When I moved to New York City twenty years ago, I promised
my family that I would try to return home at least once a year. As my work
responsibilities grew and my personal life expanded, coordinating these trips
became more complicated, but I kept my vow for the most part. Save the half
dozen times I chose to fly straight through to Kansas City, renting a car to
complete the trip to Wichita, I primarily flew out of LaGuardia at the crack of
dawn with connecting flights to tinier airplanes through Atlanta or Chicago, finally landing
sometime around noon Central Standard Time at the old Wichita Midcontinent airport. No matter how
tired or frazzled I might feel from the hustle and jumble of air
travel, I always looked forward to driving the flyover span of US 400 toward my
mother’s home on the east side of town. Past the flat boxes of retail, through
old neighborhoods thick with trees, the proud spire of the Friends University
clocktower, then a curve, a sweep upward, and suddenly, to the north, the
singular skyscape of downtown Wichita.
It has always been a comfort and a thrill to see it, the color
wheel cross-section of light, bright blues, the monolithic flight control tower
of the Garvey building, the black glass hulk of the former Bank 4, the
improbable brutalist Lego transformer that is the old library, and that
bodacious saucer, somehow futuristic yet still mid-century modern and forever
too cool for school, the Century II Performing Arts and Convention Center.
 |
| The old, brutalist library at night. |
The first, informal whispers that the old library and
Century II might be leveled for downtown redevelopment was met by many Wichita
natives as far-fetched and, frankly, unthinkable. Buildings are not paper cups
to be tossed after use, and buildings as architecturally significant as Century
II and the old library are certainly far beyond mere "structures." This wouldn’t
be like tearing down an old Costco or Wal-Mart. These buildings are works of art. With a little refurbishment and a bit of repurposing, they have
decades of life still left in them. Unfortunately (and completely
unsurprisingly), the same minds that shoehorned the uninspired
Intrust Arena downtown--with
little regard to aesthetics or parking, it seems--are at it again. Populous, as part of the deceptively named
Riverfront Legacy Master Plan
coalition, promoted a rigged “community outreach” by means of a push poll, and
initially proposed a selection of five plans for redevelopment on the river,
only one of which kept Century II. It is clear that little to no effort was put into using the buildings we
already have. Why refurbish, repurpose, and rebrand solid works of art that
were built to last when you can build new, prefab, cheaply constructed boxes
that will be ready to tear down in less than thirty years for yet another money
grab?
 |
| Back in her library glory, full of stacks. |
The corruption at the root of Century II’s possible demise
has been remarkably slow and unabashedly deliberate. While Wichitans lived
their lives, paid their bills, grew their gardens, and raised their kids, the
city’s plan for Century II was to simply let it go to seed. Instead
of caring for this remarkable building, an irreplaceable piece of architecture,
the city manager decided to just let it rot. Paint and power washing was put
aside, improvements were not made, and only the most critical of broken things
were fixed. The plan, it seems, was to let it slowly deteriorate, allowing the
facilities to become so rundown, outdated, and under resourced that the city
manager could finally point to it and say, See, it is “
no longer viable.” The citizens would look upon the faded, dirty structure and
think “yes, we deserve something better.” Something shiny and new. They would
forget that Century II was properly maintained for decades, a lovely, strange,
one-of-a-kind centerpiece to Wichita’s skyline and treated thusly. Not all of
us have forgotten.
Using the word
“legacy” to describe the pre-fab, mini-mall village the Riverfront Legacy
Master Plan coalition has in mind is particularly galling. Unless, of course,
the lowest bid, aesthetically inconsequential strip mall mediocrity littered
across the country is anyone’s idea of a suitable “legacy” for their beloved town. There is a reason
that the three “concept” images featured on the RLMP website are vague and
almost comically misleading. The first focuses the Arkansas River, depicting it in
a decidedly bluer hue that it has ever been this century (or last, or ever,
maybe). There is an inset swimming area that should run chills of horror down the
spine of anyone who learned canoeing at North High, or has ever braved the
river in a kayak, or has ever just walked by the river and caught a heady punch
of its aroma. Even in this rendering, the “dream” river dominates, and the rest
is obscured by trees and mobs of Wichitans, apparently wild to get up close and personal to the dank and
dirty in the proposed river pool. What great works of architectural genius are
slated to replace our beloved Century II and library? What daring design is
just over the horizon?
