2020 will bring a new baseball stadium and plenty of 150th birthday parties

From being a census year to celebrating major milestones, 2020 is shaping up to be a year of numbers.

Wichita and Sedgwick County will mark their 150th anniversaries, while Wichita State University will celebrate 125 years of education. The Kansas Cosmosphere will recognize the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, while the Wichita Art Museum turns 85.

The start of a new decade is ushering in several firsts too, from the first year of new Wichita mayor Brandon Whipple’s term to the first time Danny, Sandy and the other angst-ridden teens of Rydell High in “Grease” are part of Music Theatre Wichita’s season.

Here’s a look at some notable events coming up in 2020, which as a leap year gives us one extra day on the calendar.

Say happy birthday

It’ll be a year of birthday celebrations for several familiar local entities: a sesquicentennial for Wichita and Sedgwick County, a quasquicentennial for WSU, a centennial year for Mark Arts, the 85th anniversary of WAM and the 20th anniversary of Exploration Place.

Events marking the sesquicentennial of Wichita and Sedgwick County are still being planned, according to Megan Lovely, the communications and special events manager for the city. So far, only one major event has been announced for the 150th celebration: an Aug. 15 “150 for 150” gala at Koch Arena that will recognize outstanding athletes who got their start Wichita. Hoopster Lynette Woodard, the first woman member of the Harlem Globetrotters, and Olympian Jim Ryun, the first high school athlete to run a mile under four minutes, are confirmed keynote speakers, according to Bob Lutz, executive director of the nonprofit youth baseball League 42, which is helping plan the event. Keep an eye on the event’s Facebook page for more confirmed participants.

Quasquicentennial celebrations for WSU will happen between July 1 and June 30, 2021, with an August convocation marking the start of the academic year being the likely kickoff event, according to organizers. Plans are still underway for other events, but one somber occasion in WSU’s history is the 50th anniversary of the Oct. 2, 1970 plane crash that killed WSU football players, administrators and supporters.

Originally founded as the Wichita Art Association, Mark Arts is recognizing its 100 years with a special exhibition open now through April 18, with an opening reception Jan. 3. The Wichita Art Museum is bringing back its annual gala for 2020 on Nov. 14. It’s also hosting a significant exhibition by Native American artist Preston Singletary Feb. 1-Aug. 30 before the exhibit travels to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Exploration Place will have a birthday bash April 4-5 and a special gala Oct. 10.

New political faces

Wichita will have a new mayor in 2020 with Brandon Whipple taking office January for a four-year term. It’ll be an important election year as well. Not only will Americans select the next president in November, but also for the first time since 1996, the ballot for Kansas’ U.S. Senate seat won’t include the name of Republican Pat Roberts, who is not seeking reelection after four terms.

Let’s play ball

New year, new team, new stadium — Wind Surge, a Triple-A affiliate team of the Miami Marlins, opens its first season of play in Wichita’s soon-to-be-named new baseball stadium on April 14. The game will end with a bang, with the first of about a dozen post-game fireworks celebrations planned for the season.

Opening play in the new Genesis Sports Complex in Goddard is also on deck in 2020. The complex featuring five turf fields and an aquatics center is expected to be fully open by Jan. 31, with its inaugural event being a slow pitch softball tournament Feb. 22, according to director Scott Martin.

The U.S. Women’s Olympic volleyball team has only one U.S. tournament before it goes to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo and it happens June 9-11 at Koch Arena on the WSU campus. The U.S. women will host teams from Japan, Turkey and Belgium.

League 42, which provides affordable youth baseball, is hoping to open a 10,500-square-foot training and academic center near McAdams Park by August, although it still needs to raise more than $20,000 for the project.

Make a splash

New public splash parks are scheduled to open at Boston, Evergreen and Edgemoor parks in 2020.

Seeing stars

Several major performers will stop in Wichita for 2020. Emmy and Tony award-winner Kristin Chenoweth performs with the Wichita Symphony May 16, while Intrust Arena kicks off its 10th anniversary concert series with an exclusive concert “Strait to Oz” by country star George Strait on Jan. 24. Other big-name performers coming to Intrust include Jason Aldean (Feb. 15), KISS (Feb. 19), Blake Shelton (March 11), Cher (April 22) and the 50th-anniversary tour of Alabama (July 31).

As the home of the Odyssey-Apollo 13 command module, the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson is marking the 50th anniversary of the aborted Apollo 13 lunar landing mission with an April 4 gala featuring James Lovell, the mission’s commander, and other crew members. The Cosmosphere is also expanding its space camps and learning spaces in 2020 with the expected March opening of CosmoKids, a new play space for kids ages 2-6.

Sports and basketball as art

In spring 2020, five new multisensory sculptures will be unveiled downtown as part of Wichita’s public art collection.

Gerrymandering and basketball are two nontraditional topics for an art museum to exhibit but you’ll find exhibitions devoted to them in 2020 at WSU’s Ulrich Museum of Art, along with a spring exhibition featuring the works of artist Lee Adler who in real life worked at one of the ad agencies featured on the popular TV series “Mad Men. Another spring exhibition, “Solving for X = Representation, Slaying the Gerrymander,” takes a look at the controversial topic of gerrymandering — the redistricting of voters done by elected officials — and proposes an alternative. Museum officials expect the fall exhibition “To the Hoop: Basketball and Contemporary Art” to draw both sports and art fans.

First-time performances

Wichita Grand Opera launches a new partnership with an aerial performance group featured on “America’s Got Talent” with the production “Cirque d’Ignite” Jan. 30-Feb. 2 at the Wichita Center for the Performing Arts. More aerial shows with On the Fly productions are expected.

In a different sort of theater, Wichita is for the first time hosting the 2020 National Theatre on Ice competition in June at Intrust Arena. Theatre on Ice is a form of competitive ice skating that has become popular in Europe, where it’s called Ballet on Ice, according to the U.S. Figure Skating Association.

The 2020 season of Music Theatre Wichita is made up of nearly all first-time productions for MTW. Besides “Grease,” other shows marking their MTW debut include “Something Rotten!,” “Twelfth Night” and “Kinky Boots.” The only repeat is “Wizard of Oz.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misspelled Brandon Whipple’s name.

This story was originally published January 1, 2020 at 7:00 AM.