultation. Later that year, RoundTable partnered with beverage industry expert, Doug Frost, to create the Greater Kansas City Bartending Competition. The annual competition showcases some of the most talented bartenders in Kansas City and serves as a benefit for a local charity, the HALO Foundation.
In 2009, he opened Manifesto, a small, speakeasy like bar focusing on classically inspired cocktails using all fresh and homemade ingredients. In a short time, the bar has already received overwhelming local and national attention by being noticed in The New York Times, Esquire, and winning Small Wonder Bar of the Year 2010 by Nightclub & Bar Magazine.
The Rieger Hotel opened in 1915 and was home to many travelling salesmen, railroad workers, and passersby during Kansas City’s formative years. The three-story brick building has a long, rich history and much of the décor, including the tile floor and the bathroom fixtures remain original. It was originally owned by Alexander Rieger, the son of Jacob Rieger, who was the founder of J. Rieger & Co. Whiskey. J. Rieger & Co. operated out of Kansas City’s West Bottoms neighborhood, also known as “The Wettest Block in the World”, from 1877 to 1919. The whiskey distribution company became one of the largest in the country before Prohibition and the Volstead Act put an end to their success. But the Rieger name lived on here at the hotel, and in 2010 The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange brought back that classic name and identity. It’s our goal to honor the history of the Rieger name while adding a new and lasting landmark restaurant to Kansas City’s culinary landscape.
The 2012 Summer Olympics start July 27 in London and Kansas City can be proud to play a big hand in the the almost month long global sporting event.
You may not know this, but London’s Olympic Stadium is designed by Populous, the sports architecture firm, with its world headquarters in the River Market right here in Kansas City. More than a hundred architects with Populous, which changed its name from HOK Sport in 2009, worked on the stadium design. The company has offices in London and around the world.
We sat down with Populous Senior Principal Scott Radecic to talk about how this local sports architecture firm is playing such an integral part in the London games and innovative sports venues around the globe.
Finally this week, we welcome Jacqueline Chanda to the show. Don’t recognize that name? She’s the new head of the Kansas City Art Institute that has been making news of late and not just because it is eyeing up plans to open a downtown location.
She’s the 23rd President of Kansas City’s venerable art school and she took time out of her busy schedule to sit down with Randy Mason.
A new season of live theater is about to get underway at Starlight Theatre. The Swope Park theater with its iconic towers has been entertaining Kansas Citians under the stars for more than 60 years.
Starlight is one of only three outdoor theatres of its size and type still operational in the United States. The Muny in St. Louis and Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia are the others. With the curtain about to rise on another season of top Broadway shows and big name concert performers, we caught up with Starlight’s man in charge, Denton Yockey.
The 2012 Concert Season is also filling up with artists such as Barry Manilow, James Taylor, Crosby, Stills & Nash, My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Phish, B.B. King, Il Divo and many, many more.
It is more than two and a half years since Congress passed and the President signed the Affordable Care Act. And it has been a good three months now since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal healthcare law. This week, The Local Show goes on location at the Kauffman Foundation for a conversation with regional health leaders to get a status report on how Kansas and Missouri are implementing these reforms and how the law is impacting small business owners, the uninsured, college students and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
It’s complicated…head scratching stuff. Do you know what a state health insurance exchange is? It’s one of the basic questions we get to the bottom of in this program.
Also, a quick reality check on the Affordable Care Act. Did you Know that while many of its most controversial provisions don’t go into effect until 2014, you can keep your college age kids on your health insurance plan until their 26. That is in effect now. And insurers are no longer allowed to charge women more than men simply because of their gender. Plus, insurance companies can no longer charge or require a co-pay for over 60 preventative care services.
Currently, 48 million Americans don’t have health insurance. The Affordable Care Act is supposed to dramatically diminish that number by providing, finally in this country, an affordable option for most Americans through the creation of new insurance pools managed by the states where people could get coverage at a reasonable price.
States are to start enrolling patients starting next year so that by 2014 they would be covered by health insurance, but as of now, only 15 states have established those so called “state health exchanges” and Kansas and Missouri are not among them.
In Missouri, there’s a statewide issue on the ballot November 6th that, if approved by voters, would block the governor or any Missouri agency from creating a state health exchange without approval from voters or the legislature.
In Kansas, Governor Brownback has chosen not to work towards establishing an exchange until the results of the Presidential election are known.
The panelists for this discussion include:
Jay Anghoff, Regional Director
U.S. Health Department
Andrea Routh, Executive Director
Missouri Health Advocacy Alliance
Sheldon Weisgrau, Director
Health Reform Resource Project
Ryan Barker, Public Policy Director
Missouri Foundation for Health
For more than twenty years, Dr. Sharon Lee has been providing medical care to the region’s poor and uninsured at her non-profit, safety net health clinic on Southwest Boulevard. Among the earliest treated at the clinic were HIV AIDS patients, when few in Kansas City knew anything about the disease. Today, it’s diabetes, high blood pressure and other health issues, all treated regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. Remarkably, Dr. Lee pays herself the same salary as the clinic’s janitor and receptionist. That’s right: an MD who makes $14 an hour. Sean Holmes produced our story.
Our KCPT Difference Maker segment has been made possible by support from the insurance firm of Haas & Wilkerson.
