This is unprecedented.

The street can't shut down for a third straight week.

What on earth is happening and when will it be back?

We go straight to the echelons of power and bring you the street calls.

Top leadership this half hour plus in our reporter roundtable.

How did we doing what some say was the most damaging storm in 20 years?

Could we have done better?

A storm report card on the way.

Plus, finally pulling the plug on Mission Gateway.

We have been humiliated and disrespected.

That has been the laughing stock of this county since it went up.

Those stories and the rest of the week's news straight ahead.

Week in review is made possible through the generous support of AARP, Kansas City, RSM Dave and Jamie Cummings.

Bob and Marlese Gourley, the Courtney S. Turner Charitable Trust, John H. Mize and Bank of America NA co-trustees.

The Restaurant at 1900.

And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Nick Haines.

We have a storm report card for you and a look at the rest of the week's most impactful, confusing and befuddling local headlines.

But first, what on earth is happening with Kansas City's seven year old streetcar system?

It's been shut down since the 4th of July.

Could it be imminently reopening?

Is And is there more to the story that we're being told and when will it be back?

We're going to find out.

We can talk to reporters about the problem.

I'll talk to those in charge around the cozy confines of our week in review table is Donna Mandelbaum with the Kansas City Streetcar Authority and the executive director of the streetcar.

Tom Gerend, thank you so much for being with us.

But let me ask you this, first of all, this started on the 4th of July.

Many of us were having parties.

We were lighting up fireworks.

I'm assuming you might have been home with your family on that day.

So you get a call and to say that there's a bit of steel popping out from the track.

Did you think this was going to be just a small issue?

Was or did you know right then that this was going to be something much more massive that was going to take weeks to prepare?

Yeah, We knew pretty quickly after the operators did their job to identify the hazard that we would be spending a little bit of time getting back up and running.

Yes, but.

Over two weeks.

Yeah, we knew within 24 hours that we were looking at between the 2 to 3 week time frame to do everything that we felt like we needed to do to make not just the one rail that that failed.

Right.

But correct.

Other issues and other and other needs within the bridge itself.

Yeah.

For those of us who do not have engineering degrees and don't subscribe to engineering magazines, can you in a nutshell tell us what the problem actually was?

Tom?

Yes, it was really an issue of thermal expansion.

We had too much rail in the street.

The pressure of the heat caused the rail to expand.

It deteriorated some of the tracks slab, some of the material that was holding that rail rail in place.

And and it gave way an elevator.

You know, Donna, we've seen this photographs from your own social media accounts.

We see cement being poured into that section.

It was on that I-70 bridge that cost cuts.

Kansas City has all the work been centered for the last two weeks on that one spot?

Have you been doing the same work in other parts of the to my line?

So we've taken this opportunity while we're out of service and repairing the bridge to look at the rest of our line and see if there is preventative maintenance that needs to happen.

So it's actually taking an opportunity to look at everything and, and do some touch ups in other areas.

So what does this do to the main street line?

I mean, that is supposed to be happening.

All of the focus has been on that.

We're going to be going down to the plaza and onto you.

Casey has that timeline, Tom, now changed as a result of this?

No, not at all.

Main Street is moving forward.

We're 50% constructed now on that project, making great progress as we marched to opening in 2025.

Are you doing anything differently in terms of the construction of that as a result of the problems you experienced?

All of the problems, but we did observe early challenges and some deterioration, and there were some opportunities for improvement on the downtown design that we embedded in the main street.

So we're going to have a thicker track slab, We're going to have reinforced concrete, we're going to have additional rebar, we're going to have a different rail section, type of rail in in the majority of the main street extension.

So all lessons learned from early observations before this failure that we've been able to incorporate from the beginning of the main Street extension.

So we feel great about the direction.

Can you just refresh our memory, Don, as to when this new extension down to the plaza, a new MKC is expected to open?

Oh, we'll be ready to arrive in 2025, Nick.

But no specific date.

Not.

To too nervous to say a specific date.

I'm going to be done with the majority of the construction on Main Street over the course of 2024, and by the end of 2024, we think we'll be testing streetcar vehicles up and down Main Street with an opening in 2025 after testing, you know, safety commissioning and all of the processes and steps we have to go through to train, not just the current staff, but we're going to be more than doubling the workforce of the system to hire maintainers, hire operator supervisors to help not just obviously build it, but to operate and maintain it at a high level going forward.

