A GRACIOUS TOWN IN THE HEARTLAND

People who have never been there think vaguely of flatlands, stockyards and Rodgers and Hammerstein. In fact, Kansas City is built upon gently rolling, wooded hills on the banks of the Missouri, its stockyards are all but closed down, and everything is not only up to date but often remarkably sophisticated. Andre Maurois was so taken with the place after a visit in the '40s that he wrote: "Who in Europe, or in America, for that matter, knows that Kansas City is one of the loveliest cities on earth?"

That may be an exaggeration, although Kansas City's fiercely chauvinistic boosters do not think so. Unfortunately, many of the 22,000 people swarming into Kansas City, Mo., next week for the G.O.P. Convention will not see the best of the town. The new 17,000-seat, $23.2 million Kemper Arena, where the Republicans will gather, is set like a snow-white spaceship in the bottoms along the Missouri, just next to the decaying old stockyards. Delegates heading for the hall will encounter such scenery as the Columbia Burlap Co. and the Sweet Lassy Feed Co. If the Republicans want to browse near by during a convention break, they will have to settle for Farm World, a shop specializing in serums, wormers and insecticides, or the Kansas City Vaccine Co., which sells animal vaccines and veterinarians' instruments. The best restaurant near the hall, a steak house called the Golden Ox, will be jammed, so visitors may find themselves staying inside the hall, settling for hot dogs. For those unfortunates, however, there will be at least one amenity. As a concession to the city's midsummer heat, the Republican National Committee agreed to allow the sale of beer inside the arena.

Kansas City (pop. 513,000) is spread out over 316 square miles. That spaciousness is one of its charms, but distances make it difficult for visitors without cars to inspect the place. Actually, like many Midwestern cities--except Chicago--Kansas City is two cities: downtown and elsewhere. The city is now laboring to restore the dreary 140sq. block downtown area, which is populated only during office hours and abandoned at 5.

The city that Maurois was writing about is elsewhere, outside the downtown area. Kansas City has 118 miles of tree-lined parkways and gracious boulevards and 7,211 acres of public parks. Kansas Citians have a fetish for fountains; it is almost a gaucherie for a developer to erect a building without one outside. The latest is a $150,000 concrete and steel-alloy fountain in Blue Valley Park. Some of the loveliest are in the Spanish-style Country Club Plaza, an opulent shopping and residential complex; it was the nation's first shopping center when Developer J.C. Nichols built it in the early '20s.

Rolling Countryside. Kansas City's tone and civic esprit are set by a cluster of local business leaders like Joyce Hall and his son Donald (Hallmark Cards, which has its headquarters in the new $350 million Crown Center) and Henry Bloch (H & R Block, the tax firm), who likes to say: "No one is anxious to cover all this beautiful rolling countryside with concrete." The town is full of monuments to the leaders' enthusiasm. There is the Nelson Art Gallery, for example, built by the estate of the late William Rockhill Nelson, founder of the Kansas City Star. The gallery now has one of the most important collections of Chinese art in the world.

Some other attractions next week: the Kansas City Royals, currently one of the hottest teams in the American League, will have three home games.

For those who can get tickets, Yul Brynner will be appearing all week in The King and I at the Starlight Theater in Swope Park. On the whole, however, few will be tempted to say, in the style of Dr. Johnson: "When a man is tired of Kansas City, he is tired of life."

Pitch a Tent. Kansas City has gone about preparing for the convention with the solid and discreet industriousness that is the city's trademark. Some 2,500 volunteers have been mustered in 54 committees, with each assigned a delegation. It has been difficult making housing arrangements for the incoming delegates, alternates, their families, newspeople, hangers-on and, as it seems, half the U.S. Government. Roughly 80 hotels are being used, some of them as far away as Topeka, Kans., 65 miles to the west. But only a score are fully first class, and that includes such motels as Holiday and Ramada inns. The remainder are mostly second-or third-rate places, although all are supposed to be neat, clean and helpfully air conditioned.

A crisis erupted when Richard Frame, vice chairman of Pennsylvania's delegation, complained that staying at the Hilton Airport Plaza Inn would be like getting stuck in the middle of "a cornfield--you can't walk to a bar or get a suit pressed." Though the Hilton Plaza is eleven miles from the Kemper Arena, it is not in a cornfield, has four bars, swimming pool, tennis courts and one-day valet service. Accordingly, Manager Maurice Bluhm threatened to cancel "the whole damn delegation" when he heard Frame's remark and suggested: "Let them go pitch a tent in a cornfield." Frame apologized, but Bluhm is still fuming.

Transportation at the convention should be fairly good. The city has mobilized 200 buses and 1,000 taxis. The fact that downtown Kansas City clears out at 5 p.m. may be a blessing; the Kemper Arena is only a mile from the heart of the city, and traffic should be light in late afternoon and evening hours.

New Yorker Writer Calvin Trillin, a native of the city, has rather eccentrically written that Kansas City has the best restaurants in the world. The best of the best, says Trillin, is Arthur Bryant's barbecue restaurant. Actually. Kansas City has few very good restaurants. The best are the American Restaurant in the Crown Center complex and Jasper's, seven miles south of downtown. In general, places like McDonald's will probably do very good business during the convention.

Kansas City has festooned itself with red, white and blue bunting for the convention. Practically everything in town seems to smell of fresh paint, including such bump-and-grind joints along Twelfth Street as the Pink Door (a new coat of pink, naturally) and the Can-Can Club (mauve and green). Even Ray's Playpen, the city's leading porno shop, has redecorated its windows with a donkey and an elephant, both looking sedate.

The only discord involves possible demonstrations. The Kansas City Convention Coalition, a mixed bag of protesters ranging from homosexuals to Yippies and anarchists, requested a permit to camp out in Penn Valley Park, a large expanse just behind the Crown Center, where President Ford will be staying. The city refused. Last week the coalition announced that it expected at least 2,500 demonstrators and that despite the turndown they would camp in Penn Valley Park, bathe in the park's small lake and dig latrines with a rented backhoe. That threat was greeted with some truculence. "By God," countered Parks Director Frank Vaydik. "they aren't going to tear up anything in that park. I don't care who I have to call in." The entire 1,200-man Kansas City police department has been given crowd-control training and put on full alert; more than 325 Missouri state police and deputy sheriffs from surrounding counties have been mustered to help. Since the Kansas state line runs next to the Kemper Arena, squads of cops from Kansas City, Kans., will patrol there.

Damn Right. The city hopes to gross about $8 million on the convention, a good return on an investment of only $500,000. Frugal Democratic Mayor Charles Wheeler plans to recover even some of that money. When the convention is over, the 4-ft.-long sounding block on which the gavel is pounded will be cut up into 2 1/2-in. chips and placed on commemorative plaques. Price: $100 each. Does Wheeler, a good Democrat, plan to buy one? Says he: "Damn right. Every family needs one."

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