This towering KC landmark deserves to shine again, especially with World Cup on the way

Your Guide to KC: Star sports columnist Vahe Gregorian is changing uniforms this spring and summer, acting as a tour guide of sorts to some well-known and hidden gems of Kansas City. Send your ideas to vgregorian@kcstar.com.

About halfway back from Lawrence a few weeks ago, I glanced at the horizon and realized … there it was.

The same can be said from the banks of the Missouri River at CPKC Stadium to the north, the Truman Sports Complex to the east and, I noticed the other day, from Camp Bow Wow in Westport to the southwest.

That’s because the spectacle looms about everywhere all at once in Kansas City — even as it could be so much more.

Jasper Mullarney sees it from his backyard in Hyde Park … and has research that says it’s visible 40 miles away. To Will Gregory, it’s a ubiquitous landmark from anywhere in town.

And to Quinton Lucas, it’s always been a welcoming and centering milepost about anywhere he might be.

Including at the very moment we spoke on the phone the other day.

“I’m staring at the KCTV tower right now,” he said.

Gazing at the 1,042-foot structure best-known to a generation of Kansas Citians as the “Eye-full Tower” (we’ll come back to that), all the more conspicuous atop a hill at 31st Street and Grand Boulevard, Lucas reckoned it’s visible to “probably hundreds of thousands” daily as what he long has considered a “beacon.”

While he meant that term more symbolically, the tower for a variety of financial and logistical reasons hasn’t been lit — other than by a few aviation warning lights — for well over a decade

Now, illuminating it better than ever before is a common cause (albeit from disparate angles) for Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City; Mullarney, founder of The Tower KC Inc., a nonprofit proposing an elaborate public art project; and Gregory, who sits on the boards of Kansas City’s Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund Committee and Kansas City PBS.

That’s the site of the tower that actually belongs to KCTV-5 in Fairway (we’ll get back to that, too).

“I am preaching the gospel to whoever will listen,” said Gregory, adding that lighting the tower resonates as just the sort of “time and treasure” sought by the boards on which he serves.

‘It’s a very uniquely Kansas City thing’

The topic was broached to me by another PBS board member, Sandy Whitaker, on a tour of the tower and station with her husband, Byron, along with Bryan Truta, senior director of radio operations for The Bridge.

In addition to being mesmerized by the dizzying view of the tower from beneath it, I was intrigued by the passion all three had for such an idea.

Seems to me the notion is enticing enough that it merits conversation about what a lit tower could or should be, how it might be funded and, ultimately, whether there is enough energy to get something substantial done.

Especially while Kansas City seeks to enhance its profile as a 2026 World Cup host 70 years after the tower opened and tripped the lights fantastic.

“Like red rubies …,” The Star wrote in May 1956, “these 1,360 25-watt bulbs glow against the night for miles and miles around.”

Lights out now, it still stands high above it all as a vast and ready-made blank canvas to install something shimmering, significant or quirky — or maybe all of the above at once.

Something that could have its own niche in the spectrum ranging from Union Station to the Liberty Memorial to The Scout and from the so-called “hair curlers” on Bartle Hall to the Shuttlecocks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

“It’s a very uniquely Kansas City thing that is the tallest piece of our skyline …,” said Mullarney, an entrepreneur. “When you see visual representation of the city, the tower is usually not on there.

“That needs to change, right? It’s a very important piece.”

Stirred by The Bay Lights that used thousands of LEDs to create a moving effect on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, Mullarney about a decade ago began working toward some sort of parallel-ish concept here.

His point wasn’t to equate the ideas or places but to emphasize the contextual fits in each location.

Making of the ‘Eye-full Tower’

What was dedicated as the KCMO Tower (as the station was known then) has peered over the city since 1956, when it debuted as the third-tallest freestanding structure in the world behind New York’s Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building — and 18 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower, which then was 1,024 feet high.

(Not that there’s any comparison in splendor, we’ll soon be reminded of ad nauseam when the Paris Olympics begin later this month.)

Still, the Eye-full Tower nickname was a natural here, particularly since it was a riff off the eye in the CBS logo.