The second concept image features more Wichitans enjoying
the expansive park space that would stand in place of where Century II is now.
The park layout is flat, plain, and uninteresting. It is, for all intents and
purposes, a glorified suburban lawn. We already have a glorified suburban lawn downtown
in the desperately trendy, oft-hyped
Naftzger Park. Likewise, Wichita already has downtown-adjacent parks that follow the river and offer far more than bland views. The
rendering primarily shows people and park space and very little of the
structures that the RLMP coalition plans to make or break our city’s lasting
“legacy.”
The last concept image shows the grand design of the new
structures, sort of, depicting a generalized, very preliminary version of what
the new development will have to offer. There will be two separate venues to
replace the one Century II—a performing arts venue and a convention center—two
vague rectangles of space that beg the question that if Century II was not
fulfilling the entertainment needs of Wichita, why was the Intrust Bank Arena
not conceived and constructed to meet those needs back in 2010? The rest of the
structures and spaces in the rendering are either park space or the grimly labeled
“mixed use,” which brings to mind the fate of the once-lovely little downtown
park of my childhood, the aforementioned Naftzger Park, which has now been
reduced to an overrated median strip next to mass-produced, derivative commercial
buildings. “Mixed use” will likely be restaurants (great) and retail (maybe
great depending on what ends up there), but will also likely include office and
residential space. Since existing commercial and residential areas downtown are
nowhere near maximum capacity, one wonders just who will be utilizing this new,
“mixed use” development in the long run? Or are these just short-term goals
with no long-term plans?
 |
| Winter CII |
It would appear that the coalition at least has a dark sense
of humor, where their deliberate use of the word “legacy” in their name could
easily be construed as petty trolling. One of the proposed parks, which appears
to be right in the demolished footprint of Century II, is named “Century Park.”
Why? As an homage to the beautiful structure that once stood there with its
cool, curved lines, bold and stark and extraordinary? Or is this just a
placeholder name some snarky designer thought appropriate, akin to dancing on
the grave of ingenuity and creativity, “so long as we get paid” sort of thing? What
I do see when I look at that last concept drawing is a whole lot of boxy boxes of
no consequence or value replacing buildings that have history, meaning, depth,
and beauty.
 |
| Night angles of the old library. |
Whenever I’ve traveled to popular destinations—New York,
London, Seattle, Paris, New Orleans—what always strikes me first is the heft of
History all around me. The stalwart permanence of the place. There is always
new mixed in—new light fixtures, buildings, parks, ideas—but the old remains. People
might go to New York to see a particular show at Madison Square Garden, but they
do not go to New York to visit Madison Square Garden for the sake of Madison
Square Garden. They do not go to see a single glass skyscraper, though they
might appreciate it in the plethora of so many glass skyscrapers. And they
certainly do not go to New York to see mini-malls, Super Targets, or Applebee’s.
They go to see those stately brownstones lining the old neighborhoods, the
elegant spire of the Chrysler Building, the handsome art deco wonder
that is the Empire State Building. They walk miles to see the city in all her
grandest splendor, the remarkable craft of mason work by hands folded
generations ago, the beautiful, etched grace of a city cobbled together by
competing interests, compelling stories, and the wearying sweat and toil of our
great-great grandfathers. The city’s structures are its legacy in this world,
the mark of the human hands, and minds, and hearts who created them, and the
history, the story of our human permanence, that even though we pass on, our
carefully crafted structures, built ever upward and outward, remain.
