It Only Takes a Spark

If the change wasn't as sweet for bars, at least it was democratic; after all, bar owners still had the opportunity to persuade their neighboring business owners that a late-night spot a few doors away wouldn't send the area to hell. That's exactly what Mike Gouddou wanted to do in spring 2001, as soon as Spark Bar qualified to apply for a later license.

One trip to the city's liquor department showed Gouddou how the face of democracy can change. Tower Properties controlled more than 51 percent of property in the area. The Kemper company alone would decide whether he could stay open late -- and whether he could compete in his market.

A decade ago, Mike Gouddou was trying to save lives on urban subways, not save a bar from rapid extinction or save downtown from itself. Gouddou, an electrical engineer by way of Louisville University, designed high-tech gadgetry. In August 1991, he received the greatest challenge of his engineering career when a New York City subway conductor named Robert Ray showed up for work after guzzling booze all day. Ray fell asleep at the controls, letting the train hurtle toward a switch at more than three times the safe speed for a track transfer. The first car made the turn but broke in half because of its extraordinary speed. Those that followed slammed into more than twenty steel beams.

Five people died, and more than 200 others suffered injuries. In the process, Robert Ray set a record of sorts; the accident was the worst in New York since 1928.

At the time, Gouddou worked in Florida for the transportation-technology company Harmon Industries. He helped design a system that would prevent drunk or sleepy conductors from crashing their passengers into subway walls. In the years since, the type of train-control system that Gouddou helped create has become a standard feature in rail systems around the world. Now when conductors fail to slow before a track transfer, a microprocessor halts the train and waits for a new engineer to take over. "That's my biggest contribution," he says. "It's something I'm proud to have done. It saves people's lives."

As good as it felt to save lives, the Moroccan-born Gouddou, now forty, had always entertained thoughts of a career outside engineering. "I always thought it would be cool to own a bar," he says. "I don't think I'm alone on that. I think a lot of people have that dream."

In the mid-'90s, Harmon Industries moved Gouddou to its Blue Springs headquarters, where he worked as manager of the company's international sales and marketing division. For three weeks of every month, he traveled to such locations as Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Melbourne, Australia, to peddle the company's safety technology. The work was enjoyable, the pay even better, but Gouddou continued to envision himself standing at his own bar.

In the cities he has lived in and visited, downtowns always held an allure. The storied troubles of downtown Kansas City, choked by a freeway loop and starved for nightlife, did nothing to dull his spirits. Where others saw empty streets, Gouddou saw potential. "People were always complaining that there's nothing to do downtown," he says. "I thought this might be my chance."

Downtown Kansas City may have gained a reputation as a nightlife repellent, an area that even those who sell bar supplies scoff at, but Gouddou would help change that. He would do his part to spark activity downtown. He would even give his bar a corny name based on that ideal.

In late 1999, Gouddou found an empty office building at 823 Walnut. Homeless people were sleeping out front. Inside, water stood ankle-deep. Gouddou envisioned a club stocked with alcohol, soundtracked by talented DJs and filled with a crowd of hip, diverse regulars. Eventually, he thought, the club could even expand to the second floor. And when things really took off, he might even lease the third floor and turn that into a penthouse.

Now when Mike Gouddou thinks of these dreams, he blushes. "If I knew then what I know today, I wouldn't have picked downtown," he says.

When Gouddou leased the first floor, he was obligated to provide a detailed schematic showing how he planned to renovate the space to the plans-review division of the city's codes-administration office. Gouddou hired local architect Allan Present to draw up the required plans and submitted them in December 1999 with a project-cost estimate of $54,000 to $68,000 -- all of which would be financed by Gouddou and his limited partner, Mark Landregan. Gouddou expected that the process -- from lease to renovation to opening night -- would take abut four months. As it turns out, it would take longer than that just for the plans-review division to sign off on the proposed improvements.

Present, who has moved much larger works through City Hall, now believes Gouddou was shortchanged by a process made needlessly difficult. "The city is understaffed, overworked and not very responsive," he says. Present stops short of saying that Gouddou was singled out. "But this did bridge on ethical issues. In terms of business development, small businesses like Mike Gouddou's are not treated very well by city government," he says.