Channel 5 reinforced the point in ads at the time, and it even became ingrained as a local reference point: In one 1957 Kansas City Times ad, for instance, Ed’s Funeral Flowers gave directions to its location by noting it was “3 blocks East (of the) Eye-Full Tower.”

As of 1957, the Eiffel Tower resumed its place as the taller tower at 1,050 feet (and now is 1,083 feet) because of a new configuration at its top after a 1956 fire and the addition of live broadcasting dishes.

But, alas, evidently not because it felt the need to take back the title from our Paris on the Plains.

For that matter, the mere fact that our tower once was taller than the Eiffel Tower seemed to be the enduring local point.

News of the Eiffel Tower’s rise seemed minimized locally, with The Kansas City Times running a brief wire story that didn’t even mention the KCMO Tower. It noted, simply, that the new Eiffel top “still lags behind the 1,472-foot Empire State building and the 1,046-foot Chrysler building.”

(The WDAF Tower at 31st and Summit is, in fact, taller than the KCTV tower but not as prominent since it’s not as central or fundamentally substantial and isn’t freestanding).

In some ways, we’ve clung to the attachment ever since.

As recently as 1997, The Star wrote a playful “tale of the tape” comparing such notions as “romance factor:”

Us: “Next question.”

Them: “The Eiffel Tower is the most beloved and recognizable of landmarks in the world’s most romantic city.”

Just the same, at least the more whimsical aspect of the French connection prevails because of the tower’s shape and height. And not just to those of a certain age.

When Gregory recently was talking about the structure with his 12-year-old daughter, who has been to Paris, she said, “That is our Eiffel Tower.”

‘Sparks that we could blow on’

After Mullarney solicited a “letter of comfort” from KCTV-5 in 2018, he and his group soon unveiled a design scheme (“Seeing the Night Bluely”) devised by James Woodfill of the Kansas City Art Institute.

At the time, he believed multiple private foundations, groups and individuals would support the project he also envisioned as a cross-state parallel to St. Louis’ Gateway Arch — at least in literal stature (nearly double the 630-foot Arch) if not in grandeur.

His group got some traction in its efforts to raise $300,000 toward what Mullarney then figured was a $2 million project, he said.

But fundraising stagnated when its application for a $1 million public art challenge from Bloomberg Philanthropies was not selected, and it more or less went dormant when the pandemic struck in 2020.

“The flywheel is not really moving around that path from this idea to funding it,” said Mullarney, who now estimates it would cost $3.5 million to $4.5 million and added, “We’re trying to figure out how to gain momentum with the project again. If the right grant comes up, if the right funder comes up and shows interest, if the city shows interest because of the World Cup, those are all sparks that we could blow on to make fire.”

While the sparks currently flickering aren’t exactly close to one another, there’s ample room for some synergy here — particularly if other entities join in.

After all, Gregory hardly is averse to Mullarney’s notion — he’s met with him and admires his enthusiasm — and Mullarney’s embrace of Woodfill’s vision doesn’t discount other possibilities he could back.

“I think that to make this anything but an art installation, like to do something commercial with it, would be a lost opportunity for the city …,” Mullarney said. “But I’m open to any conversation that ends with it being lit.”

This isn’t the first attempt to, well, jazz up the tower.

In 1989, when its lights were used to forecast the next day’s weather (flashing upward signaled warmer, downward predicted cooler), The Star wondered if that was a waste of a “landmark that could be sending another signal to residents and visitors to Kansas City?

“After all, this is a town in need of a recognizable symbol, an identifiable image, a hook to hang something other than a well-worn cowboy hat.”

In this case, The Star presented William H. Alburty’s rendering of construction around the tower to shape it into a giant (presumably illuminated) saxophone as a nod to our rich and essential jazz history.

But his concept, which also proposed making that the site of the then-in-the-works American Jazz Museum, never took off, particularly since city money was allocated for the museum as conceived to be part of the revitalization of the 18th and Vine District.

