It Only Takes a Spark

Mike Gouddou first heard the sad joke less than two years ago. He was inside Nickol's Store Fixtures and Equipment, a West Bottoms warehouse of used pots and pans, glasses and utensils -- a cemetery of sorts for Kansas City's failed bars and restaurants. Gus Nickols had even said, "Welcome to the graveyard," as Gouddou strode in. But that wasn't the joke.

Gouddou explained that he needed to outfit a nightclub. He'd already signed a lease. "Where?" Nickols asked. When Gouddou told him he planned to open a bar downtown, Nickols frowned. Shouldn't do that, he said. And then he let Gouddou in on the joke. You could take a shotgun, he said, and you could fire it up and down the streets of downtown Kansas City at night, and you wouldn't hit anyone.

Gouddou smiled. I get it, he thought; no one goes downtown. He planned to change that.

Tonight, at Ninth and Walnut, Gouddou stands at the end of a bar he built with his own hands and looks over his nightclub. Between him and the DJ spinning house music at the other end of the bar, a solid row of twentysomethings sips beers and cocktails. Others sit at tables and booths scattered around the room. Jackie Chan kicks tail on four silent televisions above the bar. In a lower-level back room, another DJ provides a darker ambience in which the Revolting Cocks' sinister take on Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" pulls a handful of people onto a small dance floor.

At 1 a.m., the bartender announces last call, and Gouddou grimaces. By 1:30, his customers are heading out to their cars parked along Walnut Street, perhaps thinking about all the other bars outside downtown that are open later, perhaps wondering why they bothered with this corner of the city tonight. The Spark's doorman retreats back into the bar, and suddenly there is no sign of life for blocks. No cars, no footsteps, no voices. Just empty buildings, empty streets, empty sidewalks and wind.

Load the shotgun.

But here's where the joke almost gets funny: The neighbors, supposedly some of the city's biggest business boosters, are strangling this neighborhood-friendly bar. Just a block from the Spark is the Commerce Tower, home of Commerce Bank, run by Jonathan and David Kemper, whose family name adorns the city arena and its modern-art museum. Another Kemper company, Tower Properties, has prevented City Hall from giving the Spark a 3 a.m. liquor license that would make Gouddou's bar worth the trip downtown. Tower Properties, which manages millions of square feet in office and parking space downtown and controls $77 million in tax money earmarked for economic development in the neighborhood, is about to put Gouddou's privately funded little economic development out of business.

As nightclubs go, Spark Bar aspires to be a low-key social club rather than a typical Kansas City warehouse-sized dance party. Gouddou brings in a diverse lineup of DJs to play anything from acid jazz to techno, but the music is a backdrop. Those inclined to dance do so, but more reserved patrons sit at the bar and talk. The place seems the perfect catalyst for the sort of 24-hour downtown leaders say they want: a vibrant city core where urban-minded Kansas Citians can eat, sleep, work and play.

Such a downtown would presumably have bars and restaurants that are open late, and indeed, Kansas City has a few 3 a.m. downtown bars, such as neighborhood hangouts the Quaff and Tanners near Quality Hill.

But late-night bars are more common outside downtown: The Plaza has Tomfooleries, O'Dowd's and Granfaloon serving posh crowds until 3 a.m. In Westport, the Hurricane, XO, Buzzard Beach, America's Pub, Stanford and Sons, Blayney's, Harry's and the Beaumont Club stay open until 3. There are also the Brooksider in Brookside, Club Cabaret south of the Plaza, and Davey's Uptown, the Empire Room and the Velvet Dog in Midtown.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that while each of these areas thrives into the night, much of downtown, with its bleak and haunted streets, resembles a sci-fi nightmare after sundown. Gouddou just wants to compete with bars elsewhere in the city under rules that don't give anyone a particular advantage. In Overland Park, all bars are licensed to operate until 2 a.m., regardless of whether an owner chooses to stay open that late; a Johnson County bar's failure won't be the result of a competitor's later hours. But minutes after Gouddou's patrons make their forced exit from the Spark, they could be sitting at another bar in Kansas City. "By the time they get settled here, they get kicked out," Gouddou says. "So they go someplace where they can stay longer."

In 1998, the city appeared to have made it easier for bars and restaurants to open downtown by no longer requiring neighboring property owners to approve of such businesses. But one old rule remained: To stay open past 1:30 a.m., bar owners who wanted to compete with the 3 a.m. spots throughout the city still needed the blessing of at least half of their downtown neighbors.