The governments of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, will likely remain unified after recent questioning of a 1997 consolidation. But the process has revealed widespread feelings of disillusionment that will require leadership.
THE JOURNAL (Print edition: ISSN 2328-4366; Online edition: ISSN 2328-4374) is published quarterly by the Kansas Leadership Center, which receives core funding from the Kansas Health Foundation.
The Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) equips people with any title or role to lead and engage others. Founded in 2007, KLC is a first-of-its-kind nonprofit educational organization with a civic mission, national reputation and global reach.
KLC MISSION
To foster civic leadership for stronger, healthier and more prosperous communities in Kansas and beyond.
KLC VISION
To be the center of excellence for leadership development and civic engagement.
THE JOURNAL’S ROLE
To build a healthy 21st century public square for all to lead.
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Ron Holt, Wichita (Chair)
Kaye Monk-Morgan, Wichita (President & CEO)
Jill Arensdorf, Hays
Tracey Beverlin, Pratt (Secretary)
Thomas Carignan, Overland Park
Gennifer Golden House, Goodland
Karen Humphreys, Wichita
Mary Lou Jaramillo, Merriam
David Lindstrom, Overland Park (Past Chair)
Peter F. Nájera, Wichita
Patrick Rossol-Allison, Seattle, Washington (Vice Chair)
Maribel Sánchez, Dodge City
Frank York, Ashland (Treasurer)
WEB EDITION
klcjournal.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Annual print subscriptions available at klcjr. nl/subscribe now. Single issues available at kansasleadershipcenter.org/klcstore.
DONATIONS
Become a member of The Journal by donating at klcjournal.com/support-our-publication/.
CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Update contact information at klcjr.nl/register.
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Chris Green 316.712.4945 cgreen@kansasleadershipcenter.org
JOURNAL ENGAGEMENT MANAGER
Maren Berblinger 316.462.9963 mberblinger@kansasleadershipcenter.org
JOURNAL REPORTER
Stefania Lugli 316.261.1582 slugli@kansasleadershipcenter.org
ART DIRECTION + DESIGN
Craig Lindeman lindemancollective.com
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jeff Tuttle Photography 316.706.8529 jefftuttlephotography.com
COMMUNICATIONS
Sam Smith, Director of Communications
Cindy Kelly, Communications Manager
Julian Montes, Creative Services Manager
DEVELOPMENT
Chris Harris, Senior Director
CONTRIBUTORS
AJ Dome, Stan Finger, P.J. Griekspoor, Kim Gronniger, Amy Geiszler-Jones, Jerry LaMartina, Joel Mathis, Mark McCormick, Amanda Vega-Mavec, Dawn Bormann Novascone, Michael Pearce, Timothy A. Schuler, Barbara Shelly, Monica Springer, Beccy Tanner, Keith Tatum, Claudia Yaujar-Amaro, Mark Wiebe
COPY EDITORS
Bruce Janssen, Shannon Littlejohn, Laura Roddy
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Carolina Loera Lozano
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Pedro Cuevas Franco
Dave Kaup
Julian Azcary Montes
Zach Tuttle
A SPECIAL NOTE
Thank you to Maren Berblinger for all your work in helping The Journal grow and prosper.
CONTRIBUTORS
CLAUDIA YAUJAR-AMARO
Contributor
Claudia is the editor-in-chief of Planeta Venus, a bilingual newsroom based in Wichita with regional distribution.
A journalist, teacher, translator and entrepreneur, Claudia founded AB&C Bilingual Resources, a bilingual marketing company, in 2017 to close the communication gap in her community.
A longtime contributor to The Journal, her first bylined story runs in this edition.
TIMOTHY SCHULER
Contributor
Timothy is an award-winning writer and design critic whose work focuses on the intersection of the built and natural environments.
His essay, “The Middle of Everywhere,” about the history and future of the Kansas Flint Hills, was included on a list of the most notable science and nature writing in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2020.
He lives in Manhattan.
CAROLINA LOERA LOZANO
Contributing Writer
Carolina, originally from Mexico, immigrated to the United States when she was 8 years old.
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER
325 East Douglas Avenue Wichita, KS 67202 kansasleadershipcenter.org
An award-winning journalism graduate at Wichita State University, she gained on-air experience through her time at KWCH.
Carolina has also worked in government institutions like the Sedgwick County communications department and the Kansas Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission.
FINGER
44.
Navigators wanted; experience necessary
MAKING STARTING A BUSINESS LESS
LONELY IN RENO COUNTY.
BY: AJ DOME
SPECIAL SECTION: STORIES OF LATINO ENTREPRENEURSHIP
55.
How Gabe Muñoz nails the needs of KCK entrepreneurs
HELPING BUSINESS OWNERS REALIZE
THEIR AMBITIONS.
BY: STEFANIA LUGLI
60. The barriers to getting into business
THE CHALLENGES OF STARTING
A BUSINESS IN COFFEYVILLE.
BY: AJ DOME
64.
When family, culture and tradition meet consistency
HOW LETICIA VARGAS AND LA PASADITA ENDURE.
BY: CLAUDIA YAUJAR-AMARO
68.
How the ‘only architect in Liberal’ found his entrepreneurial spirit
AN ORTUÑO FAMILY BUSINESS STARTED WITH BEEF.
BY: STEFANIA LUGLI
70.
‘Por el amor a la cultura’ TWO ARTISTS PARTNERING IN MULTIPLE WAYS.
BY: CAROLINA LOERA LOZANO
THE BACK PAGE
79.
Opinion: Let’s not become what we despise
THE DEBATE OVER A WINTER SHELTER.
BY: MARK MCCORMICK
AN EFFORT EMERGING IN WICHITA SHOWS HOW RESIDENTS CAN PLAY A ROLE IN HELPING THEIR COMMUNITIES BECOME MORE INFORMED AND ENGAGED.
CHRIS GREEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR
One of the best professional compliments I’ve ever received came from Joe Palacioz Sr., the longtime city manager of Hutchinson who retired from that post in 2005 after more than three decades of public service.
I was a young reporter covering City Hall for The Hutchinson News. Palacioz told me during the 2004 budget approval process that he appreciated how I worked to understand the ins and outs of that document.
I wasn’t fishing for compliments. And I don’t remember Palacioz being known for giving them. The fact is, from time to time plenty of people in the city didn’t like what I reported.
But Palacioz’s words were meaningful because they spoke to the role I played in informing the public. Every resident was affected by what happened at those City Council meetings – from how much they paid in taxes to whether their streets got fixed.
Yet almost no one had the time to sit through the meetings. And even if people had popped in, they likely would have struggled to understand some of the details.
I was a lifeline to crucial information for tens of thousands of readers each day. Because The Hutch News made it my job, I could attend every City Council meeting each week. And I took my responsibility seriously.
These days, there are fewer and fewer reporters covering local government. The decline of the news business means fewer local journalists at city council or school board meetings.
That’s bad because researchers have found that when there’s less local news, voter turnout goes down and corruption goes up. And there’s a whiplash effect in communities that I’ve experienced. An
issue that’s been flying under the radar, such as the potential sale of local parkland, suddenly gets attention and becomes a microcontroversy. That tends to stress out elected officials, who are increasingly targets of harassment, and fosters distrust in the process among residents, who don’t hear about something until it’s too late.
Ensuring that communities remain informed and engaged is an adaptive challenge that requires experiments. The Journal is proud to be a part of one that we hope will make a difference.
The Kansas Leadership Center this spring is joining with the Wichita Foundation and members of the Wichita Journalism Collaborative, including The Journal, to launch Wichita Documenters. The effort aims to make public meetings more transparent and accessible by paying residents to attend, take notes of what transpires and share them with journalists and the public.
This growing effort in participatory civic media, which will soon reach 15 cities in 11 states, won’t provide everything we need. But it will provide additional visibility into hundreds of public meetings every year.
It also gives residents a chance to see how government works up close, grounding them to perhaps run for office or serve on a local board themselves at some point.
The Kansas Leadership Center has long taught that leadership starts with you. Perhaps this can be the beginning of an era when an informed and engaged community starts with you too.
Coming undone? A movement backed by three Wyandotte County mayors is underway to return the governments of their county to their pre-unification days. That’s despite the fact that WyCo has become Kansas’ biggest tourist destination. How deep does discontent run? And if there’s another vote — in a county where turnout was 15.5% last November — can a majority still rule?
Unified government, fractured community, Page 8
Stuck on a sand bar? Four years ago, Wichita released a visionary plan to redo 70 acres of its downtown riverfront — and in the process level the Century II convention center. Rather than unite the community, the effort ran aground — and there’s no Vision B. But Century II endures.
Salvaged but not quite saved, Page 20
A coffee shop in the Strawberry Hill neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas, is a popular outpost of diversity and activity, just what owner TJ Roberts was aiming for. And when patrons learned it might be bulldozed, they came forth with more than love.
When coffee comes with a side of community, Page 32
The mail still gets through, but population declines in rural Kansas are taking their toll on post offices. Still, there are some ways to work around that. About 30 community post offices have sprung up, providing a place to buy stamps, mail letters and packages and sometimes even provide P.O. boxes.
When your small-town store becomes your post office, Page 39
Entrepreneurship can be a lonely pursuit. But it doesn’t need to be. In Reno County, a group is building an entrepreneurial ecosystem and mapping out a landscape of assistance that’s accessible to dreamers and doers.
Navigators wanted; experience necessary, Page 44
Downtown Topeka is bustling. Good luck finding a parking place after 5, even in the middle of the week. What the city does have in abundance is jobs — in the thousands. But recruiting workers has been a heavy lift, despite some misunderstood incentives that are available for those who settle and are employed locally. Photo by Jeff Tuttle
In a story in the Summer 2022 issue, Kim Gronniger documented Topeka’s efforts to make itself more livable, and in the process, more likable. She combined details of its rejuvenated downtown with a peek under the hood at the Greater Topeka Partnership. Gronniger also wrote that the city’s reputation isn’t just an impediment – it’s the source of endless jokes. But doing the work of image building and attracting new residents is serious business. Last fall, a Telemundo story focused on the Choose Topeka program – which offers cash incentives to new employees – and its availability to Latinos and immigrants. In January, the Wall Street Journal did its own article about the city’s labor challenges. Both reports made it clear that to be eligible for an incentive, jobholders had to have permission to work in the U.S. But a Fox News commentator wrongly claimed the city was paying to haul in undocumented workers and give them cash. No joke: Facts can be feeble when put up against appeals to emotion.
The Winter 2017 issue of the Journal was devoted entirely to the subject of faith. As a part of that, Thomas Stanley wrote about five unproductive patterns he had seen in church congregations. (Stanley, a KLC staff member who worked closely with faith communities, died tragically in 2019.) One of them dealt with engaging “nones,” that segment of Americans who don’t have a religious preference. (Not all “nones” are nonbelievers, but about half say they dislike religious organizations.) At the time, the Pew Research Center had put the share of adults who identified as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” at 20%. The most recent Pew survey data shows that number has grown to 28%. That cohort makes “nones” more prevalent than either Catholics or evangelical Protestants.
Immigration and its ancillary issues were the focus of the Summer 2023 issue of the Journal as we sought to complicate the narrative by tapping the talents – and the opinions – of a cross section of Kansans. Now the Congressional Budget Office has released data that puts a
dollar figure on one of the benefits of increased immigration. To reach its conclusion, the CBO factored in the surge of immigrants (most of them are of working age) that began two years ago and, it presumes, will continue for a while. The bottom line? “We estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.” Such data is unlikely to influence many, as immigration remains a highly charged partisan issue that’s been at a stalemate for decades.
SAVE THE DATE, RODEO FANS — With the turn of the calendar, it’s worth reminding Kansans that the annual Flint Hills PRCA Rodeo will be held from May 30 to June 1. Last year, AJ Dome and photographer Jeff Tuttle, a couple of pretty good hands, made the drive to Strong City to take in the parade, dances and other fun activities. Their report ran in the Summer 2023 Journal.
WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING Mary Sauer, a freelance writer from Kansas City, took to the pages of The Washington Post in January to prescribe a remedy for kids who could benefit by spending more time outside and a lot less time online. She points out that during COVID, Kansas City, Missouri, provided a temporary framework allowing residents to create play streets. (Copycats without permission shut down many more blocks with borrowed orange cones.) This was not a concept that found universal appeal, but Sauer makes the case that play streets are worthy of the blessings of governmental bodies.
Hayden Kalp of The Pitch has taken the pulse of the Kansas music scene and pronounces it darned healthy: “Kansas is filled to the brim with talented artists. Whether it’s Hays thrash or Lawrence indie/ska-punk, there’s something for everybody.” Included in his checkup are links to tracks from Parl, Social Cinema, Indra, DJ Alphabeta and MellowPhobia.
A PUSH TO UNDO THE 1997 CONSOLIDATION THAT CREATED THE UNIFIED GOVERNMENT OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY AND KANSAS CITY, KANSAS, REVEALS PROFOUND LEVELS OF DISCONTENT WITH A STATUS QUO OF HIGH TAXES, INSUFFICIENT SERVICES AND DECLINING PUBLIC TRUST. BUT PROPONENTS OF THE MERGER, ONCE A NOVEL AND ENVIED EXPERIMENT IN KANSAS GOVERNMENTAL REFORM, ARGUE IT HELPED PROPEL EXPLOSIVE GROWTH. WHILE A DIVORCE APPEARS TO FACE LONG ODDS, THERE’S NO CLEAR PATH TO RECONCILIATION EITHER.
Find a table, pull up a chair and talk amongst yourselves.
Broadly, those were the instructions for the several dozen people who gathered on a chilly evening last December for a meeting at The South Branch Library in the Argentine neighborhood of KCK.
The purpose, as stated in a Facebook invitation: “To discover the successes and failures brought about by the unification of Wyandotte County over the last 25 years.”
This bold summons had come from a newly formed group, the Unified Residents of Wyandotte County. Its backers hope to set into motion a process that could alter or even unravel the county’s consolidated government.
Once seated at tables of seven or eight, residents were handed questionnaires and asked to chat while working on their answers.
The questions were designed to measure discontent. At Mike Runyon’s table, he and his new acquaintances underscored their frustrations with the current government.
Queries such as “Would you describe the Unified Government as open and transparent?” and “Do
Consolidation has come to Kansas City, Kansas, twice. In the mid-1880s, “greater” KCK was formed through a merger of the communities of Kansas City, Armstrong, Armourdale, Riverview and Wyandotte. The current city-county government got voter approval in 1997. Photo by Zach Tuttle
you feel the Unified Government is efficient?” set off snorts and derisive laughter.
Other questions, about budgets, utility bills and economic development incentives, left people looking at one another. What does the Unified Government do? Why are tax bills so high and, in some areas, neighborhoods so shabby?
Runyon, a retiree who has lived all his life in KCK, shook his head. “Everything’s broken. How do you answer all this when everything’s broken?”
Refrains of high taxes, inefficiencies and a dearth of transparency can sometimes spell the doom of a mayor or a manager. They certainly can foster frustration and unhappiness among voters. But are they enough to bring down an entire governmental structure? Should they be?
The concept of a unified government was embraced in a countywide vote in 1997, after Wyandotte County had endured years of economic and political dysfunction. The charter that voters approved effectively eliminated the positions of the KCK mayor, the City Council and the Wyandotte County Commission. They were replaced with a 10-member commission and executive.
Bonner Springs, with about 7,800 residents, and Edwardsville, a city of about 5,000, maintained mayors and city councils. Their residents do elect
representatives to the Unified Government, which, besides acting as the municipal government for KCK, is responsible for managing the jail, the district court, elections and other functions formerly performed by the county government.
The new structure has been credited with paving the way for Kansas Speedway, the Legends shopping center and other marquee developments – projects that have filled county and state coffers with new tax revenues. But poverty and blight have stubbornly persisted in older KCK neighborhoods, and some people see those conditions as broken promises of consolidated government.
In October, Tyrone Garner, mayor and CEO of the Unified Government, stood with the mayors of Edwardsville and Bonner Springs at an outdoor news conference and said the government he leads is so flawed it might be best to dismantle it.
Behind the startling announcement lies ongoing political turmoil in Kansas City, which occupies 83% of the county’s land mass, and longstanding resentments in Bonner Springs and Edwardsville.
