The Concrete Bungle

In Ohio, the director of the state turnpike commission resigned in 2002, after an investigation revealed a "free flow of gratuities" from contractors to turnpike employees. The investigation found HNTB to be among the grateful, treating the director and other employees to golf games, meals and various outings 21 times during a period in which HNTB landed $2.8 billion in turnpike business.

But taking clients to dinner and making campaign contributions are practically matters of etiquette in the business world. HNTB isn't considered a sinister company -- connected might be a better word. "They're basically honorable people," says Norquist. He adds that he sometimes has agreed with HNTB's recommendations. "It's not all their fault bad stuff gets built, at least not theirs alone. They're basically doing what they're asked to do."

Still, Norquist says, it would have been nice if HNTB had reminded state and regional transportation officials that mass transit might be a better option than the endless thatch of expressways the firm is usually asked to design. "But they're trying to make money, so you don't start arguing with your client."

HNTB's proposal to build decks over a portion of the south leg of the loop is not a revolutionary idea. The Sasaki and the FOCUS plans talked about reconstructing the north leg into a boulevard. Undoing the north leg is appealing because it would remove the barrier separating the River Market from downtown. Also, the north leg is less heavily traveled than the south leg, making it more amenable to change.

The former mayor of Milwaukee has an even more interesting idea for the loop: Just tear up the whole thing.

"Those freeways have been depressing the property values of downtown Kansas City since they were built," says Norquist, who led several efforts to remove or halt freeway construction during his four terms in office. Norquist came to be- lieve that urban freeways obliterated neighborhoods, hastened sprawl and demanded hundreds of millions of dollars in upkeep.

"They are a complete net loss," he says. "They make Kansas City worth less -- much less -- than it would have been if they hadn't been built. It was the worst kind of public works project. It cost tons of money, and it reduced the value of the place it was supposed to help. The only sensible thing is to tear it out and replace it with an at-grade street level or boulevard. It is the only thing that makes sense. Anything else is a complete waste of taxpayer money."

Norquist is today the CEO of the Congress for New Urbanism, a nonprofit organization that seeks to re-establish compact, walkable and environmentally sustainable cities. He advises cities to follow the models in Europe and in such U.S. cities as San Francisco, where the removal of a freeway damaged by the 1989 earthquake led surrounding property values to rise by 300 percent.

Kansas City isn't on the fast track to removing anything, however. In fact, a $1 million MoDOT study of connections between downtown and the Northland (HTNB received about $425,000 for its role in putting together the study) essentially concluded that Interstate 29 needed to be widened. Widening I-29 would require the Paseo Bridge to be expanded or replaced, a design job HNTB is more than qualified to perform. (An eight-lane Paseo bridge would also make the loop indispensable, defeating Norquist's cause.)

The Northland-downtown study did consider proposals to transform the north leg into a boulevard. It determined that such an approach would merely shift traffic elsewhere. "All of a sudden, you need more lanes on the south leg," says Jerry Mugg, an HNTB transportation director.

Others, however, say it's time for the city to stop thinking in circles.

In a recent issue of the arts magazine Review, for example, BNIM architect Tom Knittel wrote a piece calling for wholesale reconsideration of the loop, which he described as "over-engineered and under-designed."

Knittel tells the Pitch he would like to see a holistic study of the loop that asks for a high level of public participation.

"The general idea of just sort of decking it over and acting like it's never been there strikes me as not very realistic or sustainable," he says. "I don't think we can afford to deck over all of these sites. I feel as if this sort of here-and-there strategy doesn't really address the real problem."

"I think the loop in many respects functions well," Mugg counters. "I think we need to look at how to make it simple and more efficient."

Yet according to Norquist, simplicity is the enemy. Cities should be complex and offer a rich set of choices, he says. Building a superhighway in the city, Norquist says, "is like putting a cow barn in the middle of the downtown." HNTB has discovered that sometimes all it takes to line up work in Kansas City is the power of suggestion.