Drunk on Optimism

Beth Garrett and Blake Elliottspent a recent Monday evening at the Blue Koi on West 39th Street. They ordered appetizers, drank Merlot and left happy. "We love it," Garrett says, standing on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. "It's one of our favorites."

Garrett, a speech pathologist, lives near 58th Street and Wyandotte. Elliott, an architect, lives near 65th Street and Holmes. She's a little gray. He's a little bald. They describe themselves as "longtime friends."

According to the state of Missouri, they're something else.

Tourists.

The state will record the couple's $30.26 bill (not including tip) as tourism spending, even though Garrett and Elliott live within a few miles of the restaurant. Missouri counts all of the money locals fork over at bars and restaurants as tourism spending.

The breakfast crowd at Niecie's on Prospect Avenue? Tourists.

Khaki-clad office workers lunching at a Northland Subway? Tourists.

Drunk girl vomiting outside a Westport bar? Tourist with matted hair.

At some establishments, out-of-town visitors do make up a portion of the clientele -- bars and restaurants on the Plaza, for instance, or an authentic and centrally located meatery like the Hereford House.

But these places are the exceptions. Without locals, most bars and restaurants would die a quick death. Daniel Stynes, a Michigan State University professor who studies recreation and tourism, says that on average, only 18 percent of restaurant diners arrive at their seats having traveled 50 miles or more.

Yet Missouri pretends that 100 percent of the hungry hail from afar, grossly distorting the importance of tourism to the state's economy. The Missouri Division of Tourism claims that tourism sales were $7.74 billion in 2003, but restaurant and bar tabs -- the bulk of which were resident-driven -- made up $5.97 billion of that total.

Treating barflies like jet-setters is more than a bureaucratic goof. There are consequences to believing in tourism's magical ability to create jobs and tax revenue. Convention centers expand. Public subsidies prop up hotels and attractions. Redevelopment efforts cater to the tastes of Arkansans.

Kay Barnes, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, is a big tourism believer. The city will spend $250 million on a new arena in large part to keep Kansas City in the rotation of Big 12 and NCAA basketball tournament sites. Bartle Hall, the city's convention center, is undergoing its second major renovation in less than 15 years. Between the arena and Bartle Hall, an East Coast developer is plotting an entertainment district that Barnes has said will be "a multistate destination center."

In a few weeks, holiday lights will twinkle on the Plaza, a beacon to shoppers in Wichita and Des Moines. Those places have malls, but none like the Plaza.

Still, Kansas City would be wise to heed the warnings of other middle-American cities that began to define themselves by their visitors' guides. Cleveland, for example, became known as the comeback city after it gave rise to glittering attractions such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Jacobs Field; and the Flats, a riverbank bar-and-restaurant district.

The comeback was short-lived. Today Cleveland has a drawer full of costume jewelry but no pants to wear. The U.S. Census Bureau recently declared it the poorest city in America.

Kansas City was a hot convention townback when suit lapels flapped in the breeze. The 1976 Republican National Convention met at Kemper Arena. By 1981, Kansas City ranked 12th among U.S. cities for meetings hosted. Our city was more popular than Houston, St. Louis and San Diego.

KC lost its edge, though, as other cities that were confronting declines in manufacturing began working harder to attract conventions. After all, the convention dollar is prized for its foreign origin -- having earned their money elsewhere, visitors bring it to town and leave it behind at hotels, restaurants and stores.

An arms race ensued. Convention-hall exhibit space in the United States more than doubled between 1980 and 2001. In 1989, only three U.S. cities had a convention facility larger than 500,000 square feet. By 1998, there were 23.

Kansas City tried to keep pace. In 1990, builders, developers and the hospitality industry spent $300,000 warning voters that Bartle Hall, built in 1972, was fast becoming inadequate. A Price Waterhouse study that year -- there's always a study -- said that more than 40 percent of cities in the top 34 markets were expanding, constructing or opening convention halls.

Not wanting to fall behind, Kansas City voters approved new taxes on restaurants and hotels to finance Bartle Hall's expansion and to increase the budget of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. Anyone who's dined out in Kansas City, Missouri, and puzzled over the bill is probably feeling the grip of the convention and tourism tax -- now at 2 percent.

The 1990 vote allowed Bartle Hall to stretch across Interstate 670, boasting a football field's worth of exhibition space. Such an engineering stunt did not come cheap. The city spends about $14 million a year servicing the debt on Bartle Hall.

Yet even with those dedicated taxes, since 1998 the Conventions and Entertainment Centers (a city department that operates independently of the city-funded, nonprofit Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Kansas City) has incurred an $18.8 million deficit. To make up the difference, the city has to dip into its general fund, reducing the money available to pay for other items, such as cops and sewers.