Garner has been feuding with the Unified Government’s Board of Commissioners since taking office in December 2021. “We’ve had to fight against a culture that’s not accepted the leadership that these voters have brought to the mayor’s office,” he said at the news conference.
He ticked off a list of troubles: “Overburdened taxpayers; crumbling infrastructure; disheartening poverty throughout this town; excessive blight; shameful acts of disinvestment; historic redlining; customer service shortfalls; rampant questions many have posed of continued cronyism, nepotism and a Unified Government on a pathway to complete financial ruin.”
The pathway was a short one, Garner added. The Unified Government, he said, could be bankrupt as early as 2026.
His claim was overstated. Local governments in Kansas cannot go bankrupt and bond raters have said that the outlook for Wyandotte County is stable.
And many Wyandotte Countians disagree with the mayor’s grim overall assessments.
Carol Marinovich, a leader of the consolidation movement and the Unified Government’s first mayor/CEO, was out of the country when she learned about Garner’s news conference.
“It was full of lies and inaccurate information,” she says.
Garner did not respond to numerous requests for an interview from The Journal. Requests were made in December and January before his planned medical leave. His public statements on the subject have been limited since that jarring news conference.
Jeff Harrington, then the mayor of Bonner Springs, told reporters after that event that the current structure often ignores his city’s needs. And Edwardsville Mayor Carolyn Caiharr says her city and Bonner Springs would benefit from a
divorce. Caiharr, who was elected mayor in 2021, organized and facilitated meetings around the county like the one at the library.
While she is primarily concerned with getting fair representation for her community, Caiharr says she sees residents throughout Wyandotte County pleading for lower taxes, better services and better representation.
“Multiple years in a row I’ve heard the same answers,” she says. “And it was, ‘We’re so sorry. We understand. We’ll work on it next year.’” Her mission, Caiharr adds, is “to help residents who are struggling and quite frankly are in fear of their future in a community that they love.”
Based on the responses to the questionnaires that she drafted for the community discussions, Caiharr thinks a vote to end the Unified Government would receive strong support. She’s also not sure it has to come to that.
The next step, Caiharr says, “would be having a discussion with the commission and saying, ‘Hey, are you guys willing to make some serious changes that are needed, and start at the ground level?’”
When voters overwhelmingly approved consolidation, Wyandotte County faced far greater challenges than dissatisfaction with taxes and government services. The county regularly recorded the state’s highest collective property tax rate. Patronage politics sowed numerous inefficiencies, as did a duplication of some services in city and county operations.
And those were just the start of the problems facing the county and KCK.
Residents were fleeing at a rapid clip. The county’s population had nosedived, from more than 185,000 in 1960 to roughly 162,000 in 1990. Those left behind endured high rates of crime and unemployment. Economic development cratered. The county lacked a single indoor movie theater. Leaders struggled to attract even one new grocery store.
County and city officials clashed over matters big and small, making it difficult to attract new businesses and enact policies to tackle seemingly intractable problems.
Corruption, real and perceived, further tarnished the county’s reputation. A KCK mayor was indicted for bribery. A Wyandotte County sheriff appointed his son as undersheriff. Illegally operating topless bars went unpunished. And the still unsolved 1987 murder of Democratic Party Chairman Chuck Thompson, shot multiple times outside of a popular restaurant, fueled rumors of a political hit job.
As one pro-reform voter told The Kansas City Star the day of the consolidation vote: “Something has got to change here. Kansas City, Kansas, is the armpit of the metropolitan area. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Over the last quarter century the Unified Government made strides toward proving that voter right.
• With help from tax subsidies called STAR bonds, a 400-acre entertainment development in west Wyandotte County broke ground soon after consolidation. The development, anchored by Kansas Speedway and the Legends Outlets Kansas City, vastly diversified the county’s sales tax base.
• Prior to consolidation, few nonresidents ever ventured to Wyandotte County for entertainment. Today, the county is the state’s most visited tourist destination.
• The population drain has reversed: Over the last two decades, the county has seen its population increase 6.7%.
• Housing starts, virtually stalled in the 1990s, have since increased at a steady rate.
• Spurred mostly by Hispanic and Latino business owners, areas around downtown that used to be havens for drug deals and prostitution are spurring economic growth. Restaurants and Latino grocers alone generate $8 million to $10 million in revenue every year.
• The county’s combined property tax rate (including county, city, school district and community college taxes) no longer ranks as the state’s highest.
• Consolidation is also credited with generating new revenue for the state.
“The explosive growth after we consolidated governments is measurable by any demographic of before and after,” says Mike Jacobi, a retired businessman who helped lead the grassroots movement that championed reform. In the early 1990s, Jacobi teamed up with
fellow businessman Kevin Kelley and soon-tobe Mayor Carol Marinovich to build support for consolidation. The years-long process included 35 public meetings, countless speeches at civic clubs and neighborhood organizations, ads, a media campaign and lobbying lawmakers to help get consolidation on the ballot.
The charter that voters approved represented a radical change for the county, one designed to weed out corruption, promote ethical governance and streamline operations.
In addition to creating a single executive and legislative body, the charter gave the district court’s administrative judge the authority to appoint and dismiss the legislative auditor and gave members of a newly formed ethics commission the power to subpoena witnesses to investigate ethics complaints.
Consolidation champions also wanted the chief executive/mayor to have more than a bully pulpit. They gave the person holding the position the power to appoint standing committee members, set an agenda, hire and fire the county
administrator and veto legislation. But they didn’t want that person to have too much power: The commission can override vetoes with a two-thirds vote and must give its consent before the CEO/ mayor hires or fires the administrator.
For Jacobi, these checks and balances are the bulwark behind consolidation’s success.
“The government now has a strong, single policymaking board that can fight what the problems actually are instead of the two warring governments that we had before,” he says. “And for a quarter of a century, every administration up until now has contributed to real solutions, proving the validity of our vision with unparalleled success and stability.”
Jacobi attended one of Caiharr’s meetings. He left unimpressed. “Her questions were clearly biased,” he says. “She repeatedly stated that unification was a failure in every news statement that preceded her surveys, including at Mayor Garner’s news conference appointing her to lead these surveys.”
That news conference and the mayor’s claim of impending bankruptcy, besides raising the hackles of Jacobi and others, left a former Unified Government chief financial officer dumbfounded.
Kathleen VonAchen, who served from February 2016 until December 2022, declined to assess the Unified Government’s current finances, but says its financial position was strong when she left. What’s more, she says, under federal law, local governments cannot declare bankruptcy unless their state has laid out a process for doing so. Kansas has not.
Last year, the Unified Government website even boasted about positive bond ratings from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. The government’s financial outlook, the agencies said, remained stable, even as it faced the prospect of increased debt from pensions and other projects.
Garner’s bankruptcy claim could actually compromise the Unified Government’s credit rating. “Any mayor that makes public statements about an imminent bankruptcy of its municipality in Kansas is simply demonstrating to the credit rating agencies that its management capacity is diminished,” VonAchen says. ”If it persists, the rating agency could put the city on a watch and then subsequently downgrade the city.”
Marinovich warned that Garner’s claims were planting seeds for distrust among community members.
“To me a mayor should never come out and say you’re going bankrupt,” Marinovich says. “The mayor is supposed to be the cheerleader. Now I’m not saying to say things to people and sugarcoat everything. But you deal with those problems.”
Marinovich suggests that instead of blaming consolidation for the Unified Government’s financial crisis, Garner should tighten the budget.
“Budgets are always going to be hard,” she says. “People are always wanting more services.”
Marinovich says she is worried that Garner’s statements will go unchallenged in a community that’s a news desert. A local newspaper in KCK folded years ago, as did The Kansas City Star’s Wyandotte County bureau.
“Word of mouth goes very far and very quickly,” Marinovich says.
Even with positive credit ratings, the Unified Government does have fiscal challenges. The most recent budget cautions that the KCK general fund faces “the fundamental issue of a structural deficit through 2028.” The outlook for the smaller budget affecting the part of Wyandotte County outside of KCK also projects a deficit.
Neither document mentioned the prospect of bankruptcy – or deconsolidation. That puts Garner’s utterances at odds with his government’s official publications. After a Nov. 20 forum, and again in early December, after his State of the Unified Government address, he said the government is “on a path to bankruptcy.”
In 1997, the consolidation question failed in Edwardsville and Bonner Springs. And the Edwardsville mayor thinks it would be rejected today.
“Word of mouth goes very far and very quickly.”
Cutting expenses to reduce that deficit won’t be easy. Public safety accounts for 69% of the expenditures for KCK. Nearly 75% of the budget is for salaries and benefits. Those are unpopular areas to cut.
The county administrator’s budget message for 2024 calls on his staff and commission “to dive deeply into UG operations and budget to ensure that we are on course for the future that keeps us out of the red while meeting our community needs and working to address a desire to mitigate the tax burden on residents.”
Also, the mayor’s annual update, a 26-page document that Garner released on Dec. 5, outlines a number of priorities, including more businesses in the urban core, better community health and less debt.
“I can tell you that in Bonner and Edwardsville, (deconsolidating) would serve the people best,” Caiharr says. “Because the consolidation didn’t take the needs of anyone outside of Kansas City, Kansas, into account. That’s just baked into the fabric of the Unified Government.”
However, Marinovich says the smaller cities’ voices were significantly muted under the former county government. Because of how districts were drawn, their residents were unlikely to hold a seat on the County Commission.
The idea that Edwardsville and Bonner Springs are under-represented also doesn’t ring true to Suzanne M. Leland, a professor of political science and public administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Leland helped lead the consolidation meetings while finishing her doctorate at the University of Kansas.
Edwardsville and Bonner Springs, she says, kept their local councils. They also got seats on the Unified Commission, and the chance to vote for two at-large commissioners, as well as the mayor/CEO. Wyandotte County’s turnaround has been so significant that Leland cites it in publications and lectures. The ability to draw in sales-tax dollars
is particularly noteworthy in a place where the mayor once noted that retail coverage was so spotty she could barely buy a pair of socks.
“All the shopping was in Johnson County. All the growth was in Johnson County,” Leland says. “They were not coming to Wyandotte.”
Consolidation success isn’t typically measured in cost savings, Leland stresses. “Success can be defined by efficiency, effectiveness, equity and accountability.”
Consolidation also ended the Democratic Party machine’s stranglehold on the county and introduced a merit-based approach to hiring. Marinovich fears patronage and political dysfunction could return if consolidation opponents succeed.
Ending unification would also mean adding layers of government and pricey department heads, Marinovich says. And the Unified Government is struggling: Since Garner became mayor in 2021, it has lost at least 16 key people, including the county administrator, two chief legal counsels, the CFO and the head of planning.
Mike Runyon says he can’t remember whether he voted for consolidation 27 years ago. But today he knows this much: The Unified Government is impenetrable to him.
“I can’t make an impact,” Runyon said at the December meeting.
Runyon isn’t apathetic. He’s friendly with his neighborhood’s community police officer and the parks maintenance supervisor. He reproaches loiterers and litterers and welcomes new families to the neighborhood.
Runyon loves KCK for the reasons he’s loved it all his 72 years.
“In some ways, my neighborhood’s as good as it’s ever been,” he says. “We’ve got kids playing; we’ve got neighbors that talk to each other.”
But Runyon is dismayed by the number of traffic violations he witnesses. He's been told the city doesn’t have enough money to fully staff
Resentment about the Unified Government still prevails in western Wyandotte County, even though the city councils in Edwardsville and Bonner Springs, shown here, continue to exist.
enforcement. And a 40-acre wooded park behind his house in the Argentine neighborhood, which Runyon calls “a natural hidden little jewel,” has been closed off and barricaded because the city can’t maintain it.
“Neighborhoods, communities, which includes schools and parks, that’s the heart of the city right there,” Runyon says. “And you just drive around Kansas City and it’s obvious all that’s neglected.” Marilyn Alstrom does remember the consolidation vote. She was a solid yes.
“There was a lot of hostility about unifying the two governments,” she says, recalling the meetings she attended at the time. “But it just made sense because of the cost savings that it would bring to our community.”
Alstrom, who founded a nonprofit, 20/20 Leadership, is now retired and living in the Piper neighborhood near the speedway. In her view, the consolidated government brought retail, tourist attractions and amenities to a place where no one would invest.
“I’m concerned,” Alstrom says. “We hear the mayor, and he says we’re going bankrupt without even knowing that you have to have a balanced budget. You cannot go bankrupt. For him to share that information with people that don’t know –that’s frustrating.”
Derrick Goodloe is “pretty sure” he voted against consolidation. “It was so long ago,” he says.
Today, Goodloe owns a contracting business with his wife, Latanya. She is building a nonprofit to support women and children affected by incarceration.
“We are invested and interested in all things Wyandotte County,” Latanya Goodloe says. They attended the library meeting and detected a sense that the Unified Government is out of touch.
“The government hears the cries of the people, yet they take none of it into consideration,” she says. “They just keep going and doing whatever. That amount of taxes Wyandotte is paying … what are we getting?”
It’s not lost on the Goodloes that the Unified Government has had three mayors since 2013. The last two, David Alvey and Mark Holland, were defeated after one term.
“I believe that every mayor comes in and finds that the task is overwhelming,” Derrick Goodloe says. “They don’t tackle the big issues. They go for the low-hanging fruit and hope that’ll get them through, and it doesn’t. Come next election, and they’re out of there.”
The Goodloes credit Garner for talking about substantive change, and they take his bankruptcy warnings seriously. “If we’re tentatively going bankrupt, that’s not responsible on any level,” Latanya says.
Bette McGill runs a sign-making business in KCK’s Turner neighborhood in a shop whose size, she estimates, is about 1,300 square feet. She used to make T-shirts in a larger building next door, but she sold that property when the taxes got too high.
Even in her small building, McGill saw her bill increase from $2,000 to $3,000 over the last two rounds of assessments.
“That’s $250 a month that I have to make before I get anything,” she says.
McGill has overcome a lot to keep her small business running. A shop she operated on Southwest Boulevard was flooded in 1998, and she lost everything.
“Luckily, I scrape and save every dime I can get my hands on just in case of an emergency,” McGill says. “And there’s always an emergency.”
Prompted mostly by what she considers unfairly high taxes and some problems in her neighborhood, she began watching the Unified Government carefully a couple of years ago and even ran for the commission last year. She tied with an opponent in the primary and lost a coin flip to be on the ballot in the general election.
At one commission meeting she attended recently, McGill says a commissioner noted that “everybody doesn’t want their taxes raised but yet they want all the services.’’
That didn’t sit well with McGill. “I pointed out to him that I have lived on my street now for 40 years,” she says. “Forty years. And they have never yet asphalted my road. So which services are we talking about? I don’t want new services. I want services. Period.”
High taxes are an overwhelming source of discontent in Wyandotte County. But Jacobi contends they would be much higher without the development that consolidation delivered. Twenty-five years ago, he says, the 400 acres now home to the development surrounding Kansas Speedway generated just $175,000 in property taxes. Retail sales were nonexistent. Some 20 years later, this land yielded nearly $30 million in annual property and sales taxes.
In Jacobi’s view, the Unified Government shouldn’t be blamed for high property taxes in Edwardsville and Bonner Springs. The county portion of their tax bills is based on a property tax rate that last year was in the bottom 10% of the state’s 105 counties.
But the perception that taxes are high in Wyandotte County isn’t entirely off base. Although
Longtime resident Bette McGill is fed up with rising property taxes on the 1,300-squarefoot building that houses her sign shop, Vital Signs LLC. She says her $3,000 annual bill is too high, given the services the county provides.
it no longer has the state's highest property tax rate, it still ranks in the top 12% when all of the county’s taxing jurisdictions are factored in.
Whatever their views on consolidation, everyone interviewed agrees that dismantling the government would entail a monumental effort, requiring cooperation from state legislators and likely an expensive campaign to win public support.
Garner’s absence from office this past spring made it harder to gauge the extent of interest in the effort. Caiharr remains convinced that Wyandotte Countians are hungry for a more transparent, accountable government.
“I will be following up with the Unified Government soon,” she wrote in a March email.
