Ingram's April 2024

MARKET MAKEOVER: The 1998 creation of a public health authority to assume ownership of The University of Kansas Hospital led to what is now the region’s biggest single acute care facility. Meanwhile, long-time Jackson County-based providers were pushing into Johnson County with Menorah Medical Center’s relocation and the new Saint Luke’s South.

ally absorbed some aspects of the failing Aquila a decade later, then worked out a marriage with Western in 2018. The decade wasn’t all work and no play: With the November 1992 vote to legalize what was ostensibly known as “riverboat” gambling in Missouri, Kansas soon joined the fray, and the nation’s big gest players quickly sprung into action to establish a market presence. That kicked off in 1994 with Harrah’s Kansas City and Argosy, followed in quick succession by Ameristar Casino & Hotel (1997) and, closer to Topeka, the Prairie Band Casino & Hotel (1998). Additional entertainment and hospi tality moves in the decade included the opening of the H. Roe Bartle Convention Center in 1994, plus a number of hotels, including the Hilton Country Club Plaza (1991), what is now the Hotel Topeka at City Center (1998), and Hampton Inn Country Club Plaza (1999). Saying Good-Bye The Kansas City region sadly bade farewell to some true titans of commerce whose entrepreneurial vision did indeed change the character of this place. The most iconic? It’s hard to imagine a big ger loss than Ewing Kauffman, who left us in 1993 after building a phar maceutical empire, then acquiring the Kansas City Royals and gifting the team to the region upon his death. His legacy continues today with the work of the foundation that bears his name, and his widow Muriel, who died two years later, also left an indelible impression on the

region with her passion for the arts and the world-class performing arts center named in her honor. The business community also lost such iconic names as Stan Durwood, the former AMC chief executive who trans formed the way America went to the movies by implementing multi-screen theaters. He was also the visionary whose biggest civic dream didn’t emerge before he exited this world, but it lives on with the Power & Light District in Downtown Kansas City. Others included fashion designer Nell Donnelly Reed (1991), for mer Hallmark executive William Harsh (1995), Russell Stover owner Lewis Ward (1996), Sprint CEO Paul Henson, Sprint (1997), Topeka hotelier Robert Brock (1998), and on a public-safety level, for mer police chief Clarence Kelly (1997). Less of a household name, but cer tainly not without influence, was Mary Hudson of Mission Hills, who started with ownership of a single gas station and built an oil industry empire worth $325 million. She was one of just three women on the Forbes list of richest Americans at the time of her death in 1999. The world of sports mourned the losses of Buck Buchanan, who anchored the defensive line on the Chiefs’ first Super Bowl team (1992), teammate and line colleague Aaron Brown (1997), and one-time ace reliever Dan Quisenberry

of the Royals, who succumbed to a brain tumor in 1998, just 13 seasons after he’d helped bring a World Series title to town. Baseball fans, being a gracious lot, also marked the passage of former Kansas City A’s owner Charles O. Finley, long remem bered (albeit less fondly) for taking his team to Oakland nearly 30 years earlier. On the social front, the decade brought—at long last—the end of the school-desegregation litigation known as Jenkins v. Missouri . In 1997, after more than 20 years of legal challenge, federal district judge Russell Clark issued his final order in the case that the Supreme Court would declare the “most ambi tious and expensive remedial program in the history of school desegregation.” Clark had ordered the school district, as well as the state, to pump roughly $2 billion into the system, a hoped-for cure for the ails that followed desegregation: higher teachers’ salaries, new schools, over-the-top amenities that included an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, TV studios, a robotics lab, a zoo and wildlife sanctuary, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. More than 25 years later, the Kansas City School District is reduced to cel ebrating reaccreditation by the state, and academic performance continues to lag. In at least one respect, then, the more things change …

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I ngr am ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

April 2024