So we've got a big hill to climb on that front.

The last time you were around this table, Tom, we were talking about a study on an east west potential corridor that would go from the University of Kansas Hospital all the way to the Truman Sports Complex.

Since then, we've been told that that project has been shelved.

It was going to cost too much money.

So you're not studying that anymore?

That's not true.

Okay.

Our partners that HCA with a consortium of others, including the streetcar authority, have received a four and a half million dollar raise grant to advance the next phase of the East-West Transit study.

We're looking at East-West connectivity, so we need to keep making progress on developing plans, getting projects in the pipeline, accessing federal money that might be available through the current infrastructure bill or future, and keep charting the course.

These projects take a long time.

As we know, the Main Street project when we started to when we think we're open, is almost a ten year time horizon.

These are generational investments for our city that are going to reconnect us in a fundamentally different way.

And they don't come easy.

It takes a lot of work, and the work is continuing on the east west extension.

We think it's vitally important not just for our city, but for our region to have an east west spine, just like we have in our building in north South Dakota.

It doesn't get as much attention.

But there is also nudging forward on the north of a smaller line that will actually go all the way to the Casey current stadium being built on the riverfront.

When is that supposed to open?

So our goal on that is that it's currently 100% designed hopefully to get into construction later this year.

And yet it'll be steps away from the Casey current stadium.

So if you're doing it to the stadium, are you in talks with John Sherman, the head of the Royals, Tom, to say, okay, we want to build a streetcar line to your new stadium, whether it be in a downtown spot or in North Kansas City.

We're not in contact that.

Not at all.

Not at all.

But we're excited about downtown baseball and we look forward to the opportunity regardless to shuttle thousands of people and create economic activity in the heart of the heart of downtown, in the heart of our region.

There was a recent RFP, a request for proposals from the city to actually have new transportation now from a brand new airport terminal to downtown, particularly with the World Cup coming to town in 2026.

In fact, the deadline for those RFP is actually today.

Did the streetcar submit a bid to as part of that effort?

No, we did not.

But we're supporting the city's efforts in the in the solicitation in the call for interest streetcar is not a solution for all transit problems in the region.

And we vitally need a higher capacity, high quality connection connecting what we're building in the spine of the streetcar system in the heart of our region.

To the new terminal in the airport.

Brian Platt, the city manager, wanted to have the streetcar going to the sports stadium to Arrowhead Stadium in time for the World Cup in 2026.

What are the chances of that happening?

Well, we don't anticipate okay, streetcar to the stadiums by 2026, but I mentioned we're taking the important steps right now to develop consensus and a plan in a vision for East-West connectivity so that we can advance that plan.

Obviously in that vision, as soon as we're done doing the hard work, building consensus, figuring out how we're going to pay for it, and accessing the federal resources to make it.

Speaking of paying for things, you know, the streetcar is totally free, Donna.

But with all of this extra work that has had to take place, something has to give.

Is this you know, is there going to be one fewer streetcar on the line as a result of this, Some delay in that main Street line or some compromise?

No.

Our budget has been smartly built to incorporate capital improvements throughout our downtown and then our future Main Street extension.

So now when we start service, you'll see the same number of streetcars and frequency.

Has been a couple of stories in the last few days about climate change being an impact on what happened to the streetcar line here.

But we have dozens of streetcar lines across the country, many of them in hot places, including in Arizona.

We have in them in Oklahoma City, New systems.

Why aren't they seeing those same problems And their experience is experiencing heat, too?

Yeah, I think it's it is an issue that is emerging in other locations.

It's not an excuse for the failure that happened by itself.

There's more, obviously, that that contributed, we think, to that specific failure.

And we're looking closely at those details.

But we do need to be cognizant of the design parameters around and the assumptions that we made ten years ago about the resilience of our infrastructure are changing at a rapid pace.

And so we're thinking about that with regards to the things we're building now to ensure that they can be resilient regardless of how hot it might get.

So if you've been waiting, though, to go on the streetcar, you can go likely you're saying this weekend.

That's what we think.

We think it's just hours away from being back and running.

Donna Mandelbaum and Tom Gerend, thank you so much for being with us on Weekend Review, updating us on the streetcar system.

Up next, the rest of the week's news with our reporter roundtable.

You're watching Kansas City.

We can review Clean up continues this week after storms ripped through the area, leaving around 200,000 people without power.

The impact is still being felt with many neighborhoods still covered in downed trees.