A big change would require political capital. And Garner would face strong opposition from founders of the Unified Government and some members of the Unified Government Commission.
Caiharr, who is leading the discussion at this point, says she understands that deconsolidation would be a long process.
Mike Runyon was a consolidation supporter back in 1997. He loves Kansas City, Kansas. But now, he says, “Everything’s broken. How do you answer all this when everything’s broken?”
“The good news is: I think we have some options.”
People who attended the community meetings expressed interest in charter amendments aimed at making the Unified Government more efficient and transparent, Caiharr says.
“The simplest answer is the commission saying, ‘Hey, we’re taking this seriously and we’re going to make some changes right away,’” she says.
To effect any sort of change in Wyandotte County, Caiharr and others will have to confront deepseated inertia. While some of the community meetings were well-attended, and some residents monitor the Unified Government faithfully, only about 14,000 people showed up to vote in last November’s election for five commission seats — a turnout of 15.5%
Garner became mayor in 2021 with just 5,202 votes, only 230 more than David Alvey received.
Runyon votes. But he remains pessimistic. “My whole life, it’s seemed to me that there’s too much cronyism and nepotism and outside interests against the public good,” he says. “But, I don’t know, I think that’s true everywhere.”
Runyon’s friends often tell him he should run for public office.
“I don’t have that in me,” he says. “My family, my friends, my neighbors, I can make a difference. And that’s where I focus my energies.”
Bette McGill has more of a stomach for politics. She stood behind Garner, Harrington and Caiharr at their October news conference, and she assisted with table discussions at Caiharr’s meetings.
But as a new year began in Wyandotte County, McGill says it wasn’t clear how the fledgling movement for change would shape up. She just hopes something will happen.
“I definitely know that we need some answers,” she says.
One possible answer is dismantling a form of government whose champions contend has transformed Wyandotte County for the better.
Whatever the future holds for the Unified Government, the current unrest reflects a fractured community. And a messy divorce rarely leads to prosperity.
1. What does it look like for a government to simultaneously hold the values of efficiency, transparency, representation and equity?
2. How does one judge the success or failure of the “experiment” of unification when both sides can cite data to support their interpretation?
3. What impact does the lack of local news coverage play in this situation?
- By Rebekah Starkey Keasling
WICHITA’S CENTURY II CONVENTION CENTER AND A HISTORIC LIBRARY REMAIN INTACT. BUT THE STORY OF THEIR SURVIVAL IS UNFINISHED, AND IT LEAVES LINGERING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE COMMUNITY AND HOW IT WILL MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF ITS RIVERFRONT.
BY: TIMOTHY A. SCHULER Wichita has its share of fine architecture, but Century II and its blue, circular roof is easily the city’s most identifiable building. Photo by Jeff TuttleEven as workers replace the distinctive blue roof of Century II, the flying saucer of a convention center that landed in downtown Wichita in 1969, the fate of the landmark and the area surrounding it remains strangely murky.
After a master plan that pushed to replace it, a grassroots campaign to save it, and political and legal fights that amounted to a battle for the future of Wichita – and the past’s place in it – five long years of discussion haven’t brought much clarity.
For now, Century II has avoided the fate of its predecessor, the Forum.
But its endurance seems less a victory than a stalemate, based on interviews with community members and architecture experts.
The story of Century II’s dramatic arc raises questions about how Wichita and other midsize cities can better build consensus and chart a course for redevelopment of public lands.
Whose voices are left out or sidelined in planning processes? Or to put it another way: Why did divisions emerge during the master-planning process? Is it possible to engage a true cross section of a city’s population and not just elevate the loudest voices? And what role does Wichita’s history play in its future?
Century II’s story begins on May 23, 1961, when Wichita voters approved the construction of a new civic center near the banks of the Arkansas River. The complex, including a performing arts venue and a new public library, would replace the Forum, opened in 1911.
Designed by two local up-and-coming architecture firms, the civic center created instant landmarks. John Hickman and partner Roy Varenhorst had
apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright and brought his aesthetic to the performing arts center, which was full of allusions to the Kansas landscape: buff-colored concrete to suggest billowing fields of wheat, a dome the color of the expansive sky. The public library, by Schaefer Schirmer & Eflin Architects, featured a delicate, exposed concrete skeleton and soaring walls of glass. Signaling the importance of the library, following its completion the firm flew Julius Shulman, a highly regarded photographer of modern architecture, from Los Angeles to Wichita to photograph the building.
Over time, the buildings aged, racking up everlonger lists of maintenance needs. In 2018, the city opened a new downtown library, leaving the former library building vacant.
In 2020, the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan Coalition, an organization made up of the Greater Wichita Partnership, Visit Wichita, the Wichita Chamber of Commerce and other groups, along with a consultant team made up of Populous, OLIN, and RCLCO Real Estate Advisors, unveiled a 10-year vision for a 70-acre section of the Wichita riverfront that included the civic center site. In the plan, Century II, the adjacent expo hall and park, and the former library would be demolished and replaced with dense commercial, retail and residential developments, interspersed with a new performing arts center, a riverfront park and a pedestrian bridge spanning the river.
The recommendation that Century II and the library be torn down sparked outrage. While some argued that Century II had become just as antiquated as the Forum, others – in particular a group calling itself Save Century II – argued the buildings should be renovated.
The pressure worked. Three years later a new plan, also developed by Populous, was presented to city leaders. Encompassing a fraction of the original 70 acres, the plan includes only a new convention center and pedestrian bridge. Century II and the library would remain. Combined with both buildings’ listings on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020, the reversal was a clear, but perhaps not permanent, victory for the preservationists.
The Riverfront Legacy Master Plan started in response to a historic shift in downtown Wichita.
“We started with about 1,300 residential units in our downtown,” says Jeff Fluhr, the president of the Greater Wichita Partnership, a regional economic development organization. “Now, our market demand is getting up to 4,300 new units.”
From the coalition’s perspective, a lot of land along the east bank of the river was underutilized. The civic center had replaced dense commercial blocks with monumental buildings set amid vast, open plazas and parking lots. Like other projects of the time, the project was partially funded through Wichita’s Urban Renewal Agency. More than 120 businesses – from service stations to cafes, many of them serving blue-collar workers – were displaced. Buildings were demolished and forgotten.
The construction of the civic center refashioned a person’s experience of downtown Wichita in
ways that are still felt today. Lucinda Sanders is the CEO of OLIN, the Philadelphia-based landscape architecture firm hired to develop the first riverfront plan with Populous. She recalls her first visit to the site in 2019. “There was nothing pleasant about being around Century II, as a person of the public not going to an event there,” Sanders says. The scale of the building and its neighboring plaza, she says, “had this deadening effect.”
The civic center sits on a stereotypical midcentury “superblock,” a mega-sized parcel of land that doesn’t conform to the city’s street grid and largely separates downtown from the river. With a footprint larger than three football fields and a circular shape, Century II became like a planet with its own gravitational force. Except, to some, the building is more like a black hole. “(Activity) tends to be very pulsating and event-driven,” Sanders explains.
Inspired by an unrealized 1922 plan that would have preserved the Forum, Sanders and the master plan team sought to break up the
superblock, reinsert the city street grid and create accessible connections to the riverfront. “If you want to get people to the water, you have to give them pleasant ways to get there,” Sanders says, not make it feel like a demilitarized zone.
From the earliest public meetings, things began to go sideways. On July 31, 2019, Celeste Racette, a former bank auditor and fraud investigator for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., showed up to the Wichita Boathouse with a folder of historic photographs and other artifacts from the planning of Century II that she had uncovered following her father’s death in 2012.
Racette’s father, Vincent Bogart, oversaw the development of the civic center as the city’s mayor during a particularly turbulent period. Her father’s connection to Century II made it something of a family legacy for Racette.
At the open house, she asked, “Are we going to ask questions about Century II?” she recalls. “And they said, ‘No, we're going to make a presentation.’ So I went downstairs and sat at an empty table, and put this neat brochure and some other stuff from my dad's collection on the table.”
Racette says she had hoped that attendees would learn more about Century II’s history. But “all of a sudden, this lady came up,” Racette says. “She pointed her finger at me and she said, ‘You have to leave.’ I was stunned. I said, ‘What am I doing?’ She said, ‘You're hijacking our meeting.’ I said, ‘Isn't this a public meeting?’ She said, ‘No, we've paid for it, and you have to leave.’”
Tami Bradley, the woman in question, recalls the incident differently. Bradley served on the public relations team for the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan. She says that the first public engagement meeting was designed to provide the public with an overview of the master-planning process, with various informational tables arranged throughout the second floor of the boathouse. Bradley says
Century II was designed by John Hickman, a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice, and opened in 1969. Its round, blue dome bears some resemblance to the Marin County Civic Center in California, designed by Wright himself. Courtesy of Wichita State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives
Racette requested permission to set up a table and present the materials she had brought. “When she was told she could not, she set up her materials at the front door, where we were checking in people, which was disruptive and confusing,” Bradley wrote in an email. “I asked Ms. Racette to please not set up her materials in the check-in area, and when she refused, I did ask her to leave.”
Racette packed up her things. That same night, she says she drove to Denver to be with her son and daughter-in-law following her granddaughter’s birth. When she returned a week later, she says she had multiple voice messages from people who had been at the meeting or had read about her expulsion in The Wichita Eagle.
“People got upset and started reaching out to me,” Racette says. One of those people was Greg Kite, the president of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Wichita. “He wanted to help. And that's all it takes,” Racette says. “It takes two people.”
Racette and Kite launched Save Century II to advocate for preserving Century II and the library. They rented office space and began circulating a petition for a municipal ordinance to require a public vote on plans to demolish historically or architecturally significant buildings. “We started the petition drive during COVID,” Racette recalls. “People would drive up – they'd have masks on –and we'd run out with the petition. We got 17,265 signatures for a municipal initiative petition during COVID.”
Two ideas formed the campaign’s core.
The first was that Century II was part of the city’s identity. Together with the library, the nearby 1920 Carnegie Library and the 1890 Sedgwick County Courthouse (now the Sedgwick County Historical Museum), a single downtown block represented 100 years of Wichita history. “You look at old telephone books, and it's the dome of Century II (on the cover),” says Robert McLaughlin, the founder of KC Modern, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the preservation of modern
architecture in Kansas. “(Wichitans) were very proud of that building for a long time.”
The second idea was that the public should influence what happens to civic buildings on cityowned property. Racette wanted to see proposals such as those recommended by the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan go before the voters, just as the 1961 civic center project had.
Racette also desired a larger political transformation. In recent developments, she had seen a pattern of private interests extracting value from publicly owned assets without providing equitable returns to the community. “City hall is so one-sided toward private interests,” Racette says. “To turn everything over to private developers runs totally contrary (to) that sense of keeping (the riverfront) available for public enjoyment.”
Indeed, a big piece of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan would have made way for new private residential and commercial development. It was the economic engine that purportedly would pay for the performing arts center. But the furor over Century II’s historic significance mostly obscured Racette’s second point.
“Whatever happens with Century II should be transparent, fiscally responsible, (and) have community buy-in”
Wichita Mayor Lily Wu
“The fight became about historic preservation, and what was lost was the privatization of what was mostly public land,” says Chase Billingham, an associate professor of sociology at Wichita State University.
Billingham studies how cities and neighborhoods change over time and has written about Wichita’s urban renewal era.
He sees in the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan something of the inverse of urban renewal. For all of its flaws, urban renewal “was about bringing to bear the resources of the federal government and public tax dollars to support the rejuvenation of cities, oftentimes with a very civic-minded focus,” he says. Century II and the library are reminders “that the public sector is necessary in a time of urban crisis.”
Of course, not everyone agrees that Century II is worth saving. Some Wichitans view an attachment to Century II as a nostalgic pining for the past or as a hindrance to the city’s growth.
Amber Luther, a planner in Populous’ San Francisco office, led the community engagement portion of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan. She says the community was split nearly 50-50 on Century II. “There was such a tight percentage of people who were for complete change and people who wanted to keep it as it was, that we came to (the client) and said, ‘Hey, we're seeing a real close call with what people want to do here.’”
Adam Wagoner embodies this ambivalence. The co-founder of Denver’s Further Architecture Office and the host of the Architect-ing Podcast, Wagoner grew up in McPherson and opened his first architectural practice in Wichita in 2009.
Wagoner agrees that the performing arts center is an indelible and instantly recognizable feature of Wichita’s skyline. “It’s one of the better examples of Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture coming to Kansas,” Wagoner says. “It's such a striking building in its formal clarity and rigor. (It’s) like this moment of real, pure architecture.”
But Wagoner also says fixating on a building can overshadow other considerations, such as undoing urban renewal’s mistakes. “As a piece of architecture, I think fondly of Century II,” he says. “But if that’s standing too much in the way of progress and really activating this location, then I think that it should go and be replaced by something that could really be a catalyst.”
Three weeks after Save Century II delivered its petition, the city of Wichita challenged the group in Sedgwick County District Court. The proposed ordinance was “overly broad,” the lawsuit claimed, and would create an “impractical precedent.” A judge sided with the city. Save Century II appealed.
Meanwhile, Racette worked to get Century II and the public library listed on the national, state and local registers of historic places. By the end of 2020, both buildings had been approved for listing on all three. But such designations only trigger a state review that results in a nonbinding recommendation. They don’t guarantee a building’s survival.
“It is possible to tear down a nationally registered building,” McLaughlin says, pointing to Topeka’s Docking State Office Building, a 12-story building completed in 1957 that was the subject of a similar preservation battle prior to its demolition in 2023.
Save Century II fared less well in court. In December 2022, the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s decision. Nonetheless, Wichita city officials sensed a shift in public opinion and promised to not tear down Century II without a vote.
Newly sworn-in Mayor Lily Wu says she too supports the holding of a public vote prior to any demolition plans: “Whatever happens with Century II should be transparent, fiscally responsible, (and) have community buy-in,” she says.
In the riverfront debate, Century II overshadowed many things, including both literally and figuratively, the library. While Save Century II fought for preserving both buildings, its own name helped center the debate on the performing arts center. And yet many architects argue that the former library, which won a national award from the American Institute of Architects in 1968, is the more elegant building.
That Julius Shulman, a famed photographer of modern architecture, captured the former Wichita Public Library building in 1967 is a testament to its significance. Copyright J. Paul Getty Trust. Courtesy of Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
“If you said the library is probably about the best building in Wichita, I think you'd be right on track,” says McLaughlin of KC Modern.
Abdallah Tabet, a landscape architect at OLIN, says the library lacks some of the liabilities of Century II and its smaller footprint makes it more compatible with any redevelopment that breaks up the superblock.
That gives the library a more compelling narrative for salvation. And public appreciation for it may be growing, due to Save Century II’s advocacy efforts and the building’s use as a pandemic vaccination center. “I think that opened a lot of people's eyes,” McLaughlin says. “They took all of the bookshelves out, and people walked in and suddenly (said), ‘Wow, this is a pretty incredible space. Maybe we shouldn't be tearing this thing down.’”
Unrelated factors may also have given preservationists an edge in this fight. Disruptions from the pandemic and the grounding of Boeing’s MAX 737 jet, for which a large local employer, Spirit Aerosystems, supplies assemblies, also loomed large.
“Those two events contributed to deflating the momentum behind the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan,” Billingham says. “But the third thing, which I think was equally important, is that they really just did not see Celeste Racette coming. They did not fully appreciate how committed she was to this cause and the lengths that she would go to to get in their way.”
Along with Century II, Wichita’s future is on the line too. Underlying the debate are questions about what sort of city Wichita is: Is it a provincial city overly attached to the achievements of its past? Or is it a forward-looking metropolis, poised to capitalize on the promise of the future? In truth, the city is both and neither, the simplistic framing of the question misleading in its zero-sum assumptions.
The question of what a community values –and therefore what it ought to preserve – is hardly regressive. Nor is historic preservation fundamentally opposed to economic development: According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the federal historic tax credit
program has created 2.41 million jobs since its inception and generated $1.20 in tax revenue for every $1 spent on preservation.
Broader questions about the value of civic space and who gets to plan it remain in play too. The preservationists often treated demolition as the worst-case scenario, a loss of incalculable finality. But the library already sat empty. Century II was slowly deteriorating. If this was how the city treated its civic assets – whether by choice or by financial necessity – what did that say about the community? And what guarantee do residents have that a new building won’t suffer the same fate?
