From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
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"One of the most remarkable buildings in Kansas City is Kemper Arena, the bright white exoskeletonized auditorium designed by famed architect Helmut Jahn.
But as the Kansas City Star reports today, the one-time home of the NBA's Kansas City (now Sacramento) Kings is in jeopardy of demolition.
Last Friday, a state historic advisory panel recommended Kemper for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Such a designation would make arena restoration and renovation eligible for state and federal historic tax credits.
Some preservationists cherish the 40-year-old arena for its external structural frame even though on June, 4, 1979, much of the roof collapsed during a heavy thunderstorm.
The Star's Steve Paul points out that the string might be playing out for Kemper, which was all but abandoned when the Sprint Center opened in downtown KC in 2007.
Paul's story describes a struggle between Foutch Brothers LLC, a private developer that wants to buy Kemper from the city and rehab it, and the namesake Kemper banking family and leaders of the American Royal Association.
Kemper is in the West Bottoms stockyards area and the Royal wants to replace the arena with a smaller building on the site.
Foutch has proposed buying Kemper from the city and redoing the arena as a complex for youth sports and community recreation.
Paul reports that KC Mayor Sly James appears to favor the Royal's plan.
For now, the building—site of the 1976 Republican National Convention—remains in limbo. And usually empty. The Kings left for Sacramento in 1985. Indoor professional football also came and went."
From Wikipedia on Kemper Arena:
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"Kemper Arena is a 19,500 seat indoor arena, in Kansas City, Missouri.
It is named for R. Crosby Kemper Sr., a member of the powerful Kemper financial family who donated $3.2 million, from his estate for the arena. Its previous most recent tenant was the American Royal livestock show, which held its annual livestock show there until 2010, when it moved to the nearby Sprint Center.
Having been essentially supplanted by Sprint Center, which opened in 2007, plans were announced in 2011 to raze the arena and replace it with an Agricultural Events Center which would include a 5,000-seat coliseum. Kemper Arena temporarily reopened as the Kansas City Renegades of the Champions Professional Indoor Football League made the arena their home in 2013, but the team folded after the season ended.
The original concept for the arena in 1972 was to replace the aging American Royal Arena just south of the new Arena that was used for animal shows. However city officials looking to attract a professional basketball and hockey team changed the scope to be a new state of the art arena.
Kemper Arena was built in 18 months in 1973–74 on the site of the former Kansas City Stockyards just west of downtown in the West Bottoms to replace the 8,000-seat Municipal Auditorium to play host to the city's professional basketball and hockey teams. The arena was the first major project of German architect Helmut Jahn who was to go on to become an important architect of his era.
The building was revolutionary in its simplicity and the fact it did not have interior columns obstructing views. Its roof is suspended by exterior steel trusses. The nearly windowless structure contrasts to Jahn's later signature style of providing wide open glass enclosed spaces. Kemper's exterior skeleton style was to be used extensively throughout Jahn's other projects.
The building cost $22 million and is owned by the city of Kansas City, Missouri.
Financing came from seven sources:
$5.6 million from general obligation bonds
$3.2 million donated by R. Crosby Kemper Sr.
$575,000 dollars from bond interest
$1.5 million donated by the American Royal Association
Land provided by the Kansas City Stockyards Company
$10 million from revenue bonds in conjunction with the Jackson County Sports Authority
$2 million in federal grants for street work."
From Wikipedia on Helmut Jahn, the architect of Kemper Arena:
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"Helmut Jahn (born January 4, 1940) is a German-American architect, well known for designs such as the US$800 million Sony Center on the Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, the Messeturm in Frankfurt and the One Liberty Place, formerly the tallest building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Suvarnabhumi Airport, an international airport in Bangkok, Thailand.
Jahn was born in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1940. After attending the Technical University of Munich from 1960 to 1965, he worked with Peter C. von Seidlein for a year. In 1966, he emigrated to Chicago to further study architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, leaving school without earning his degree.
In 1967, he joined C. F. Murphy Associates as a protégé of Gene Summers and was appointed Executive Vice President and Director of Planning and Design of the firm in 1973. Taking sole control from 1981, the firm was renamed Murphy/Jahn, although the aged Murphy had retired (dying a few years later, in 1985).
Generally inspired by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, yet opposed to the doctrinal application of modernism by his followers, in 1978, Jahn became the eighth member of the Chicago Seven. Despite a rocky start when the roof of his first major project Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri collapsed in 1979, Jahn established his pre-eminent reputation in 1985 with the State of Illinois Center in Chicago which prompted him to be dubbed "Flash Gordon.".
Jahn has grown the business into a global architectural practice that consistently ranks among top 20 United States architectural firms in terms of gross annual billings. In addition to the main seat in Chicago, the company has offices in Berlin and Shanghai.
On October 26, 2012, Helmut Jahn renamed Murphy/Jahn to simply JAHN and announced that he will share design leadership at the firm with architect Francisco Gonzalez Pulido, a partner and president of JAHN."