It's still spring, and tickets are selling strong for the Bodies Revealed exhibit in the bowels of Union Station.
On this late-April Saturday, the parents of two children — one boy and one girl — are picking up their exhibit tickets at the box office. Next to them, a woman paces in front of the ticket windows; some in her group weren't able to make it, and she's giving away a free pair.
The family enters the exhibit, seeing for themselves the plasticized corpses flaunted for months on banners and billboards and in newspaper ads. They seem as interested and excited as all the other patrons walking around the glass cases full of bones, past the once-living men and women frozen in athletic motion and flayed to the muscle tissue. They wander through the room that shows the circulatory system and on to the respiratory room, with its cancerous lung and its Plexiglas box filled a foot high with discarded cigarette boxes. Finally they come to the cadavers of pregnant women and the bodies sliced into dozens of sections suspended inches from one another, so that a man less than six feet tall when alive now stretches close to 20 feet long. The family spends time at each information card, the parents taking turns reading to their kids, who both look younger than 10. They make jokes and seem to be having a good time.
It's exactly the type of educational family experience that Andi Udris, Union Station's CEO and president, says the place is supposed to foster.
When these visitors are finished at Bodies, they don't pause in the gift shop, though the boy's eyes widen at boxes of plastic miniature replicas of the skulls and intestines they've just seen. They don't stop at any of Union Station's restaurants for lunch, though the Bistro at Union Station and the Harvey House Diner are reasonably priced and, at the moment, equally without a glut of customers. Instead, the family walks straight out of the building and back to the parking garage without leaving behind another dime.
Two floors above the exhibit, a middle-aged waitress is attending to no one at the Harvey House. She stands behind the long, rectangular counter, next to a rotating display of pies. Down one end of the counter is a single man with a cane resting against a neighboring stool, eating a cheeseburger. Behind her, another solitary customer reads the paper and drinks a cup of coffee. All but two booths are empty.
"It's not too busy lately," the waitress says. "Mostly the rushes come when people are on their lunch break, but that's never too bad. Usually it's pretty quiet."
The problem with Union Station isn't that families who see Bodies Revealed leave without spending more money.
It's that those families are basically the only visitors the place gets anymore.
The man in charge of turning that around is Udris, who took over as head of Union Station in May 2005, succeeding interim CEO Sean O'Byrne, who served for 11 months after the resignation of Turner White in June 2004. White had been the station's director and CEO since it reopened in November 1999, renovated with revenues from a bistate tax devoted to saving the station. By the end of White's tenure, Science City attendance had been disappointing, philanthropic support had evaporated, the station was losing an estimated $5 million a year and the public had grown frustrated with what seemed like a constant stream of bad news about the finances of the beloved — but largely unused and crushingly expensive to operate — landmark.
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I moved to Kansas City six months and have driven past Union Station numerous times. I thought if anything was in there, it was about the railroad. Maybe they would get more traffic if people knew what was there. If you didn't grow up in Kansas City, how are you supposed to know what's there? Yeah there were billboards for Bodies Revealed, but I didn't know about Science City or that there was a restaurant inside. I hope that Union Station is able to survive. Thank you Peter Rugg for writing this article.
I moved to Kansas City six months and have driven past Union Station numerous times. I thought if anything was in there, it was about the railroad. Maybe they would get more traffic if people knew what was there. If you didn't grow up in Kansas City, how are you supposed to know what's there? Yeah there were billboards for Bodies Revealed, but I didn't know about Science City or that there was a restaurant inside. I hope that Union Station is able to survive. Thank you Peter Rugg for writing this article.
Face it folks...
This is a sports/party town. People here have no interest in Science/Space/Exhibit Museums. The only culture here are the money mongers who support the Arts/Theater. The rest are cow town rednecks who would rather paint themselves up for losing sports teams so they can tailgate, or spend hundreds of dollars on has been entertainers at the Sprint Center.
And Science City is a joke. It is nothing more than a playground. I spent time there and even though there is suppose to be a "lesson taught", there is no one there to explain what the science is behind what the kids are doing.
It's a white elephant that needs to be dumped.