Populous’ Luther says the scaled-back approach presented in January 2023 doesn’t replace the initial master plan. “I wouldn't even call it a plan; I would call it a feasibility study,” she says. “The riverfront plan took a real estate development approach to a 70-acre site. This most recent update really just looked at the convention center itself.” She says Wichita needs a vision for the riverfront, and she wonders where it will come from.
On that point, Billingham agrees. “Regardless of what you thought of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan, it was a cohesive plan,” he says. “The whole idea now is it's going to be piecemeal. ‘We're going to do it when we can, however we can find the money.’ It's just not exciting. The plans are not inspiring.”
For Luther, the energy behind Save Century II sends a signal. If the community wants to renovate Century
II and the library, “Fine,” she says, “Then city of Wichita, you need to be willing to pay for this.”
It’s happening to an extent. The city’s 2023 budget included $18 million over 10 years for upgrading Century II, including $5 million for a new (still blue) roof. And the city has asked for proposals allowing adaptive reuse of the library building, which suffers from deferred maintenance.
“Part of community engagement is to learn what you may not know,” Fluhr says, and certainly, the discourse around Century II brought new information and attitudes. But did the most consequential issues get debated?
Yes, Century II and the library building carry historic status. But are they more appreciated as a result? Or has Save Century II only driven an existing wedge deeper? Has the fight resulted in any meaningful change in the way the community will approach large-scale master plans in the future?
When asked how much clarity the community has on its goals for the riverfront, Billingham is succinct: “Zero. None at all.”
And yet he says Save Century II’s message struck a chord with residents. City officials have taken note of the community’s interest in deciding the fate of Century II through democratic means.
“That's a pretty good lesson to learn from Century II and the old library,” McLaughlin says. “We do have a say in our public buildings and what's important to us.”
1. What are the aspirations for the downtown civic space? How are those engaged defining what “civic” means?
2. What opportunities or barriers exist with a new mayor and her goals and priorities for Wichita? How might those serve or hinder either side's goals?
3. What kind of community engagement or input would help make this conversation more productive or decisions about the space less polarizing?
- By Lydia Santiago
Provided with continued life by preservationists and architectural admirers, Century II recently received a $5 million roof. In addition, last year’s city budget included $18 million to be spent over 10 years on building upgrades. Photo by Jeff Tuttle
STEP 1:
Your Leadership Edge is the foundational training that introduces core concepts in KLC’s powerful leadership framework. Discover new ways to communicate, solve problems and lead more effectively back in your context. Sharpen interpersonal skills, self-awareness and confidence with others. Find, test and push to the edge of your comfort zone.
2 DAYS
Anyone can lead, anytime and anywhere. Our leadership path shows you how. The KLC path helps you change the way you manage yourself and mobilize others. Transform your leadership skills and become more effective in solving problems with our three-step leadership development journey.
Based on KLC's bestselling book, When Everyone Leads, this sixhour course makes leadership radically accessible and inclusive, unleashing capacity for collective leadership in teams, organizations, coalitions and communities.
1 DAY
Continue your learning with this advanced and immersive training. Lead for Change prepares you and your team to mobilize others to deal with tough problems and seize opportunities in any context. Deepen your skills and confidence to engage others to create or manage change. Energize others to deal with problems more effectively for lasting results.
3 DAYS
MORE THAN 100 PEOPLE HELPED TJ ROBERTS RAISE $11,000 WHEN THE FUTURE OF HIS DOWNTOWN KANSAS CITY, KANSAS, COFFEE SHOP HUNG IN THE BALANCE LAST YEAR. THESE DAYS, KINSHIP COFFEE’S FUTURE LOOKS MORE SECURE, AND ITS MISSION TO BRING DIVERSE GROUPS OF PEOPLE TOGETHER AROUND COFFEE AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY REGISTERS AS EVER MORE IMPORTANT.
BY: MARK WIEBEAt left, TJ Roberts’ Kinship Cafe in Kansas City, Kansas, provides more than a place to grab a cup of coffee; it’s a neighborhood hub. “The vision for Kinship was always about community,” he says. Photo by Dave Kaup
A year ago, Kinship Cafe – a popular coffee shop in downtown Kansas City, Kansas – was fighting for its life.
Owner TJ Roberts had learned that the land where his shop is was destined to wind up as a parking lot for new apartments. The landlord gave Roberts the option of purchasing the building, but the price was steep and the agreedupon deadline was short – $200,000 in 60 days.
The parking lot proposal ultimately fell through. But for a brief time, Kinship’s future hung in the balance. As it did, Roberts discovered that one of his business’s mottos – ”coffee and community” –was no mere slogan.
For starters, Roberts had already begun a GoFundMe campaign to help with rent and equipment. The campaign was extended to include a down payment for purchasing the building. That yielded a few thousand dollars – not nearly enough. Still, there were real people making a real effort to save Roberts’ business. And there was more: A local nonprofit
development organization pledged enough money for Roberts to buy the building outright. (That money is still available if the landlord ever decides to sell.)
“We had a lot of people come out of the woodwork who wanted to support us,” Roberts says. “A lot of people in the neighborhood who said, ‘You just can’t not be here.’”
Roberts, 32, opened his coffee shop nearly three years ago – during the pandemic, no less – and quickly built a loyal customer base. Residents of the Strawberry Hill neighborhood, where Kinship sits, share the shop’s space with police officers, court and City Hall employees, and even people from across the state line in Missouri. They’ve all made Kinship a go-to option for coffee, breakfast and lunch.
A former barista at The Roasterie Cafe, a Kansas City coffee chain, Roberts knows something about coffee. And he knows the power of coffee to bring people together. His vision for Kinship was to amplify that power by creating a community
hub, a place where people could gather not only for coffee but for any number of events. Since opening, Kinship has hosted workshops on trauma, yoga classes, musical performances and trunk-or-treat events. He also supports local artists and craftspeople, allowing them to sell their wares on site without asking for anything in return. Dozens of plants from a local florist grace the coffee shop in addition to dozens that Roberts has brought in.
“The vision for Kinship was always about community,” Roberts says. “This is about putting something out in the world that’s better.”
On a Saturday morning last summer, Jenna Bodensteiner led her Rhythm and Rootz class in Kinship’s parking lot. On this particular day, just one other person showed up, but Bodensteiner’s enthusiasm didn’t wane for the entire hour of dance and yoga, a dynamic combination of hipshaking cat-cows and downward dogs. About midway through, Roberts removed his shoes and joined the action. A former running back and special teams player at Kansas State University, Roberts embraces fitness as another tool to strengthen community bonds, not just bodies.
“I got in contact with TJ through fitness communities,” Bodensteiner says. “One of his main things is there isn’t a whole lot of access to physical activities or yoga classes in that part of KCK. Making that available is something that’s super important when you’re building a community. It has to be healthy too.”
Roberts, of course, is in business to make a living. But he says building a community and making a profit aren’t incompatible. In fact, they often depend on each other. Whether that community emerges organically, say, with the familiar faces that come into a neighborhood bar or barbershop, or whether it comes about through the kind of nudging Roberts provides, the people who make up these communities are also customers. And once he brings them in, he wants them to keep coming back. To ensure this, he relies on the basics.
“This is about putting something out in the world that's better. ”
T J
says. “If we do these things really well, we’re going to be just fine.”
Ray Freeman and his wife, Kat, are Kinship regulars. They’ve been sipping iced caramel macchiatos, chais and cinnamon delights three days a week since the coffee shop opened. But for Ray Freeman, executive director of the One Community JiuJitsu Club, Kinship has been more than a place to hang out. It’s become a crucial partner, raising the profile of Freeman’s nonprofit by allowing it to conduct jiujitsu demonstrations in the parking lot during monthly art walks downtown.
“He’s really preaching collaboration and cooperation,” Freeman says.
In the process, Kinship has become a networking hub for his organization. Freeman says that One
Community – which provides jiujitsu courses for families and children as a way to promote mental and physical resilience – owes its existence to a chance encounter he had at Kinship. The United Way of Greater Kansas City had set up a booth on a day when Freeman and Kat had stopped in for coffee. A few days earlier, Freeman had applied for a $15,000 grant from the organization. When he saw the booth, he approached the woman staffing it.
“She really went to bat for us,” Freeman says. “She could just feel my energy and that we could use help.” One Community JiuJitsu got the grant, its first significant contribution. “If not for that encounter, I’m not sure One Community would be here.”
Roberts is the Black son of a white couple who adopted him when he was 2 years old and raised him in Wamego, Kansas, where less than 1% of the population is Black. He says that as hard as he worked to become part of the community – joining the band, getting elected to his high school student council, excelling at team sports – he never quite fit into the nearly all-white small town about 15 miles east of Manhattan.
“My parents made an effort,” he says, “and there were those people who were cool to me who made me who I am.”
But then there were the racist assaults. The frequent need to fight to protect his dignity. The n-word some students would shout at him, including one incident involving a teammate. “I quit the basketball team because of that,” he says.
Roberts also grew up with what he refers to as his ‘deformity’ – having been born with three fingers missing from his left hand. Despite this, he excelled at sports and music.
Through it all, Roberts relied on grit and his adult champions to make good things happen. “They saw greatness in me,” he says. “They just didn’t know what it was. And to be honest, I didn’t either.”
Although Roberts did not grow up with Black role models, as an adult he embraced his Black identity as he stepped into a beverage industry that is dominated by white people. And because it is, Roberts says, Black people have spent most of the last three decades of the coffee revolution on the sidelines. He aims to change that with Kinship.
“There’s a large demographic that’s not used to being invited to specialty coffee,” he says. “Some of the companies may claim to love diversity, but it’s a laughable comment, to be honest. You can tell in two seconds how diverse a company is. When I realized that, I realized there’s a huge opportunity here to create our own lane.”
To that end, Roberts has a diverse staff; currently, all of Kinship’s five baristas are either Black or Hispanic. But Roberts’ vision for a more inclusive industry goes beyond the coffee shop walls. He is determined to demonstrate to other coffee shops, no matter the race or ethnicity of their owners, that it is possible to diversify the entire specialty coffee supply chain – from growers to shippers to roasters and shop owners.
It’s a tall order, Roberts says: “Today’s trade routes, which are virtually the same as the slave trade, are pretty much European-owned. And it’s hard to find Black-owned or Hispanic-owned specialty coffee farms. The good land that goes to the coffee farmers is likely white-owned, large investors.”
Because he roasts his own beans and owns his own shop, Roberts has solved the end of that supply-chain puzzle. And he’s making inroads with the beginning and the middle. He recently found Black-owned coffee growers that can supply the Colombian and Ethiopian beans he roasts, and a Black individual to ship them. Diversifying the supply chains for his beans from Guatemala, Brazil, Kenya and Costa Rica is a work in progress. Roberts hopes that other coffee shop owners will follow his example. “We need more transparency around sourcing and ownership,” he says.
Upon entering the Kinship Cafe, customers pick up on a cheery vibe that’s augmented by artwork and plants. It’s one of the things that’s boosted the coffee shop’s rating to five stars on Yelp. Photo by Dave Kaup
Building a diverse customer base has been an easier task, but it takes effort. Cast an eye around Kinship on any given day and there will be a mix of Black, Hispanic and white coffee drinkers, largely reflecting downtown KCK’s demographics. As with the supply chain, Roberts knows that he can’t simply count on diversity to just happen. He needs to bill Kinship as an inclusive place to gather. It’s no accident, for example, that Kinship’s logo is a black and white heart designed to resemble two people hugging.
“All are welcome,” Roberts says. “We’re not just here for LGBTQ people, or Black or brown or white people. We’re literally here for everyone who wants to get a good cup of coffee and enjoy good artwork and good music.”
1. What are the values behind operating Kinship Coffee in this way?
2. How might TJ Roberts influence other coffee shop owners to diversify the supply chains for their beans?
3. What should Roberts be considering
Even though the post office in Norwich has gone the way of the 25-cent stamp, residents can still get their mail downtown from folks like June Hardaway, at Ye Olde General Store. Photo by Jeff Tuttle
BY: STAN FINGER
The modest general store on the corner of Second Avenue and Main Street in Norwich, with its angled awning on wooden pillars, echoes back to a time before two World Wars and automobiles brought profound change to retailing.
The shelves of Ye Olde General Store hold a little bit of everything, from nuts and bolts to kitchen basics to paint and plumbing supplies. Even strangers are greeted with a warm smile when they reach the simple counter in the corner.
If you can’t find something on the shelves, you can pretty much order it through the store’s online catalog.
In a walled-off corner, carved out of the back office on the south end of the store, sits another of the store’s goods and services. That is where Norwich’s community post office is tucked away, where residents can access their post office boxes and basic postal supplies 24 hours a day.
Norwich has not had a post office for many years. But residents say having that secure location in the heart of town is vital for this community of
little more than 400 people less than 40 miles southwest of Wichita.
“I love it,” Sabrina Van Dyke says as she stands on a sleepy Main Street on a chilly winter’s morning. “We can show up at any point in time and know that our mail is here.”
It also means she can walk two blocks to get her mail from a post office box, when otherwise she would have to drive several miles.
According to data obtained from the U.S. Postal Service through a Freedom of Information Act request, Norwich is one of more than 30 Kansas towns and cities that have community post offices, often located in retail stores. The spaces are not allowed to be owned or staffed by the Postal Service or its employees.
There are several other criteria that must be met for a community post office to be approved, including having a designated space apart from the contractor’s business, not being in or next to a business in which intoxicating beverages are sold for consumption on the premises, and taking out a surety bond.
With rural areas of the state shrinking in population, many communities have had to get creative to ensure that residents have the services they need close to home. In some cases, that means local amenities such as Ye Olde General Store, to paraphrase the Travis Kelce Pfizer commercial, offering “two things” – or more – at once.
It’s a transition, though, that requires leadership. For it to work, June Hardaway, the owner of Ye Olde General Store, says a town has to have a business or individual willing to take on responsibility and a feasible location or inside space to put a post office.
“It does take some extra work,” particularly early on, Hardaway says, but she says it’s well worth it – especially for elderly residents. Many of them get their medications by mail, and having a post office box nearby means “it’s in a protected environment,” she points out. “We’ve even had medications come through that had to be refrigerated. We have a little refrigerator, and we were able to accommodate that.”
In a sense, it is something of a return to the early days of Kansas, when a small town’s general store was where people went to send and receive mail via the stagecoach.
Selden was on the verge of losing its post office about 10 years ago after the clerk left and officials could not find a replacement. The grocery store there, Karl’s Cash Store, became a community post office so people would have a place in town to buy stamps and postal supplies.
“I feel like this is a win-win, because it helps you to be able to keep a small business with a little extra revenue coming in. And you keep your community alive.”
June Hardaway
The vacancy at the post office has been filled twice since. One of those clerks, Tammie Stevenson, says if employees had not been found, it is likely the Selden post office would have been closed.
“Everybody's having such a terrible time finding help in general,” says Stevenson, who is now the postmaster in Oberlin. “I don't know what's going to happen.”
There have been three openings in her office in the two years she has been Oberlin’s postmaster, she says, and in that time span only two people applied for the jobs.
Grover Cleveland was president when a post office was opened in tiny Vassar in Osage County in 1887. But after nearly 150 years, the town of about 200 no longer has a post office. The aging building next to Zion Lutheran Church was falling apart and the longtime clerk retired.
“It was kind of a temporary situation that went on for years and years and years,” says church secretary Jean Curtis.
Jennifer Roy, a veterinarian who owns South Shore Animal Hospital in Vassar, was approached about converting a small building she owns next door into a community post office, but she declined.
“For us to improve the building so that it meets code, we would have to pour way more money into it than the rent that we would ever receive off of it,” Roy says, “so it was like a no-brainer that we
Breck’s Green Acres Restaurant down the road on K-268 serves as Vassar’s community post office, and most residents have mail delivered to mailboxes erected at their addresses and handled by a rural route mail carrier. There are no P.O. boxes at the restaurant, though.