How bad was it?

Local arborists say it's the worst tree damage they've seen in more than 20 years.

With a report card on the responses, Kyle Palmer with the Shawnee Mission Post, former Kansas City star reporter and editorial writer Dave Helling, and KMBC nine political analyst Micheal Mahoney.

Kyle Palmer I happened to be in Pretty Village over the weekend.

It was like a war zone there.

You must be one of the hardest hit areas in the entire metro.

Yeah, it seemed like that area of Johnson County, particularly Prairie Village, Fairway Mission, Rolling Park took a direct hit.

My mother in law lives near 77th and Blender.

We were out on Saturday morning helping her clean up.

She had three or four big branches down in her yard.

It was a good day, a good weekend to have a friend or an uncle or a grandpa with a truck and a trailer, because if you were able to have that like we did, then you were able to kind of chop things up, get things change and moved out of there.

But there are still huge piles of logs and debris and limbs spread out all across northeast Johnson County.

Right now.

It's going to be days and weeks before it's fully cleaned out.

On Twitter, Michael, I saw quite a few disgruntled homeowners pointing the finger of blame at Evergy and the city, for that matter, saying they're not keeping up with tree trimming, that it could it wouldn't have to be in as bad as if they had done that.

Is that fair?

Yes and no.

One of the big parts of every energy's budget every year, a sizable chunk of it is for tree trimming.

But there are they've got a big service area and there are lots of trees in this part of the world and and in Kansas, Kansas City.

So they can't get to them all.

And this is the result of it.

City manager Brian Platt actually responded, Dave, the storm had gusts over 80 miles per hour, which is the same as a Category one hurricane, meaning damage is hard to avoid.

Is he right?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, the hissing of summer chainsaws were everywhere in my neighborhood as the trees came down.

I remember NEC doing a story five or six years ago about a conference in Kansas City public works directors talking about climate change and the main theme was it's not something that's coming.

It's already here and we have to learn to deal with it.

And I think utilities and cities and states and governments are going to have to adapt to a time of extreme weather events like this, not just in the summer, but in the winter, too.

And pay the cost of tree trimming, tree removal and other amelioration, if you will, of these kinds.

So when it comes to your readers, what were they saying?

The city or the utility company Evergy could have done better.

Yeah, I didn't hear a lot directed at average Evergy.

We did have some residents and some city officials, frankly, in Overland Park bring up the the idea that the City of Overland Park could have done more accommodating residents to to pick up things curbside.

I didn't hear a lot of anger directed at Evergy, but that could change as Evergy tries to increase rates in the coming months.

I love the letter in the paper this week in the Kansas City Star Dave from a reader by the name of Diane, who said she was thrilled that because of what happened with the storm, she was going to have a lower energy bill because they were without power for so many days.

That was a sort of forced savings.

But I see this week also now that you might be seeing your bill go up, because energy is now asking for a rate hike in Kansas because of that new Panasonic plant, which we talked about last week, that that's going to be the biggest customer.

All the infrastructure doing that.

Right.

And but they're also asking for increases outstate of Kansas, not just in our metro area and utility rates are going up all over the nation, Nic, in large part because people are going to alternative sources of energy.

And that leaves the big utility providers scrambling to try and figure out a way to keep keep revenue coming in.

One other quick note in there.

I remember after an ice storm several years ago, I did a story on why more power lines are buried in our area.

And what I was told by the utilities is burying existing lines is massively expensive, labor intensive and very difficult.

It takes 25 or 30 years to do a metropolitan area.

So that's not on the immediate horizon as a solution to a problem like the storm.

It's had more lives than Jason in the Halloween movie series.

But the City of Mission says it means it This time this week, it ends the Mission Gateway deal.

After years of missed deadlines, the Mission City Council voted unanimously to terminate the agreement with the developer behind the project.

We have been humiliated and disrespected for years.

We now have what we call the white albatross.

That has been the laughing stock of this county since it went up.

Now, just in case you are not aware, this is what some say is the most cussed piece of real estate in the entire metro.

It was a thriving Johnson County Mall once upon a time.

But for the last 17 years, it's been an unsightly hole in the ground right next to Shawnee Mission Parkway, as a New York based developer has promised to turn the prime site into everything from the region's biggest aquarium to one of Johnson County's most exciting entertainment districts, only to break every promise.

So what happens now?

Well, unfortunately for a lot of mission residents and people who live in north of Johnson County, the immediate answer is not much what you mean.

