Page 4 of 4
"We tried to put a brewery in the old power plant building," he says of a structure on the west end of the property. "But at the end of the day, that wasn't going to happen." McDonald says he talked with White and White's predecessor, Andy Scott. "We worked it and worked it and worked it, and it was just a lack of anybody making a decision. It was sort of a dream of mine, but I had to give it up."
The conversation pauses here for a painful sigh -- actually, it's an expletive on my part.
"I know," McDonald says. "It was a cool building."
But now, he says, Boulevard is getting ready to build a new building on what has become its signature corner at 25th Street and Southwest Boulevard, home of the second-largest brewery in Missouri -- second only to Anheuser-Busch.
"I don't know what the right thing is for Union Station," he says. "Kansas City needs to ask what works here and ask the people here who have ideas to try to do something of our own instead of hiring these consulting companies who did something in Texas or California or New York or whatever. Those guys come, and you spend a bunch of money and then they're gone."
McDonald declines to serve on my dream board of directors for Union Station, but maybe if the mayor asked him, he would.
We'll eagerly await word that she's named him to her new Union Station review committee.
In the meantime, I ask McDonald what's in the old power plant now.
"Nothing," he says. "Bird shit."
« previous 1 2 3 4