“The people that live in Vassar who had to go to the post office every day to pick up their mail out of a P.O. box, they now have to drive into Lyndon,” Roy says. “That’s a bit of a hike” – at least seven miles. “If you’re a retired person and don’t really have a reason to go into Lyndon every day, that would be cumbersome.”
Rexford finds itself at a crossroads similar to Vassar’s: The longtime post office building has been closed for at least eight months because it was deemed unsafe. Lane Purcell, pastor of the local church, has lived in the Rexford area for almost three decades and says there have been some adjustments.
The benefits to the community and the store from this arrangement flow in both directions. “I feel like this is a win-win, because it helps you to be able to keep a small business with a little extra revenue coming in. And you keep your community alive,” Hardaway says.
Community post offices like the one in Norwich will likely become much more common in Kansas and nationwide as staffing shortages become more severe and the Postal Service strives to stanch financial losses.
“They're going to have to do some hard thinking about rural routes and stuff,” Stevenson says of the Postal Service. “Because if you can't find people, what do you do?”
The current postal clerk in Selden, Jessica Wahrman, says rural carriers are hard to come by and in high demand.
“We have two carriers,” she says. “One of them does Selden and a little bit of Rexford, and the other one does a little bit of the Dresden area because they don't have a post office.”
“Everybody had to put up mailboxes around town,” he says. His church didn’t, though, so instead Purcell takes advantage of the town’s multi-cubby P.O. box – which happens to be placed right in front of the old post office building.
“It’s OK,” he says. “I like having a post office. You get to talk to people and buy your stamps.”
Without a place for such casual social encounters, rural communities with fewer than 250 residents like Rexford often begin to lose their quiet charm and just become, well, quiet.
“We don’t have much going on here,” Purcell says as he walked his dachshund, Winnie, through the town’s wide streets on a brisk January day. According to him, the post office building was closed because of persistent roof leaks. There’s speculation it’ll reopen, but Purcell has his doubts.
Some communities, such as Gorham, have found ways to put the post office in a newer building. The Russell County burg of nearly 400 people has a small, well-kept postal building similar in design to the one in Selden, featuring residential boxes, stamps, shipping materials and a drop-box for outgoing packages. It’s close to most of the town’s eateries and places of interest, and it’s staffed during the workweek.
It’s convenient enough for Cheryl Hemken most of the time, who has lived a couple of blocks south of the post office for about seven years. She says the only major inconvenience is the hours. The lobby is open 24 hours a day but the clerk is only available weekdays from 8 a.m. to noon and on Saturdays from 9 to 10 a.m. Hemken says the schedule is usually fine.
“I just think there’s not enough going on to keep somebody here and paying them to stand around and wait for somebody to come in and mail something,” she says.
But it beats the alternative, which is not having a post office at all.
Dozens of post offices were established across Kansas in the 19th century, including in Corning. But in 1997, the bell tolled for Corning’s Mr. ZIP, and First Heritage Bank took on the responsibility of providing postal services. Photo by Jeff Tuttle
“Every town hates it when you lose your post office,” Corning City Clerk Diane Haverkamp says.
When her town of about 200 residents northeast of Manhattan lost its post office several years ago, the First Heritage Bank signed up to serve as a community post office.
“We feel blessed to have that service,” Haverkamp says. “It is a nice option, and it gets used a lot.”
Jackie Heideman has always lived in Corning, but until she transferred to a position at the First Heritage Bank branch in her hometown, she had no idea how busy the community post office is.
“One of the biggest things that we do is people who need to send packages,” Heideman says.
“They can't just leave them in their mailbox and hope that the carrier will pick it up and make change for them if they leave $40 in there. So we do a lot of packages, which surprised me.”
Many people are now doing return receipt mailing, she says, so they can track their mailings.
“We have seen that pick up a lot,” Heideman says. “They want that extra item on there to know where their package or their parcel actually is located.”
Van Dyke says she likes knowing who is handling her mail in Norwich because she knows they will take good care of it.
In several towns across Kansas, a community post office is an outpost of convenience, not the only option.
Mount Hope, for instance, still has a U.S. Postal Service presence, but it also has what Barb Nowak likes to call a “village post office” in the town’s public library. There are no post office boxes in the library, just a display of stamps and mailers available atop a high shelf.
“Our hours are kind of opposite,” says Nowak, director of the library. “I’m usually open in the afternoon and one evening a week, and they’re open every morning.”
Community post offices aren’t unfamiliar to residents of urban areas, allowing residents to do their postal business often at a grocery store, cutting down on errands. But they are even more important to small towns. On the surface, they might seem like a good alternative to a post office, but Hardaway says there’s no generic prescription.
“Every community has its own dynamics,” she says, “and I think you would just need to dive into that and see what that is and see who’s willing” to do it. “You’ve got to have somebody to go above and beyond in order to get it started, and then it can kind of run itself.”
In some cases, ensuring that the venture works calls for a bit of sacrifice. If there isn’t an adjoining structure available that could be converted to a community post office, she says, “the big thing
is you’ve got someone who’s willing to give up (retail) space for it and do whatever it takes to make it work.”
In her case, the general store had a second access point on the south end of the building, so they put up a new wall and created sufficient space for nearly 100 post office boxes, about 85% of which are rented. They use a separate cash register to handle postal transactions and added doors to improve access to the post office boxes.
Not every town finds an acceptable solution to losing a post office, as Vassar shows, but Hardaway says small-town creativity can often find a way.
“If you’ve got a little city hall, why could you not put it in your city hall?” Hardaway says. “It doesn’t take much room, honestly.”
Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing series called “Rural Solutions” about efforts to address challenges in rural parts of Kansas. It is being curated by Journal reporters Stan Finger and Beccy Tanner based on ideas shared from the Kansas Sampler Foundation, based near Inman.
1. What uncertainty and conflict might someone gearing up to exercise leadership on this challenge expect to encounter?
2. What could a trustworthy process for more rural areas to experiment with solutions such as community post offices look like?
3. Such as the reliable delivery of medications, especially for elderly residents, what other potential losses are likely alive for the various factions implicated in this challenge?
- By Jaryth Barten
STARTING AND RUNNING A SMALL BUSINESS CAN BE AN ISOLATING EXPERIENCE, MANY PROPRIETORS SAY. BUT IN RENO COUNTY, EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY TO BETTER EDUCATE AND COMMUNICATE WITH ENTREPRENEURS. STILL, CHALLENGES ABOUND, RANGING FROM LACK OF ACCESS TO NEGATIVE ATTITUDES TO AGING HOMES AND BUILDINGS.
BY: AJ DOMESometimes running a small business means waking up before dawn on a bitterly cold January morning, preparing for a snowstorm.
Just ask Shane Iwashige. Last winter, the resident of Hutchinson in south-central Kansas knew the properties his company manages in and around the city would need to be cleared before the snow got too deep.
“I left my house around 2:45 a.m. and didn’t get home until around 9 p.m. one day,” Iwashige says. “It was an 18-hour day of plowing parking lots.”
A native of Partridge, a small community in Reno County near Hutchinson, Iwashige (pronounced Ee-WASH-ee-gay) is an entrepreneur and an owner of The Rock Group, an umbrella organization that encompasses a property management firm, general construction business, janitorial services and a real estate wing.
Iwashige sells real estate, provides leadership coaching programs and during winter months he clears snow from the properties managed by his company. Some of the properties, such as banks and apartment complexes, are relatively small, while others are large commercial manufacturing facilities. Scraping parking lots in the predawn hours during a blizzard reminds him of wheat harvests from his youth.
“I kind of like that adrenaline rush,” he says.
A long day spent alone pushing snow into piles doesn’t faze Iwashige; it’s just another aspect of being an entrepreneur and business owner. But there’s a difference between toiling in solitude and the isolation that can accompany entrepreneurism.
“I really underestimated how alone a business owner can be at many times, even if they’re very intentional with their time,” he says.
Iwashige’s brother, Joel, also knows the feeling of aloneness that’s part of the entrepreneurial experience. A software developer by trade, Joel Iwashige is trying to explore how he can help the Reno County business community through a consulting firm he’s attempting to establish while still working full-time.
“My day job is with a small company, but with other employees located largely outside of Reno County,” Joel Iwashige says. “Then, I’m a nascent entrepreneur on the other hand.”
In his attempt to build a business while working daily, Joel Iwashige feels as though he’s balancing with one leg extended over a ravine, representing the leap into entrepreneurship and away from a more stable 9-to-5 job. Joel says it’s quite common for budding entrepreneurs to maintain their day jobs for support, and not just in Reno County.
“There are a lot of entrepreneurs who dip their toes into the water before deciding how fully to commit,” he says.
Efforts currently underway in Reno County aim to make the daunting aspects of starting a business easier for entrepreneurs like the Iwashiges. In a county struggling to grow, the climate for innovation is held back by a lack of consistent, accessible information about how to start a business. And residents of the county’s 16 other towns can see economic development efforts as being too centered on Hutchinson, the largest city.
But those are not the only barriers. Mindset matters too. Some residents see new business ideas and how they operate as a threat to what they value most about the community, its culture and traditions. Or as larks destined to fail, as so many quests have before.
There’s even a sense of being stuck with the old: old buildings that require extensive repairs to renovate
and old houses past their useful life spans but still lived in because there aren’t affordable alternatives.
The Iwashige brothers can see the resources for first-time business owners and more seasoned entrepreneurs that exist in the community. But they also see a gap that more connection and education could help fill.d ucation could help fill.
“It’s important … to let people see that you don’t actually have it all together, without scaring off potential collaborators,” Joel Iwashige says. “But also, a space for authentic connection is a major need.”
An effort to help the county bridge the gap between where it is and where it wants to be
has been underway in recent months. A pilot program called Heartland Together is designed to better connect Reno County entrepreneurs with local support organizations and to shore up the connections needed to promote an entrepreneurial ecosystem.
That description, evoking an image of flora and fauna, has been used in recent years to describe the inner workings of a community’s business landscape and its makeup. According to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Missouri, entrepreneurial ecosystems include onramps for accessing talent and resources within a community, as well as intersections for people to share ideas and knowledge, plus a community culture built on collaboration and trust.
Heartland Together, hosted by the Kansas Leadership Center, is a three-month pilot program funded with help from a $450,000 grant from the Kauffman Foundation. The program includes leadership training and also has been initiated in Liberal, Kansas, and Marshalltown, Iowa. (The Journal is published by the KLC, but this story was reported independently.)
More than 20 people from across Reno County met in September and again in November to discuss their ecosystem, point out what’s working and what isn’t, and formulate action steps. Participants ranged from entrepreneurs like the
One of the biggest needs identified by the group was more accessible, consistent information on how to start a business in Reno County. Candace Davidson, health education supervisor for the Reno County Health Department, wanted people to have more chances to learn about entrepreneurialism and what support agencies were present in the area. Her Heartland Together group focused on creating a new channel for information.
“We’re trying to figure out how to best get the resources we have available into the hands of people who don’t normally know about them or don’t know where to look for them,” she says.
Options such as a printed booklet were floated, but Davidson thought a digital option would be better. Her group ultimately landed on designing a QR code, a graphic that resembles a Tetris version of a barcode. When scanned by a cell phone or tablet, the QR code leads to the website for StartUp Hutch, an entrepreneurial support organization.
“We hope to really see an increase of entrepreneurs within our ecosystem,” Davidson says. “That’s hopefully the end result, driving more clicks and more insight to StartUp Hutch.”
Johannah Moore likes the QR code. She is the branch president of Peoples Bank and Trust in Hutchinson, and she’s part of Davidson’s group. She also sits on the board for StartUp Hutch, the main entrepreneurial support organization in the county. She doesn’t come across many residents who dislike the idea of economic growth in Reno County.
“I feel like Reno County is shifting in a sense that people just seem more willing to try to collaborate,” Moore says.
Moore and Davidson agree that one of the main challenges Reno County entrepreneurs and support organizations face is the state of discouragement regarding new business efforts. It’s present among Reno County’s smaller communities as well as in Hutchinson, a city that has remained stuck at a population mark of 40,000 for three decades.
Such trends have helped fuel a sense of pessimism. Moore regularly encounters negative talk about Reno County’s economic status and business opportunities in her office and on the street. Usually that talk includes some variation of the phrase, “That’s the way it’s always been.”
Jackson Swearer, the director of StartUp Hutch, is an area native, and has always thought of Reno County as a good place to grow up and grow a business.
To help get the word to local go-getters, Johannah Moore, branch president of Peoples Bank and Trust and a member of the Heartland Together group, devised a QR code that sends users to the StartUp Hutch website, a source of entrepreneurial support. Photo by Jeff Tuttle
“I do think there’s a group of people who, you’re not going to change their opinion,” Moore says. “So you have to focus on those who you can talk to. I’d say overall there’s an upward trend of positivity.”
“When we talk about negative mindsets, my mind goes to the question of, ‘Is it really harder here?’” he says. “I’d say it’s actually easier here in Reno County with the resources we have available.”
Swearer says the misperception stems in part from concerns about local code enforcement, especially when it comes to renovating older buildings.
The cost of starting a business can skyrocket if an entrepreneur wants to renovate an existing building to bring it to current code standards –even higher if they wish to construct new.
It’s a dynamic that’s true for housing too. Reno County lacks livable homes for sale or rent in the lower-to-middle-income market segment. Many neighborhoods, especially Hutchinson’s, are filled with homes built between the 1920s and the 1950s. Some of these structures are becoming blighted, but they remain occupied. A large number of renters living below the poverty line can’t afford to buy better houses.
“One of our challenges in Reno County is we do have a high poverty rate,” Swearer says. “We have a higher rate of kids on free and reduced lunch. It’s above the state average.”
Improving economic conditions and growing the community will require investments in housing, particularly if the community wants to attract more industry, Swearer says. Reno County has been home to heavy agricultural and manufacturing operations for decades. However, the loss of large corporate partners such as Target and the decline of the Uptown Hutch Mall over the past dozen years have led to a constant stream of Reno Countians headed south on Kansas Highway 96 to Wichita for shopping.
More industry would bring more jobs and the means to support new and existing small businesses. Swearer says those are among the big-picture items he and other community leaders will be tackling in coming years.
“I do think investing in small-business growth and development is not only the thing we need to do, but it’s one thing we must do,” he says.
Swearer frequently hears a range of concerns people have about starting businesses in Reno County. He’s hoping to change some of the sourer attitudes by promoting a philosophy of active leadership.
“That’s one of the reasons why the KLC framework is really valuable,” Swearer says, “this attitude that anyone can lead, and we can self-authorize to act on the challenges we care about. I think that’s a powerful mindset for social change and progress generally, especially in entrepreneurial ecosystem work.”
Growing and developing small businesses is what Swearer specializes in. The goal of StartUp Hutch is to “help new ventures take flight.” Swearer serves as an entrepreneur navigator, listening to individuals’ needs and connecting them with tools to help them overcome challenges. Online tools on his agency’s website range from videos about securing startup funding and communicating with
In the late 19th century, railroads helped get the infant city of Hutchinson off to a start. One of their surveyors provided its name. Shortly thereafter, the local salt beds were discovered, forming the basis for a major industry. The population grew at a steady, if modest, rate until about 1980, where it’s remained stuck at around 40,000. Photo by Jeff Tuttle
municipal officials, to marketing and branding a new business.
“I want to help more people reach their goals or explore whether it (small-business ownership) would be something that works for them,” Swearer says.
He knows that many people have a tough time accessing his agency’s information simply because they don’t know about StartUp Hutch, so he’s excited about the QR code implementation.
“I’m really curious to see how it works,” he says.
“I think a bunch of low-risk experiments like this are exactly what we need to move the needle. I think we’ll learn something important regardless of the outcome.”
Once the QR code is distributed, Swearer will be able to monitor new traffic to the StartUp Hutch website. Moore, the bank president, says it’s a more measurable method of effecting change.
“If it’s something that works well, and people are passing them out and utilizing them, and the website is getting more volume, then we’ll look at the cost of making sure it gets replicated and dispersed more,” Moore says.
The code will be printed on stickers and flyers and placed at various well-traveled spots around Reno County, such as village eateries and city bus stops. Davidson hopes people with business websites will incorporate the QR code onto their web pages.
One hurdle that Davidson sees is getting people to understand the code isn’t spam and it won’t infect any digital device.