I thought we could finally put the nail in the coffin on this and we wouldn't have to talk about it again.

You made the Jason analogy.

I think a better eighties horror movie analogy would be the nightmare on Johnson Drive.

Okay.

All right.

Well, it's currently tied up in a foreclosure lawsuit.

So that's the other thing that's happening right now.

Just about a month ago, a New York bank moved to foreclose on that property because the New York based developers had not started to pay back $26 million in loans.

And so that's going to tie that property up.

It's still privately owned.

The city is going to have trouble buying it.

That would also involve eminent domain.

So unfortunately, right now in the immediate term, as you're driving by that spot on Shawnee Mission Parkway, our mission residents grumbling about what's happening.

Not much is going to change on that side of want continue to stay that way.

It was staggering to me from the story that they the city mission doesn't own the site, so they do have to wait for that.

The judge to rule on the foreclosure, which could take 18 months.

You know, what is the best scenario at that point to turn into a public.

Park seems seems viable for right now.

You know, if they wanted to try and convert it into office space, that's a very soft market right now.

I don't know if that would work.

You know, housing would be would be a possibility as well.

But again, is is Kyle said nothing's going to happen here for in the immediate future.

And as you mentioned, Nick, that this lawsuit is going to take another 18 months or so.

Can you reveal a secret plan happening behind the scenes, Kyle, as to what's going to happen here?

I hear the royals are looking for the mission royalty.

We were just at the Mission City Council meeting last night.

It was not about Mission Gateway, but they are all they're facing their own budget shortfall for 2024.

There are about $1,000,000 in the hole.

And so, I mean, just buying that property is not something that's practical, right now for the city.

So as much as local residents, I mean, probably rightfully so, want to see something done more immediately and maybe see the city be more aggressive in stepping in their hands are tied.

There will be books written about what went wrong here because other developments have come and gone and are now open and working well in Kansas.

And in Missouri.

What went wrong with this particular project seems to be a combination of misinformation, bad guidance, economic factors.

Again, it is not a simple story, but this this is an epic collapse in our area.

And perhaps now that you're not with the star, you have the time to write that book.

Dave Mahoney and I are going to work together.

Okay, Already retired people.

How many entertainment districts can Kansas City support now that plans by the Kansas City Royals to build a new ballpark have gone quiet again?

The KC Current is moving forward with plans for an $800 million retail office and housing district right next to that new stadium being built on the Kansas City riverfront.

The 11,000 seat soccer venue was scheduled to be open in March.

The Port Authority is offering to give the team's ownership group a free pass on all sales and property taxes for up to 15 years to make it happen.

That's got people upset again about throwing around big public subsidies.

But if there was a place to give public subsidies, everybody's always complaining nothing happens at the river.

It's been abandoned.

This is a good place to make that happen.

Long time residents of of the area and particularly downtown and those neighborhoods will tell you that, you know, nothing has happened down there for years and years and years.

This is the sort of thing that can do it.

But your question at the beginning at the beginning of this is how many different sites like this if the ballpark ends up on the east side, there's power light, then there would be the Royals ballpark village for lack of a better term, and then this.

And this this Penn Way point, which is by Union Station, you build it with the Ferris wheel and all these other entertainment options there.

That's a as a lot of fun and a lot of in a small area.

It's interesting that this this doesn't get the same idea as say the wall we hear about the downtown ballpark with the royals for instance.

Why is that, Dave?

Why don't we hear the same type of criticism about tax breaks being used in this instance?

To a certain degree, I think there is some criticism of the port Authority using its sort of unilateral ability to offer these tax breaks to this development.

There's a lot going on actually in the riverfront.

If you go down there from what it was when Mike and I were reporters in the tow lot was there, you know, wherever there were abandoned cars everywhere, and now there are apartments and some office buildings and a park and riverboat gaming at the East End, which was always a part of this.

But I think that as this goes forward, if the royals propose something on the East Village site, there will be more squawking about handing out these kinds of incentives to various sports teams for these things.

The Women's World Cup is now underway in Australia and New Zealand and Kansas City's Power and Light District is hosting World Cup watch parties to see the US women play.

The hoopla is a reminder that in just two years from now, the men's tournament will arrive in Kansas City mark June 11th, 2026.

On your calendar.

That's when the first game is scheduled to be played.

Other than bringing in Taylor Swift again, what does Kansas City need to do, Michael, to make this a successful event?