Face it folks... This is a sports/party town. People here have no interest in Science/Space/Exhibit Museums. The only culture here are the money mongers who support the Arts/Theater. The rest are cow town rednecks who would rather paint themselves up for losing sports teams so they can tailgate, or spend hundreds of dollars on has been entertainers at the Sprint Center. And Science City is a joke. It is nothing more than a playground. I spent time there and even though there is suppose to be a "lesson taught", there is no one there to explain what the science is behind what the kids are doing. It's a white elephant that needs to be dumped.
kc is kind of a funny place. it's very idealistic and weird.
change the laws and put a casino in union station. quit making everything so painful. that science museum sucks.
nobody is learning anything there that they can't learn by picking up a book or getting online. the important thing is saving that building and the investment in it. i personally don't gamble, but when i drive through riverside and see the new streets i'm thinking....this is riverside? that money could be downtown, but no, a bunch of nut jobs said casino's had to be on boats. that's kc. the same kind of nut jobs that put kemper arena in the west bottoms and the royals and chiefs stadiums "out there". of course gas was cheap then and drinking and driving was once trivial.
maybe i'll buy a 300k 2br loft in downtown, and use all my leftover money on $10 martinis so i can be part of the "scene" of the new downtown. then i'll just walk on over to the science museum for an $20 education on dinosaurs. what painful idealism.
kc is kind of a funny place. it's very idealistic and weird. change the laws and put a casino in union station. quit making everything so painful. that science museum sucks. nobody is learning anything there that they can't learn by picking up a book or getting online. the important thing is saving that building and the investment in it. i personally don't gamble, but when i drive through riverside and see the new streets i'm thinking....this is riverside? that money could be downtown, but no, a bunch of nut jobs said casino's had to be on boats. that's kc. the same kind of nut jobs that put kemper arena in the west bottoms and the royals and chiefs stadiums "out there". of course gas was cheap then and drinking and driving was once trivial. maybe i'll buy a 300k 2br loft in downtown, and use all my leftover money on $10 martinis so i can be part of the "scene" of the new downtown. then i'll just walk on over to the science museum for an $20 education on dinosaurs. what painful idealism.
I�ve been extremely disappointed in Union Station since the restoration. The building is stunning, but what�s to see? I�ve lived in the area since 1980. During this time I�ve have visited most small museums within a 100 mile radius.
Pull the plug on Science City.
There is no doubt in my mind a quality permanent multi-themed museum could be gleaned from some of the smaller struggling ones.
There must be 25 small museums around the area, some in rough financial shape. For instance the Topeka�s Combat Air Museum, and the Fort Leavenworth Army collection rarely have visitors. Both are outstanding. Add the Steamboat Arabia, and display the stored items from the Truman Home. Thanks so much for the excellent Arabia museum by the way. Put the Connie and other older planes down there! Ft. Riley has a Calvary collection. Waylon Jennings tour bus, antique trucks cars, Johnson County has a 1950s futuristic model home, move the Negro League Baseball Museum/Jazz Hall of Fame in too.
Actively go after the dozens and dozens of private fascinating collections for on loan exhibits. The Smithsonian loans exhibits too. Get the place humming, take some pride Metro KC! Make Union Station a MUST SEE and repeat visit museum.
I’ve been extremely disappointed in Union Station since the restoration. The building is stunning, but what’s to see? I’ve lived in the area since 1980. During this time I’ve have visited most small museums within a 100 mile radius. Pull the plug on Science City. There is no doubt in my mind a quality permanent multi-themed museum could be gleaned from some of the smaller struggling ones. There must be 25 small museums around the area, some in rough financial shape. For instance the Topeka’s Combat Air Museum, and the Fort Leavenworth Army collection rarely have visitors. Both are outstanding. Add the Steamboat Arabia, and display the stored items from the Truman Home. Thanks so much for the excellent Arabia museum by the way. Put the Connie and other older planes down there! Ft. Riley has a Calvary collection. Waylon Jennings tour bus, antique trucks cars, Johnson County has a 1950s futuristic model home, move the Negro League Baseball Museum/Jazz Hall of Fame in too. Actively go after the dozens and dozens of private fascinating collections for on loan exhibits. The Smithsonian loans exhibits too. Get the place humming, take some pride Metro KC! Make Union Station a MUST SEE and repeat visit museum.
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