The QR code isn’t the only experiment being tried by Heartland Together participants. The Iwashige brothers are developing a “mastermind group” made up of Reno County entrepreneurs and business experts. The goal is for novice entrepreneurs such as Joel Iwashige to connect with more experienced business owners, and learn from them.
While most of the discussion regarding entrepreneurial progress focuses on Hutch, the county seat, Reno County’s smaller communities also have important places in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Candace Davidson lives in Buhler, a community of about 1,400 people just north and east of Hutchinson, and she serves on the City Council. She says there are a lot of budding entrepreneurs in towns like hers who have good ideas worth investing in.
“It’s super important that we reach them,” she says, “and hopefully this (QR code) will be a catalyst for them to really jump on whatever their dream is, or at least show them what’s possible.”
Joel Iwashige knows what’s possible when community members come together for the betterment of their hometown. His parents volunteered time with the Partridge Community Association, a group of people who “simply wanted to invest in the community.”
“I’ve seen both the pressures that work against rural spaces, but I’ve also seen people stepping up in really cool ways and making a difference in various places,” he says.
Shane Iwashige hopes the mastermind groups will push back on the sense of isolation that entrepreneurs can experience.
“All connection is better than none, but a deep sense of connection, where vulnerability is welcomed and held, is still significantly lacking in entrepreneurial spaces,” Shane says. “Frankly,
I think we might do a little better job in Reno County than in other places, and yet there’s so much more to be done.”
“More to be done” includes more experiments to try to benefit the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Shane Iwashige thinks Reno County entrepreneurs and their support organizations should attempt every experiment available to them “and probably 25 more” to help raise the collective bar for Reno County.
“All I have to offer is my interpretation of where the bar is, and it’s higher than where it used to be,” he says. “I think one of the seductions of navigating adaptive challenges like an ecosystem is: We try to boil it down to one thing that’ll fix everything. When in truth, different pieces need to move at different times.
“That’s why I love the experimental model coming from Heartland Together. We’re trying to put together different things to help different people at different times in different places.”
1. There are resources for entrepreneurs in Reno County and still launching a new business is challenging. What are some of the barriers that exist?
2. What other experiments could those in the entrepreneurial ecosystem try to address the sense of isolation newer business owners may experience?
3. Is this community challenge deeper than entrepreneurship? What other factors are impacting the situation?
-
By Camille ScottMark and Phoebe Davenport, owners of Levare Properties, whose holdings include Plaza Towers, the Leon Apartments, and the 111-year-old Hoke Building, spoke about their entrepreneurial efforts at a StartUp Hutch event at Sand Hills Brewery, another budding business venture.
MUÑOZ, FOUNDER OF THE TOOLBOX, HELPS BUSINESS OWNERS OF COLOR REALIZE THEIR ENTREPRENEURIAL AMBITIONS AND FIND ECONOMIC STABILITY.
BY: STEFANIA LUGLIWhen sharp-dressed strangers in suits visited his childhood house, it ignited a spark in 9-year-old Gabe Muñoz.
Although he didn’t know them, he was taken with their appearance and the presence they brought into his great-grandparents’ home in Mexico City.
“It was the very first time that I ever saw anybody wear a suit that looked Latino,” Muñoz says. “I remember asking my mom, ‘Hey, who are those guys? What do they do?’ And she said, ‘They’re businessmen.’ I was like, ‘Oh. I like the way they dress. They look good.’ And I thought to myself, I want to be a businessman when I grow up.”
Modern-day Muñoz didn’t land too far from the childhood dream: He’s the founder of The Toolbox, which bills itself as the “go-to resource for everything small business” in Wyandotte County. The nonprofit specializes in reducing barriers for Latino entrepreneurs to “create a more inclusive and equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
The Toolbox was born from a mix of professional research and personal ambition. In 2019, Muñoz was named the director of the Kansas City ESHIP Communities initiative, funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. He was charged with identifying barriers to local entrepreneurship, pinpointing existing gaps in services and brainstorming possible solutions.
Muñoz was familiar with such markers, for he grew up watching his father struggle to maintain a small business. He even changed his major in college
in the hopes of learning enough to address his father’s challenges as a small-business owner.
After college, he worked at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City as its director of sales.
“I didn’t come to the position with this mentality of ‘go out and sell and sell’ to people. I just went out and talked to people to learn their stories, figure out what were problems and issues they were running into, trying to see if there’s any way I can help them,” Muñoz says. “My end goal was to knock on doors and meet business owners where they were at.”
When Muñoz was in third grade – shortly after meeting those men in suits – his school held a fundraiser selling chocolate bars. It was a prime opportunity for him to flex business credentials.
According to Muñoz, his mother persuaded the school to give him and his brothers extra candy to sell. She would drop off the pack in front of an office building in downtown Topeka, where Muñoz learned the rough-goings of cold sales.
“The first day I would go up to people and say ‘Hi, would you like to buy candy?’ People right away say, ‘No, no, no.’ I was like, ‘Oh, man, this is hard.’ But I figured that if I changed my approach, I would get different responses,” Muñoz says.
“I learned that messaging was important. So I started going up to people and asking ‘Hi, can you help me?’ They would pause … and they’d say, ‘Yes.’”
Muñoz says he ended up selling the most chocolate bars nationwide that year – 900 in a week’s time. A ceremony was held at the school, where officials from the fundraiser held an assembly to bestow on Muñoz a special plaque that he still has to this day.
As a teenager, he helped his father at the family business: a shop selling retail and grocery items from Mexico, international calling cards and, he says, “the first place in the Midwest where you could find music in Spanish.”
The family of 11 would run registers, stock shelves and take trips to Mexico to shop for products.
“We were very hands-on kids. We went from being on food stamps to being able to get off of all the federal assistance,” Muñoz says. “My dad was able to provide comfortably for his family. That’s nine of us kids.”
The Muñoz family saw how entrepreneurship can help move families up economically.
Research does suggest that entrepreneurship can be a strong vehicle for economic mobility or stability.
A 2020 study from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School found a significant relationship between entrepreneurship and economic mobility in the U.S., tracking an increase in a person’s self-determined economic mobility after becoming self-employed.
Additionally, a 2023 report from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business characterizes Latino-owned businesses as resilient, pointing to a nationwide trend of Latino-owned businesses recovering at a slightly faster rate than white-owned businesses – despite being disproportionately impacted by the COVID pandemic.
On the other hand, as Muñoz’s family experienced, entrepreneurship can exacerbate the racial wealth gap if a business fails. Recent research from Brandeis University found that Black-owned
“ … I THOUGHT TO MYSELF, I WANT TO BE A BUSINESSMAN WHEN I GROW UP.”
Gabe Muñoz
businesses were less likely to remain open four years after their start, and that, due to this disparity, “Black business owners are more likely to experience downward economic mobility and less likely to experience upward mobility, compared to their white counterparts.”
“Like a lot of small businesses, my dad tried to do everything by himself,” Muñoz says, ‘from stocking shelves to filling inventory to doing all the taxes and paperwork. He eventually fell behind … and had to make the decision to close the business and come to an agreement with the IRS on some type of payment plan.”
That’s why The Toolbox focuses on empowering entrepreneurs of color to find success in the long term rather than put all their efforts behind just increasing the rate of entrepreneurship.
That mission uplifts entrepreneurs such as Virginia Mercado, the founder and CEO of Thunderlight Work Boots in Kansas City, Kansas. She had been in business for two years when she first heard about The Toolbox, and says she was initially skeptical of the nonprofit. She had had negative experiences with other support organizations.
“However, after attending one of their classes, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how willing they were to help a non-English speaking immigrant who was also a single mother,” Mercado says.
She added that after taking courses with The Toolbox, she created a business plan that she calls “instrumental” in securing a grant from the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. Mercado also was able to develop a plan for sales growth, which she says
has helped her obtain her first business loan after repeatedly being denied.
“The Toolbox's commitment to empowering small businesses like mine has had an incredible impact, not only on me but also on my community,” Mercado says. “Their tireless efforts to support and uplift small businesses have not gone unnoticed, and I am confident that many others, like me, have benefited from their work.”
“I get hit up by quite a few people saying they wish they could do something similar to us,” says Toolbox founder Gabe Muñoz, “but I don’t think we have any secret sauce. We just go out and talk to people.” Photo by Jeff Tuttle
When Muñoz was named the director of the Kansas City ESHIP Communities initiative in 2019, he assembled a council to survey small-business owners in the community to identify key barriers entrepreneurs face.
Their research outlined four: trust issues amongst entrepreneurs toward service providers being able to meet their specific needs, cultural competency challenges on the side of entrepreneurial support organizations, lack of multilingual programs, and entrepreneurs’ lack of awareness of existing resources.
“We want to create independence for our clients,” says Yvette Solis, director of economic empowerment at El Centro, a community partner with The Toolbox.
Solis cites culture shock, technology and a lack of access to information as stressors for entrepreneurs. Resources need to extend beyond just handing them a check.
“We give financial literacy classes, teach them about credit, home-buying. We do budgeting as well,” she says. The Toolbox offers similar expertise on access to capital, permits and what different levels of government require from business owners.
The Toolbox has several Spanish-speaking individuals on staff, which Solis says builds confidence for entrepreneurs with a language barrier, allowing them to better communicate their vision and any challenges they face. El Centro and The Toolbox regularly send clients to each other to help build a rounded education.
Muñoz believes that language and culture are factors in the trust between an individual and an institution. During his ESHIP survey, participants admitted to feeling distrustful of organizations, and they thought that information related to their entrepreneurial ambitions “was being held for selective view.”
“I don’t think that is ever the intention of organizations,” Muñoz says. “It’s just that there is no communication or relationship there. And because there’s no communication, people feel like they’re siloed and that ‘The Other’ doesn’t care about them.”
For example, he says, quite a few businesses of color were not aware of their eligibility for
Paycheck Protection Program loans or similar measures during the COVID pandemic.
“A lot of people were hesitant, even thinking that I was trying to scam them,” Muñoz says. He was able to achieve a small grant to contract accountants to help small-business owners get their books in order, which helped build a trusting relationship.
Pedro Morales, owner of Quality Framing & Art in Mission, credits Muñoz for giving him the skills necessary to start his business. Muñoz taught him how to apply for a business license, create his store’s website, pay business taxes and helped him apply for local grants.
“My English is poor, and he helped me understand so much,” Morales says. “We are still connected (beyond just starting Quality Framing). He’s a great person; they’re a great team. Good people.
“Sometimes when you want to start a business you freak out. You have fear. Like, ‘How do I do this?!’” Morales says. “If there's a business struggling in one way or another, they should go to The Toolbox. They are a very helpful offer to the community.”
Solis, the director at El Centro, says that the attention Muñoz provides to his client goes beyond the routine.
“If we don’t have an answer for clients, we tell them, ‘Just go to Gabe! Go to the Toolbox!’ That trust he’s built with the community is essential,” she says.
Since its founding, The Toolbox has assisted 115 entrepreneurs in launching their businesses, according to Muñoz. Another 225 individual entrepreneurs were helped. 70% of those were immigrant entrepreneurs.
“I get hit up by quite a few people saying they wish they could do something similar to us, but I don’t think we have any secret sauce. We just go out and talk to people,” Muñoz says. “We started with no money and built a brand by word of mouth.”
While encouraging growth for other entrepreneurs, Muñoz says The Toolbox has its own goals too: opening locations in other Kansas cities and expanding its programming to languages beyond English and Spanish. In the meantime, Muñoz continues to diversify Kansas City’s entrepreneurial landscape, showing others that they don’t have to wait for strangers in suits to validate their dreams.
1. The story highlights the role of education and cultural understanding in empowering entrepreneurs of color. How does The Toolbox address these factors?
2. Considering the challenges faced by entrepreneurs of color, how can organizations and individuals contribute to increasing economic mobility?
3. In what ways do Muñoz and The Toolbox work to build trust? What are ways you could experiment with building trust in your own context?
- By Maren BerblingerBLANCA LOPEZ IS WORKING TO ESTABLISH A LANGUAGE BUSINESS IN COFFEYVILLE TO SERVE MORE NATIVE SPANISH SPEAKERS. BUT A LACK OF FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND DIFFICULTY IN CARVING OUT THE TIME NEEDED TO SORT THROUGH THE DETAILS ARE HOLDING HER BACK. HER STORY ILLUSTRATES A GAP THAT PROGRAMS DESIGNED TO SERVE ENTREPRENEURS MIGHT NEED CREATIVE SOLUTIONS TO FILL.
a
“Being on the other side of things – being the one who is not able to communicate or speak or defend herself – kind of pushed me into being an advocate for my community,” she says.
BY: AJ DOMEBlanca Lopez has been present for childbirths, traffic stops, hospital visits, court dates and jail appearances – mostly as a volunteer – as she works to establish a language services company to meet the changing needs of her southeast Kansas community.
A resident of Coffeyville since 2007, Lopez has worked for the past decade as an interpreter and translator for the area’s Latino population. She contracts with various organizations and companies in and around Coffeyville to provide Spanish-English interpretation and translation, both paid and unpaid. In that time, she’s seen how important it is to distinguish between interpreting and translating.
The English-as-a-Second-Language educators at her middle school helped, but Lopez only saw them for an hour a day. She felt like she was drowning because she had no advocate to help her understand English. Then came high school, where Lopez felt relieved to be around more Spanish-speaking students. Her grades still suffered though, and she sometimes skipped classes. When she became pregnant as a junior, she realized she needed to do something to improve her situation.
“I REMEMBER GOING HOME AND CRYING TO MY PARENTS.”
“Just because a person is able to speak Spanish and English, it doesn’t mean they are able to interpret for you,” she says. “Interpreting takes a lot,” of skill. “You need to be willing to take and retain information, then change it into the other language and still deliver that information to the other person and continue to do that.”
Lopez and her family emigrated from San Antonio de los Morales in the state of Guanajuato in Mexico. There, Lopez had been a straight-A student who enjoyed attending school. That changed when she came to Kansas without knowing any English.
“It was almost like … all the things I knew didn’t really matter, because I couldn’t express it to anybody,” Lopez says. “I remember going home and crying to my parents, saying, ‘Take me back to Mexico, I don’t need to be here.’”
“Once I had my child as a senior, I was able to go to high school and the alternative school for my GED,” she says.
“I was also working at McDonald’s from 6 p.m. to midnight every night.”
Today, Lopez has four children, ranging in age from 6 to 13. Her husband of 10 years, Isidro, commutes to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for his refinery job. She works full-time for the Kansas Children’s Service League in addition to a part-time job and several contracts for interpretation/translation services. Lopez also serves as a community liaison to connect native Spanish speakers with local resources.
“Being on the other side of things – being the one who is not able to communicate or speak or defend herself – kind of pushed me into being an advocate for my community,” Lopez says. That experience is now driving Lopez to create her own translation company to provide additional services for her clients. She’s encountered a few challenges on her road to establishing her business in Coffeyville, one being a lack of financial support for such services in her area.
“
… I’M
CONSTANTLY BEING PULLED IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS.”
“It’s easier for different entities to hire somebody that they can pay the minimum rate to interpret and translate, rather than going above and beyond to make sure this person is able to practice what you’re hiring them to do,” Lopez says.
The Spanish-speaking population is growing in Coffeyville, in turn putting Lopez’s talents in high demand, which is another challenge she faces in starting her business – being stretched too thin. She says she recently worked 129 hours over a 10-day span.
“It’s hard … making enough time to move forward (with my business) because I’m constantly being pulled in different directions,” Lopez says.
The Kansas Small Business Development Center is a little more than an hour to the northeast of Coffeyville, on the campus of Pittsburg State University, but Lopez currently has no time or energy to spend on entrepreneurialism.
“I don’t have a lot of free time to sit down and go through all the little details and things,” Lopez says. “I don’t know a lot of people that have started something like this.”
Census data suggests the need for interpretation and translation businesses is rising statewide.
Of the 2.9 million residents of Kansas, more than 380,000 identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino in last year’s population estimates.
Across the state in Dodge City, the population is nearly two-thirds Hispanic/Latino, and Maria Aidee Villa says that number is increasing.
“There’s a huge need for interpreters,” Villa says, “and not just for Spanish speakers now.”
