Beer in the Bottoms? Let's Bulldoze the Power & Light District!

Last night, while researching my next homebrew recipe, I came upon a spot of amazingly cool news. In 2009, Kansas City will have another brewery opening up, this time in the West Bottoms. Dead Canary Brewing is a woman-owned and run new brewery, setting up in the West Bottoms down off 12th Street, among the haunted houses and great old brick buildings.

Folks, this could be amazing.

They are setting up Beer Pong and Dodgeball Leagues. They are creating a taproom. They are committed to brewing practices that are green and sustainable. They got started on this journey by brewing naked.

Most importantly, they are creating "high content, high flavor, knock you on yo ass beers." Beers like Cat House Stout - (Dry hopped mint chocolate imperial stout), Local No. 12 - (lemongrass maple strong ale), Speakeasy IPA - (honeysuckle grapefruit IPA), Bathtub Barleywine - (copiously hopped barleywine), and Chickory Rhubarb Imperial Porter.

This could do more for the West Bottoms than any TIF Project ever brewed up in a closed-door meeting between Kay Barnes and Mephistopheles. Really - the West Bottoms could become the new Crossroads X 20, with lots of inexpensive great old buildings around, acres of parking, and reasonable access to the highways.

But, since Wayne Cauthen and the prior City Council have gambled our city's future on the Power & Light District, which is already turning out to be a bit of a flop, I have a radical idea. Let's bulldoze the Power & Light District, and refuse to give any more of our tax dollars to Cordish and their cronies. (Yes, of course they will sue, but it will take years for them to recover anything, and a sensible jury might just rule in our favor if we can introduce evidence of all their broken promises and their racist dress codes.)

Now that we have freed ourselves of the millions upon millions of obligations to out-of-state developers, we can bring in some topsoil and put in the world's most awesome beer garden in all the paved expanse that currently exists down there. Let's be ambitious - let's create something that will make Munich's Oktoberfest seem like an unpopular fraternity's weekend kegger. (We can even, as a nod to our prior mayor, put in a rain garden, just to show we're not angry anymore.)

Then, we take a few million dollars and give them to our local brewers to create the micro-breweries of their dreams on the periphery of our new beer garden. Relocate Boulevard's and its emblematic smokestack downtown. Get 75th Street Brewery to open up a 12th Street Brewery. In a cross-state gesture of goodwill to make up for our outright theft of the 1985 World Series, offer Schlafly a space.

But don't forget the beginners, either! The Kauffman Foundation wants to support entrepreneurship - let them funnel a few million dollars to help ambitious homebrewers make the leap into micro-brewing. And, because cans are so much more recyclable and cheaper to ship than bottles, let the city open up a municipal cannery, offering access to its canning lines for each of the breweries on a cooperative basis - a green infrastructure project that ought to attract funding from every level of government.

As I think we demonstrated at 75th Street Brewery on Monday night, real beer is a big draw. People will come out for something unusual, and they appreciate a good party. Imagine if Kansas City was the undisputed Home of Great Beer. We would have to hire thugs to control the hoards of convention planners! Vacationers would come in year round, just to try the seasonal brews! Hotels chains would pony up their own money to get access to the crowds of tipsy beer-lovers walking around downtown.

Most importantly, it would be awesome.

My point in this flight of fancy is that for the millions of dollars we have blown on a cookie-cutter assemblage of national chain restaurants, we could have had something unique and truly attractive to Kansas Citians and conventions if only we had focused on local businesses and local flavor. This is the sort of impulse that Mayor Funkhouser has pushed with his New Tools initiative. Economic Development does not have to mean sending massive amounts of money to out-of-state developers for massive projects. Let's hope that the Council gets behind the concept and that we see some real Kansas City economic development.

In the meantime, let's raise a toast to Dead Canary Brewing. They might accomplish with beer what politicians have failed to accomplish with hot air and taxpayer dollars.