Mullarney remains most dedicated to the concept of Woodfill, who in 2018 told The Star he’d been “dreaming about that tower the last 40 years” and conceived the idea of capturing the colors of the sky throughout the day and reproducing them on the tower at night.

As described by The Star then , “the colors would be played back by the LEDs in a minutes-long repeating loop, creating a subtle light show against the night sky.”

Meanwhile, as much as Gregory admires Mullarney’s ambition, he envisions a more straightforward and economical concept: lighting that mirrors the commercial lighting schemes of neon hues already so evident downtown and in the fountain at the Country Club Plaza … but with a capacity for thematic messaging.

Gregory also has been considering whether what he calls “discreet corporate sponsorship,” possibly highlighted at the base, could help pay for it.

“Whether it’s an art installation or a corporate sponsored entity,” said Gregory, who runs his own public relations business, “I just want to see it get done.”

Lucas has more of a curious mind than an agenda on this but sees fertile potential.

“So the question is, is this something we want to tell a story about, or is this something that we just think of as ancillary?” he said. “To me, it’s almost like if you have something in your house, like, say, a pole right in front, what do you do with it? How do you interact with it?

“Do you try to act like it’s not part of it? Or do you actually say, ‘This is part of Kansas City … (and) maybe there’s a lot more we can do with it.’”

As for how KC 2026, Kansas City’s World Cup leadership, might view the possibility as it considers many options in its work ahead?

“All ideas are welcome,” said Kathy Nelson, a KC 2026 board member who is president of Visit KC and the Kansas City Sports Commission. “Funding is the question.”

For his part, Lucas said there’s no “discretionary fund” for such an enterprise. But he is interested in listening to ideas and reckons “maybe one of these days” something alluring could be worked out.

‘A new landmark of sorts’

Any such possibility starts with KCTV-5, which still uses the tower but moved its offices from the site to Fairway in 1977 amid such acrimony with the city that some politicians wanted the tower torn down or moved out along with the station.

(And while Kansas City PBS’ offices sit right next to the tower, it transmits from a different spot.)

Lucas recently posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he planned to “talk to TV5 about lighting again.”

In a statement to The Star, KCTV-5 vice president and general manager Curtis Miles said: “We know how much the community enjoyed the tower lights in the past, so we continue to explore the possibility of re-lighting it. However, we don’t have anything planned at this time.”

The station’s last public position on the matter, in 2018, was that relighting the tower was “not feasible” because of expenses and the complications of frequently changing more than 1,300 incandescent lights over 900 feet of the tower’s four legs.

And looking up at the elevator-less structure from below, it’s easy to appreciate how time-consuming and precarious replacing the bulbs would be for those who have to scale it.

(To say nothing of how risky it was when two Vietnam War protesters stayed at the top for more than 14 hours in 1972, and three boys made their way up in 1956 “while about 20 police officers waited for them” to come down, The Star wrote then.)

But technology, particularly LED lighting, would seem to reduce both the financial and logistical obstacles — even as the age-old issue of ice shards flying off the tower and damaging property still poses its own challenges.

In 2018, KCTV-5 did grant conditional approval for Mullarney’s group to study a proposal, which Mullarney said included the outline of a plan for 20 years of funding as well as the station’s right to say no to any proposed piece.

Asked whether that remained in place, a KCTV-5 spokesperson noted that there had been no formal agreement in place and that management has changed since.

Whatever the case, here’s hoping that all of these parties — and more — can generate fresh talk and action about the potential of something that begs to stand out even more glaringly but has been less and less visible since its post-Sept. 11 red, white and blue display.

Meanwhile, the right concept at the right time remains to be divined. And with the world heading this way in 2026, maybe there’s no time like now to improve the view.

“If you were to look at every major city in the U.S.,” Mullarney said, “I don’t think there are many opportunities at this scale to make a meaningful difference to the skyline and create a new landmark of sorts.”

Star sports columnist Vahe Gregorian is changing uniforms this spring and summer, acting as a tour guide of sorts to some well-known and hidden gems of Kansas City. Send your ideas to vgregorian@kcstar.com.