Villa owns and operates Spanglish by Aidee (pronounced EYE-dee) LLC. Based in Dodge City, her language business is exactly the kind that Lopez is trying to establish in Coffeyville. To get it off the ground, Villa financed her start-up with money she set aside from her full-time job, because her search to find grants for interpreting or translating services in the state came up empty.
Villa built her business mostly through word of mouth generated by clients throughout southwest Kansas and by sponsoring local athletic events. She now has four to five people who are on call to provide Spanish translation and interpretation. She’s also gained Guatemalan and Somali interpreters in recent months and will assist clients across the state if necessary.
“We’re driving a lot,” Villa says, “but sometimes we can just do” translating and interpreting “over the phone or via Zoom. It just depends on where we’re at and what’s needed.”
Kansas is becoming more of a melting pot of languages as migrants flock to jobs in agriculture and manufacturing. Villa needs more interpreters to serve the growing Somali and Guatemalan populations, plus professionals who are fluent in several Asian languages, including Vietnamese.
Villa has never heard of another business like hers, and she says the fact that Lopez wants to start a similar business speaks to the need for increased language services in Kansas.
“My ultimate fantasy goal … is to create some sort of bigger company to cover the state,” Villa says, “to have interpreters available in different parts of Kansas. That way, anybody who’s in need can call us up.”
Professional language services also reduce the number of “lost in translation” moments. A common practice among Latino adults who aren’t bilingual is to have their children, often elementary- or middle-school-age and receiving English education, translate and interpret for older family members.
“That’s extremely not cool,” Villa says. “You’re putting a huge responsibility on a child to interpret words that they’ve never come across in their life.”
Both Villa and Lopez know how it feels to be a child translator. Villa remembers struggling with medical terminology while interpreting for her mother at a doctor’s office.
“That’s unfair for the parent as well,” Villa says. “They’re having to just go off what their child is saying, which might not be totally accurate.”
Lopez says improving language access for nonnative English speakers in Coffeyville will require placing more Latinos into positions of power, particularly elective office.
“I think we definitely need to do something about the voices who are making decisions in
our community,” she says. “The choices they’re making are based on what they’ve known for years and what’s worked, but they’re not taking into account the demographics of our community today to make decisions.”
Lopez says she’s been asked by local officials to serve as a “guide” for civic boards to address the Spanish-speaking community. Her experience discussing language barriers and community changes with members of those boards, however, often leads to a familiar obstacle: officials using the phrase, “We’ve always done things this way.”
“I think … when something doesn’t impact you, it’s harder for you to see what’s needed out there, and sometimes it takes a lot more being open to change and understanding that our community is changing. This is a new need we didn’t have 10 years ago, but we do have it now.”
1. Juggling multiple contracts and being “spread too thin” could lead one to interpret that Lopez already has her own business. What other interpretations could be made from this article?
2. For more progress to occur, who needs to be involved? If Lopez created a faction map, what would emerge and who would she need to help her make progress?
3. What might holding to purpose look like for Lopez and Villa as they each work to build a statewide network of translation and interpretation services?
- Racquel ThiesenWHEN LETICIA VARGAS OPENED LA PASADITA IN 2002, THE BOUTIQUE WAS ONE OF A FEW LATINO BUSINESSES OPERATING IN SOUTH WICHITA.
NOW THE AREA IS BUSTLING WITH SPANISH-LANGUAGE-FRIENDLY BUSINESSES, AND LA PASADITA IS THRIVING. VARGAS’ STORY OFFERS LESSONS ABOUT THE CHALLENGES FACING LATINO BUSINESS OWNERS AND HOW THEY CAN BE OVERCOME.
BY: CLAUDIA YAUJAR-AMARODriving through south Wichita on Harry Street close to Hydraulic Avenue, business signs in Spanish readily catch the eye. But La Pasadita stands out. It has been there for more than 20 years.
When people think of Latino businesses in Wichita, they often think of the north side of town, known as El Norte or the North End. El Norte has historically been a Latino area, because it was populated by railroad workers who arrived at the area in the early 1900s. It also developed important institutions that would serve Spanish speakers. That started to change in the early 2000s when arriving Latinos began to disperse.
Leticia Vargas migrated to the United States from Durango, a northern Mexican state. She first landed in California, where she lived for 20 years. That is where she started her entrepreneurship journey by selling purses in flea markets.
Vargas decided to move to Wichita in the early 2000s to work in a meatpacking plant.
At first, she did not want to start another business. But it soon became a necessity.
Being a single mother of two girls, she could not support her family with one job. She started selling blankets, ceramics and other goods from her house.
For about a year she would welcome strangers into her house to show them merchandise. Other times
she would go to their homes to sell. One afternoon in 2002, she was driving down Harry Street when she saw a vacant building and decided to rent it. When Vargas’ store opened, she added clothing to her product line.
“LATINOS LOOK AT THE RESOURCES AT HAND AND WHAT THEY CAN DO WITH IT,”
Leticia Vargas
“I believe we were one of the first businesses that began to be established in the south,” Vargas says. “Before, everything for Latinos was on the north side. That was difficult for us. Even when people asked me where my business was, it seemed like it was too far away to come here. But, thank God, more businesses opened, and we are no longer in that position. There are a lot of Latinos also in the south.”
Acculturation, assimilation or simply a new way of living?
According to a report from the Kansas Hispanic & Latino American Affairs Commission, as Latinos become familiar with their new surroundings, new traditions and new ways of doing things in the U.S., they begin to incorporate a new approach to life.
La Pasadita is not just another boutique. It specializes in quinceañera wear. A quinceañera is the Latin American tradition of celebrating a
young girl’s coming of age – her 15th birthday. Forbes states that the average quinceañera costs $21,781 and has 212 guests, a scale of celebration that isn’t unusual in Wichita.
For Latinos, the decision to start a business can be spontaneous, says Frank Choriego, associate director of the Kansas Small Business Development Center at Wichita State University, which serves the central region of the state.
Choriego, who is bilingual, says, in his experience, Latinos tend to be action-oriented and independent.
“Latinos look at the resources at hand and what they can do with it,” he says. “They do not worry about a business plan. They use their instincts more than anything else for their plans and opening the business.”
Over the years, Vargas’ business has weathered several storms, including the Great Recession
and the pandemic that started in 2020. The main reason? Consistency.
“There are many businesses that open with great enthusiasm,” she says. But a lack of immediate results can try the patience of Latino business owners: “We wait two or three months and say, ‘No, well there is nothing; it would be better to close it now.’ … When I do something, it is long term. I like to be persistent and wait for results.”
It took Vargas about two years to see positive results in her business. She eventually added more product lines to her business, such as party decorations.
Vargas says that Latino businesses ecosystems are different from others. “We are learning as we go,” she says.
For her, language was a big challenge, because she does not speak much English. Someone had to help her investigate which permits were needed to establish her business. Another challenge she faced was other Latinos taking advantage of people who are looking for help or information, “There are people who suddenly came to offer help, but in the end, they left generating more benefit for them.”
Because they might not know the business culture in the U.S. as well as natives, Choriego says that Latinos can lose opportunities to obtain resources that could help them succeed. Most of the time they have a network of friends, family and acquaintances to offer support in the process – a situation that did not apply in Vargas’ case because she has no family in Wichita. Many times, they lack financial sophistication, limiting them from obtaining the best financing or developing sales outside their community.
Vargas has been able to grow her clientele as more Anglos shop for prom dresses and other accessories.
“Americans already realized that we are here, that we exist, and they like it,” she says. “And they also really like our traditions, and that is why they come to places like mine, as our prices are more accessible than other places.”
Community support is vital for keeping her business alive, Vargas says. She knows that many people like to travel to bigger cities to look for quinceañera dresses, and she wishes more people would support local businesses instead. In her opinion, people do not have to travel far to find something nice.
While one of her biggest dreams is to expand her store to other locations, she loves what she does. She feels energized when she delivers a dress or when she sees the happy faces of her clients after decorating a place. She describes herself as a servant leader. Her advice for people wanting to start a business is to find something that motivates them. “Look for something that you really like – that you are enthusiastic about. Because when challenging times come, the love for your work will keep you going. That is what makes you get up every day and start again.”
Choriego invites people who want to start a business to be curious, to look for help. Many universities and colleges, including WSU, have programs to help Latino entrepreneurs, often with materials and assistance in Spanish. City and state offices also provide education and advice to help Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs.
“Ask, ask and ask,“ he says. “Do not make assumptions without investigating. Do not be embarrassed or afraid to approach organizations to find out how they can help Latino entrepreneurs.”
Claudia Yaujar-Amaro is the editor-in-chief of Planeta Venus, a bilingual newsroom based in Wichita with regional distribution.
1. What feels risky about admitting what we don’t know and asking questions?
2. Vargas discusses the divergences beginning to form within the Latino community. As they establish deeper roots and a growing variety of interests, what are the different factions that might begin to emerge?
3. How can entrepreneurs hold to their purpose and stay consistent in the face of delays and barriers to making progress?
- By Neha
BatawalaEDGAR ORTUÑO AND HIS FATHER, MANUEL ORTUÑO, RECENTLY OPENED A BUSINESS DESIGNING HOMES FOR LIBERAL RESIDENTS. IT’S THE ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND IN TOWN – AND IT ALL STARTED WITH BEEF.
BY: STEFANIA LUGLITucked into southwestern Kansas stands the city of Liberal, a majority-Latino community where more residents speak Spanish than English. Many work at the nearby National Beef Packing Co., a common job for rural Kansans – including immigrant workers.
Manuel Ortuño moved to Liberal from Chicago in pursuit of a lower cost of living. He quickly found a job at National Beef, which provided a good living but was extremely labor intensive.
His son, Edgar, says that his father started building cabinets in his garage and taking night classes outside of his factory shift. Eventually, he found
a carpentry job building displays at Beto Botas, a western apparel store in town. From there, his side hustle blossomed into a full-time career, evolving into Ortuño Cabinets in 2007.
“I grew up seeing his hustle, seeking these jobs,” Edgar Ortuño says. “I watched the evolution of his business. He found new opportunities while being an immigrant with (imperfect) English and still receiving pretty good clientele. It was really inspiring to me.”
Besides bearing witness to his father’s unwavering entrepreneurial spirit, Ortuño was especially
“… WE SEE OPPORTUNITIES WHERE PEOPLE USUALLY DON’T.”Edgar Ortuño
1. What challenges and opportunities do immigrant communities face when establishing businesses in rural areas?
2. How does Manuel’s journey from immigrant worker to successful business owner reflect the American dream narrative? What other ways is that narrative being dispelled?
3. What role do education and mentorship play in empowering individuals to pursue their dreams and make a positive impact on their communities?
- By Pedro
Cuevas Francoattracted to carpentry and design when his father began building the home his parents live in now.
“It was really a learning experience for me; I saw the struggle that hard-working people are doing … concrete, framing. … It's hard labor. I was like, ‘Man, this is cool, but I don’t really want to keep doing this,’ so my dad would tell me to strive for better and evolve to a bigger step.”
So, Ortuño decided to study architecture at Kansas State University, where he found a network of mentors excited to uplift a Latino architect. Fast forward several years to 2023, when the Ortuños opened a design and construction business together: OC Quality Custom Homes.
The family business is staffed entirely by immigrants. Edgar Ortuño hopes that this new chapter in Liberal’s architectural landscape attracts younger generations to move to southwest Kansas – even if, as he puts it, it means living “literally in the middle of nowhere.”
“In Liberal I’m the only one trying to do it. In Garden City and Dodge (City) there’s only like one or two architects,” Edgar says. “When I was studying architecture – my professor always told
me that architects are problem-seekers in a sense. Because we see opportunities where people usually don’t.
“Being in a small town is appealing to me because you have to do a little bit of everything. You don’t just do concrete or this and that. … I have a pioneering spirit. Architecture doesn’t exist here. I just want to bring it to life in southwest Kansas.”
As for revolutionizing, Ortuño acknowledges that Liberal residents sometimes are startled at his business’s prices due to the “community not being used to” the prices for custom homebuilding. But he remains hopeful that younger Liberal generations see value in investing in quality housing. He thinks it’s one way for people to see Liberal as a “blank canvas for you to make it your own.”
“Garden City has always been famous for always being a pioneer and starting things,” he says. “But I feel like we’re in a position now where Liberal can become pioneers, too. This is where we can start building new opportunities.”
TWO WICHITA ARTISTS HAVE BUILT THEIR SMALL BUSINESSES, AND THEIR MARRIAGE, ATOP THE FOUNDATION OF A SINGLE PHRASE –FOR THE LOVE OF THE CULTURE. THEIR EFFORTS ARE ADDING CULTURAL VIBRANCY TO A COMMUNITY THAT NEEDS TO LEVERAGE ITS DIVERSITY TO THRIVE. THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THE COMMUNITY WILL EMBRACE THEIR EFFORTS AND BUILD THE NETWORKS OF SUPPORT NECESSARY TO AID THEM IN REALIZING THEIR ASPIRATIONS.
BY: CAROLINA LOERA LOZANOThe atmosphere feels energetic, flavorful and vibrant. Lively, upbeat and danceable salsa music is being played live inside a cramped, sweaty bar.
But you don’t need a plane ticket to the Caribbean islands of Cuba, the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico. It's taking place in Wichita, thanks to two cultural business ventures: Tumbáo and Baila Wichita.
Through a combination of hard work and talent, the groups are making a mark on Wichita by filling a void in a growing Latin music and dance scene. But even though they perform to packed houses of hundreds, they also help illustrate the challenges that Latino business owners can face when they pursue their dreams.
Elisa Santana-Rosales, owner of Baila Wichita, struggled at first to establish herself, but her dancing talent quickly brought attention. Time and financial constraints keep her from fully embracing her calling, though.
Miguel Santana-Morales leads a band with a sound like few others, if any, in the region. But despite the popularity of his music, he sees a void in preparing local youth to play the music he loves.
The pair presently operate in a space where their big dreams are coming to life, albeit with constraints. Not that they necessarily always feel them.
“It's just pretty great to be able to do these events and … many people come out,” Miguel says.
“I'm really happy with where Baila Wichita is now, and I like that … we have a really close-knit community,” says Elisa. “We're all very supportive of each other. It truly feels like a family, and the environment is really welcoming and very healthy.”
One major reason for their success is that the two have each other. Not only do they support each other with their work, Elisa and Miguel are married.
That’s important. Because being an entrepreneur is hard enough, from accessing capital to finding mentors to consult. Being an entrepreneur in the arts carries its own special set of challenges, including cultural and financial pressures to pursue or preserve careers with more certainty and stability. The entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports their work is even less developed than one that supports non-artistic Latino businesses, an ecosystem that itself has plenty of challenges.
Yet a lot more than just the happiness of Elisa and Miguel is riding on their success. The more success that the couple and others like them have in establishing businesses, the better the chances that Wichita will be a place where diverse cultures feel at home, a goal that would enhance the community’s vibrancy and strengthen its economy.
According to Kate Van Steenhuyse, the assistant director of Kansas Creative Arts Industries, arts –and the nonprofits and other organizations who promote them – are already an influential part of people's everyday lives, even if they don't realize it. Their reach extends to the types of interactions kids have at schools, property values and the safety of the community.
“That vibrancy factor is impacting your life now,” says Steenhuyse. “You have the opportunity to engage with it actively and just feed the momentum of it to make your community a healthier place.”
Miguel got involved with Tumbáo in 2018 when John Goering, assistant professor of jazz piano at Wichita State University, reached out to him and his father to come to work with his students in the band, initially called Banda Hispanica.
“Then somewhere, somehow John started booking the student band at Barleycorn’s,” Miguel says.
It was an unusual move for a venue that, 29 days of the month, is known for its emo, punk rock and blues vibes. Miguel recalls that it took a while to get noticed, but then the band's monthly performances blew up.
“And we were having firemen and people coming like, ‘Hey, you let one more person in this place and we have to shut you down,’” says Miguel.
Miguel’s history with music goes back as far as he can remember. He was born and raised in Carolina, Puerto Rico, where he grew up around music. He started playing at age 6.
“All my family has always been very musical,” he says. “We had music at our Christmas parties, with live instruments and all that.”