Provide reliable, steady transportation from downtown at all points in the metro out to out to Arrowhead Stadium.

We know that's not going to be the street car because we just spoke to the head of it and they said that's not going to happen.

Right.

Right.

And and there won't be any sort of, you know, mass transit line.

They're going to they're going to have to develop a pretty effective bus system.

I don't see any other option on it.

I would caution everybody, we went through the NFL draft, everybody complained, well, you know, local businesses didn't do so well.

The World Cup may not be the complete panacea for the mom and pop stores that some people think it could end up being.

We've talked a lot about the sort of Missouri side sports attachments, but there was a big push at one time to see something happen on the Kansas side.

Do we see Johnson County leaders salivating over the prospect still of still trying to potentially attract the royals or the chiefs.

Are If they are?

I am not seeing it.

I think, you know, just saying in jest earlier about the royals moving to Michigan.

I mean, there's the problem with at least that pocket of Johnson County is there's not a lot of infill development available.

Right.

If you want to build something that big in Johnson County, you're going to have to go out to greenfield spaces, probably far beyond where most fans are going to want to drive to.

And I say that and the San Francisco 49 is are actually in Santa Clara.

So who knows?

But I just you know, I don't hear it a lot from county leadership.

I think they're much more interested in trying to build up places like the Shields soccer complex in South Overland Park or Blue Hawk, also in South Overland Park.

That might be regional amateur sports hubs for big tournaments.

Now with our three core newsmakers joining us this week, we have less time than usual for our regular round up of news.

So our next segment is even more important this week.

What was the big story we missed?

Three weeks after the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, the Kansas and Missouri attorneys general making national news as they sent letters to the heads of Fortune 100 companies warning them of the legal consequences of race based hiring.

Fewer cops on the beat.

A new Kansas City Police Department report says that down 221 officers since 2019.

The Jackson County assessment saga continues.

The latest figures show more than 38,000 property owners have now appealed their assessments.

That's about 12% of every house in the entire county.

Remembering Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator and presidential candidate would have turned 100 on Saturday.

A big centennial Party planned.

At cue, Alicia Keys makes good on that launch gift.

The Grammy Award winning singer performs in Saint Louis this weekend, and she's providing free transportation and concert tickets to every person in Rafael's school.

He's the black teen who was shot in the head when he rang the wrong doorbell In North Kansas City.

Around 1500 students attend Staley High School, which makes this a gigantic size gift.

And the Chiefs reported training camp in Saint Joe.

The team's first preseason game is just three weeks away already.

Lots of amazing options there, and we haven't even mentioned the man who caused mayhem at the food plant by calling in a security threat just so his friend wouldn't have to go to work.

All the city of Lawrence joining Kansas City and becoming the region's second transgender sanctuary city.

But Kyle, it is your choice.

Did you pick one of those stories or something completely different?

I chose something completely different.

So there's a brewing battle over over zoning in Johnson County.

And I say it now just because we are on the cusp of election season and there's early voting starts on Saturday, people in elected positions of power in that city and beyond in the county as well, who really want to take a serious look at zoning, trying to reform zoning practices, open things up, maybe allow for more types of single family and multi-family housing.

And there are entrenched interests in a lot of Northeast Johnson County and Johnson County cities writ large that don't want to see that are very wary of that.

And it was a factor in the mayor's race in Overland Park last year.

I'm picking the Kansas City police in enrollment.

Their roster.

However you want to approach the problem of violent crime in this area.

Not having a fully staffed police force for Kansas City, Missouri is an element of that.

And for them to be down now to 2019 or last levels is something that they've got to.

Address just quickly.

It's not for lack of money.

It's been other cities are facing this same problem of recruiting people for the police department.

We'll see how it works out.

Now, my top story was the end of the current city council in Kansas City, Missouri.

A new council will take over.

The council that is leaving office will be known, I think, for three things.

The airport, which as it turns out, went fairly well.

COVID, the COVID response, which I think again was relatively well handled in the metro area and in Kansas City, not without controversy, but was relatively well handled.

And then, as Michael suggests, violent crime and the police problem, which is only indirectly the responsibility of the city council, but some people in the public will blame them for it.

And on that, we will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of Kyle Palmer of the Shawnee Mission Post and Channel Nine's Micheal Mahoney, a news icon and former star reporter Dave Helling.

And I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City, PBS.

Be well, keep calm and carry on.