 |
| Main entryway of the old library at an angle. |
It’s been suggested that the whole middle of the country
suffers from a sort of vague identity crisis. We are the “flyover states,” the
great, blank expanse, the parking lot to the Rocky Mountains. We are small
town, small minded. Our cities are stopovers to better places, run through with
train tracks, a gas station hub to anywhere but here. Compared to aged cities
like London, or ancient cities like Jerusalem, our settlements are mere blips
on the timeline, of no consequence, maybe just one bad drought away from ghost
towns run flat to dust. We don’t have the alluring seduction of Hollywood, the
primeval forests of the redwoods, the shining, dangerous lights of Las Vegas, the
breathtaking awe of the Grand Canyon. We are not a destination. We have only
scraps of history. And what we do have, too many of us are eager to take for
granted. Why is there never room for nostalgia when we speak of public spaces?
Is this not one of the ways we create a sense of home and belonging? Arguments
to delegitimize nostalgia as a worthy aspect to saving Century II and the old
library are disingenuous, dismissive, and critically flawed.
What the city government of Wichita seems to have forgotten
(and the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition could care less) is that the
revitalization of downtown Wichita managed to take place using the existing
structures that had been there for decades. Oldtown is called “Oldtown” for a
reason. The brick streets, the old buildings, the sense of history, place—a
true destination—made the revitalization of downtown what it is today. Ticky
tacky, pressed board construction was never the answer. It is not the answer
now. Nevertheless, the bulldozer of progress is chugging on. The old Wichita
Eagle building (never a beauty contest winner, even in her youth) was replaced
by the standard issue modern aesthetics of the new Cargill building, a similar
mishmash of styles and “flairs” not unlike the new library (also near, but not
on the river). Similarly styled buildings are rising up where the old Mead’s
Corner used to stand and, most irritatingly, a new Fidelity megabank has gone
up behind the quirky “Ho Ho” shaped Broadway Autopark,
formerly the Knightly Parking Garage, on South Broadway, which was only just
recently refurbished and repainted to now be obscured by yet another boxy box
of boxness.
In a time when the world is on a precipice of survival,
where we collectively seem to only half understand the need to re-use,
re-source, and re-cycle, it is all the more tone deaf to tear down perfectly
usable, perfectly astounding structures to replace them with stunted, cheap mediocrity.
There is no time like the present to prove we are not locusts ever consuming,
never building to stay, to stand, to commit, and not just to persevere but
build true monuments to our audacity, our midwestern spirit to forge grain and
stand into the wind, immovable and bound together. Do we leave crumbling
detritus in our wake, choking the river, clogging the banks, or do we make a
real effort to prove we as a people value beauty and art, and understand that
we have already created something enduring to memorialize our grandest dreams in
the name of our greatest virtues, institutions of learning and community? Our library,
our Century II. Can we collectively say, Fly over us if you will, but we
choose to leave something permanent and indelible, extraordinary and sublime.
We dreamt big, wild, and limitless and shouted proudly that we loved this
ground, these winding forks in the river, and wished to make our mark, leave
sign of our daring, and state unequivocally that We Were Here.
Century II and the old library are worth saving. Instead of
taking for granted the things that we have and striving for the banal, we could
embrace a new century’s worth of science, education, arts, entertainment, work
space, green space, community gathering place, and for a fraction of the cost
of a hyped-up strip mall next to another bland park. We already have a sense of
place, a monument to our community and generations past, but we’ve got to
invest in it to make it prevail, otherwise we commit to a future of waystation
grayness, the anyplace rest area in between more enticing destinations. Have
your “mixed use” boxes, plan your grand monument suburban lawn maintenance—there
are plenty of places around Wichita in desperate need of some investment and
invigoration—but do not tear down the two buildings that make our skyline more
than just vaguely memorable. Do not erase our identity—what makes us both
identifiable and inscrutable—only to build nothing special at all.