Miguel's father, also a musician, had been involved in bands since he was a kid, so it was inevitable for his son to fall in love with music.
“… MUSIC IS EXACTLY HOW WE CONNECTED.”
Elisa Santana-Rosales
Before the music starts, Elisa and Miguel Santana-Rosales show off a dance move –and their togetherness – at a Baila Wichita salsa dance lesson. Photo by Pedro Cuevas Franco
“They would rehearse so late, like several nights a week,” Miguel says. “It got to a point that I would just be in rehearsals, and I would learn the songs like just by seeing them play the instruments and stuff like that.”
Things were a little different for Elisa. She was born and raised in the north end of Wichita. She's a third-generation Mexican American. Throughout her childhood, she participated in gymnastics and played piano. Although salsa and dance weren't central to her life growing up, she was always interested in the arts. Elisa's great-aunt was married to the brother of a member of El Gran Combo, a Puerto Rican salsa orchestra based in San Juan. Her father then had the opportunity to travel to Puerto Rico, where he learned about salsa music.
“So really, my dad, he's the reason why I'm really into salsa,” Elisa says. “He exposed me to salsa at a really young age, and I always wanted to learn how to dance.”
Elisa has a full-time remote job as a health care analyst in addition to the work needed to keep Baila Wichita moving forward. After moving away from Wichita for 12 years, Elisa pursued professional salsa dancing as a side of her career. She moved back to Wichita during the pandemic
in 2021. She then started teaching students how to dance salsa and bachata socially. In her program, students will train for six weeks and then perform.
“Growing up, I was taught by family and even somewhat by my school, by teachers that to make money and to be successful, you need to focus on STEM,” Elisa says. “You know, nowadays, they talk about STEAM, they add art in STEM, right? But growing up, I was scared away from pursuing art.”
Their passions for music and dance led to a chance encounter for the couple. A couple of months before COVID-19 was deemed a pandemic, Elisa’s mother remarried, and Tumbáo was hired to perform at the wedding party. That's when Elisa and Miguel met. She didn't live in Wichita then, but the pair stayed in touch. When she moved back during the pandemic, they ended up together.
“Over time, we got to know each other, and I mean, music is exactly how we connected,” Elisa says. “At the time, we were teaching classes, and I would go to all of his family's performances at
Barleycorn’s, and we were just always around each other.”
Even though their passion for music initially bonded them, Elisa needed more convincing. She's 34 and Miguel is 26. The age gap made her hesitant about a romance. But that changed after their first date.
“He wanted to, you know, share his culture. I didn't know what bomba was really back in the day, and he was like, “Hey, let me teach you how to dance.”
Bomba music is an intense, strong-rooted dance and part of the black culture in Puerto Rico; Miguel was determined to share this part of his culture with Elisa.
“I literally just pulled up to Riverside Park in the parking lot and just lowered the windows,” Miguel says.
After this date, the chemistry was undeniable.
“I just like the intensity. I like his intensity. I liked the passion and the fact that we were able to have a great spontaneous time in the parking lot of Riverside,” says Elisa. “I don't know. It's like there's something about him. He's special.”
Today, Miguel helps Elisa teach salsa classes. Elisa performs at or socially attends Tumbáo's events to showcase her dance skills and get more people interested in her business. The two have expanded their work over the past few years, impacting the community’s cultural fabric.
“I feel like I share everything in my life with her,” says Miguel. “She's always in my corner.”
Tumbáo might be one of the only salsa bands in the area, and while other dance schools teach a class on two-step salsa or bachata, several factors make the Santana-Rosales’ efforts particularly special.
“I think consistency is definitely the main thing that's making it at least feel like we're succeeding at what we're doing,” Miguel says.
Although there is much to celebrate in their work, some significant challenges are ahead. For Baila Wichita, it’s greater appreciation of the need for training – and more qualified instructors to teach it.
“It's kind of like, why? Why would I pay you money to learn something I already know how to do?” Elisa says. For some students, she says, it takes some convincing for them to realize they haven’t reached the limits of their abilities.
For Tumbáo, it's improving the quality of the music and product.
“The main challenges used to be … musicians that didn't know how to play this music correctly,” said Miguel. “That was a really hard part of this process because I would essentially have to – while I'm trying to rehearse this song – teach somebody on piano how to play.”
Other community members share Elisa’s and Miguel’s desires to develop cultural musicianship and dance discipline. At Mayberry Middle School, where Panya Amphone-Suh teaches mariachi, the vision is to foster a safe and caring environment for students to learn about themselves through studying culture and fine arts. Amphone-Suh took on teaching the only mariachi class in the Wichita Public Schools after deciding to step down as director of choir and orchestra. He is 27 and is half Laotian and half Chinese.
“I hope that through this program, I can provide people who live outside of this mariachi culture a window into just a glimmer of what mariachi is and how it is such an integral part of community and celebrations and all of those kinds of things,” Amphone-Suh says. “And then I also hope to provide my students who participate in the study of mariachi a sense of ownership over their culture.”
Mayberry wasn't the first school to teach mariachi; it started at North High School.
“The class kind of disbanded. It's no longer happening at North,” said Amphone-Suh. “And so, I figured I was like, if all of those instruments are sitting there and this is something that I can learn how to teach, why would I not take that opportunity?”
Maira Castaneda is la maestra for Raíces de Mi Tierra, a local “folclórico” or folk group. She started teaching in Tijuana. In Wichita, she's been instructing for about four years.
Although music is a vital part of Mexican culture, Castaneda believes it's a challenge for the Hispanic community to get their children involved in the arts. The level of resources required can be a stretch for some families.
“That part is a little sad. It's a little difficult, but it doesn't limit us. On the contrary, as a group, we want … to have more children continue participating in this,” Castaneda says.
Alejo Cabral, program coordinator for the Spark Community Business Academy at Create Campaign Inc., a minority business development nonprofit, says that for businesses in the arts and otherwise to be successful they must work together. Cabral admires the collaboration
within the city's beer industry and thinks other companies could work together too.
“There's a saying in Mexican culture that ‘un mexicano peor enemigo is otro Mexicano,’” the enemy of a Mexican is another Mexican, “and I hate that saying because at the end of the day, we can't do everything alone,” Cabral says. “For their businesses to thrive, they have to be able to collaborate not just with each other but with other businesses.”
What seems to be a hallmark of Elisa and Miguel's success is their partnership – in their case, a marriage too. In a way, it’s part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that both are building and tapping into, allowing them to serve the community and the culture as business owners.
Steenhuyse says there are many barriers and opportunities in the entrepreneurial space for artists. Although there are many entrepreneurial opportunities, it's up to the individual artist to define their path and what creative success looks like.
“I think there are a lot of resources to assist artists in figuring that out,” Steenhuyse says. “At the state level, we have our artist programming, we have
our organizational mentorship grant and other grants that are really about capacity building and connecting artists with each other.”
She says with these opportunities, there's a lot of freedom to define their own path. Elisa and Miguel want more for Wichita. It's not enough to just be in the market, they want to do more for the culture in the area. Miguel says the goal is for Tumbáo to play with more artists. He says he would like Tumbáo to be the band to bring big-name artists to the Midwest and be the band that plays for them.
Elisa hopes to open her dance studio eventually. She aspires to offer competitive and noncompetitive classes for the youth and adults. She also says she would like to incorporate Caribbean folkloric dancing.
Ambition and passion are not something Miguel and Elisa lack, but taking the next step would be challenging. For Elisa, time and money are constraints.
“I think it's just really hard for me to because I personally think to do it right, I would have to do it full-time,” Elisa says. “I'm personally not ready to make the leap because it feels like such a huge financial risk that I'm not ready to take.”
Elisa says she could be risking stability and needs to become more educated to run this type of organization on a much bigger spectrum.
“I need the education. I need to; I need to learn how to run a studio,” Elisa says. “It's one thing teaching a couple hours a week … But it's a whole other thing to run a studio. So it's hard for me to dive headfirst into something like that until I have more education and mentorship.”
Miguel grew up surrounded by music, which is a significant part of Caribbean culture. However, he believes that there is a need for better music education in his art form. According to him, a lot of students in the area pursue music as a career, but need more skills to play his music. Miguel thinks that there are some gaps in higher education in preparing musicians, and says Wichita needs to build more capacity in the technical musicianship required to play Latin music like salsa.
“What is going on with the system in Wichita is that the youth doesn't really know much about the music,” Miguel says.
At a time when he could benefit from leading a cluster of highly skilled musicians, he often feels on his own. He’d like to see kids being taught from a young age to have the level of musicianship to make it big.
“I can start teaching people in college right now how to play salsa, and that's great, but it will be so much better to be able to do it from a much earlier age,” Miguel says.
Artistic groups like Tumbáo and Baila Wichita in a city like Wichita keep many cultures alive. However, they can easily go away if artists don’t feel their entrepreneurial efforts are supported. They may seek opportunities elsewhere, costing Wichita some of the diversity it needs to compete with other cities for talent.
And it makes for a more boring place to live.
“So, if these art forms go away, right, people lose. People lose their worldview; they lose the opportunity to be exposed to these cultures, to be exposed to these experiences,” Amphone-Suh says. “They lose the beauty of what every art form has to offer.”
Those focused on building businesses in Wichita think the community can’t flourish without projects like Baila Wichita, Tumbáo, the Mariachi class in Mayberry or Raices de mi Tierra.
“There's a gap that exists now in the experiences that somebody can have in Wichita,” Cabral says. “We lose on opportunities to attract other business leaders, other business opportunities, other opportunities for community, our community, to continue to be better and serve the people that live here.”
That’s a reminder that Baila Wichita and Tumbáo are not just small businesses, but a reflection of home, a labor of love, and an homage from which they came. It's more than dollars and cents.
With the help of their marriage, Elisa and Miguel have woven their lives and artistic pursuits together, adding threads to Wichita’s cultural fabric. The question the community faces is whether they’ll let the couple and others like them build their businesses, and the love of the culture, on their own or join them in adding to the tapestry.
1. As culture drives the work Elisa and Miguel do, what connection do culture and heritage have with the activity of leadership?
2. With changing demographics, what might be possible if communities embrace and celebrate the different cultures that exist within them?
3. What might be gained if entrepreneurial efforts like Tumbáo and Baila Wichita meet their aspirations? What loss is there if they don't?
4. Relationships are often about balance. What balance of competing values may emerge for Elisa and Miguel as they work toward their aspirations? What loyalties might be challenged?
- Julian MontesThis story is accompanied by a documentary set at the cross-section of arts and entertainment and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Learn more about the film and join us for the premiere this spring.
kansasleadershipcenter.org/klcevents/for-the-love-of-the-culture/
Compiled from various sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, Latino Donor Collaborative, U.S. Small Business Administration and the Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship report
Read more online at klcjournal.com/las-adelitas-coffee-latino-entrepreneurship-in-kansas/
Estimates calculated from the Current Population Survey
Source: National Report on Early-stage Entrepreneurship in the United States: 2021
The first news of
day
Wichita and Kansas, in less than 15 minutes.
Listen at kmuw.org and wherever you get podcasts.
RECENT CONTROVERSIES IN WICHITA OVER THE LOCATION OF AN EMERGENCY WINTER SHELTER FOR THE HOMELESS RECALLS A 2009 DEBATE – AND THE EXCLUSIONS OF THE LONG PAST.
By: MARK MCCORMICKWichita, at one point in its history, stood as one of the most racially segregated cities outside the South.
It took longer to integrate its schools – the early ’70s – than many cities in the South.
White friends of Black civil rights lawyer Chester Lewis craftily bought a home in a white neighborhood in the 1960s and deeded it to Lewis and his wife. Then other friends had to sit on the porch with a shotgun to protect the house from angry white neighbors.
When Black architect Charles McAfee moved into the same neighborhood, racist vandals threw a brick through his daughter’s bedroom window.
have likely experienced that unwelcoming spirit. We must take great care that we are not of the world we inherit, but a few people have drifted toward behavior uncomfortably close to what African Americans have encountered for centuries.
Mark McCormick
In the South, white people didn’t care how close Black people got to them so long as they didn’t get too big. Well, in Wichita during the 1960s, whites didn’t care how big you got, so long as you didn’t get too close. The same neighborhood? That was too close.
Long-term exposure to this toxic belief system may have created a coldness in some of Wichita’s seemingly least-likely individuals – people who
The reaction of some to the city’s decision to place an emergency warming center in central northeast Wichita comes to mind, as does an attempt a few years ago to establish a Lord’s Diner location in the same neighborhood.
Late last year, the City Council voted unanimously to allocate $685,000 of COVID recovery funds to support an emergency winter shelter on Opportunity Drive that would be open through March. The move proved prescient when a January cold snap produced wind chills well below minus 10 degrees.
Officials put the number of people seeking shelter the previous winter at about 188, and without a new shelter, nearly 50 people needing shelter would have been turned away.
To that, the president of the Millair Neighborhood Association, Aujanae Bennett, seemed to suggest
that the city had moved to help those from outside that part of town while ignoring the needs of people who live there.
“Again and again, you show blatant disrespect for our community,” Bennett said. “ZIP code 67214 was the most impoverished in the state. You talk about compassion. Well, where is your compassion for us?”
In addition, fears were expressed about moving homeless people close to the TOP Early Learning Center and daycare, the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Central Kansas and Gordon Parks Academy, a K-8 magnet school.
My mind traveled back to January 2005, when I wrote about Randall “Randy” Taylor, a homeless man who, seeking shelter from deadly cold, climbed into the back of a parked van and died from exposure.
In that piece, I quoted what I thought was a poem my Dad used to recite, but was actually lyrics from a Hank Williams standard from the 1950s, “Men With Broken Hearts.”
You’ve never walked in that man’s shoes
Or seen things through his eyes
Or stood and watched with helpless hands
As the heart within you, dies.
Some were paupers, some were kings
Some were masters of their arts
But in their shame, they were all the same Those men with broken hearts.
Social media buzzed for a while with complaints about the emergency homeless shelter.
People asked, “What about the kids?” Others faulted the city for not communicating sufficiently about its plans. Many said they just didn’t want homeless outsiders getting dumped in their neighborhood.
I found that response sad and disappointing coming from the progeny of people who’d been treated similarly by segregated communities and schools, by violent “sundown towns,” and by government and banks’ racial redlining.
It reminded me of an attempt a few years ago to establish a second Lord’s Diner location near 21st and Grove streets, not far from where the emergency shelter stands.
Then, Wendy Glick, the former executive director for the Lord’s Diner, was trying to meet the needs of the hungry in the area when she fielded an unforgettable call from a grandmother.
Glick says she could hear children screaming from hunger over the grandmother’s pained voice. The grandmother had no money and no car. She pleaded with Glick to pick up the children and take them downtown to the diner for a meal.
Glick couldn’t do that, but promised to do her best to establish a Lord’s Diner in the neighborhood where the grandmother and the children could go for a meal.
Glick says public school data as well as food bank figures showing how many children qualified for free and reduced lunches in the area led them to the area to try to address the needs there. The city embraced the plan as did a handful of community activists.
But it never happened.
Community opposition was abrupt and sharp. The loudest complaints came from people who were neither hungry nor homeless, but rather, people concerned about aesthetics and appearances.
“It became very apparent that we were not welcome,” Glick says, remembering a meeting downtown at the Bishop Eugene Gerber’s conference room. “We were told that if we were to continue to persist that we would be sorry. We were threatened.”
She says she tried to make Wichita a community that prided itself on how it served the least and the lost.
But what do we do when even some of the “least of these” decide that they, too, don’t want anything in their backyard? When the stranger no one welcomed wants to deny others the basic
dignity of a meal and a warm place to sleep when winter temperatures plummet?
I wish I knew. I don’t understand it.
Maybe this reflects a deep mistrust of city government. Maybe these things don’t happen if city officials had communicated better with residents. Maybe this is just a few loud people who are eager to weigh in on a public issue because the opportunity to do so has long been denied them.
Those days of segregated neighborhoods and schools really aren’t that long ago, but even if forgotten, can’t justify denying people food and shelter.
That last line from the country-western song quoted above really said it best: “So help your brother along the road, no matter where he starts. Because the God that made you, made him too, those men with broken hearts.”
Mark McCormick previously served
