Petition drive to put fate of Century II in voters’ hands starts Monday
Supporters of Century II plan to kick off a petition drive Monday for a ballot initiative that would prevent the city from tearing down the performing arts and convention center without a public vote, a leader of the campaign said Tuesday.
The petition also includes protection for the former downtown public library building, said Celeste Racette, whose father was a City Council member and mayor in the 1960s when Century II was developed.
The group is planning a full-scale campaign including yard signs and a central location for citizens to pick up blank petitions and drop them off when they’re filled in.
Century II is too important a building to consider tearing it down, said Greg Kite, president of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Wichita and Sedgwick County, who supports the initiative drive.
“It represents the best of both history and architecture in the city of Wichita,” Kite said. “It has its roots in the architecture of (famed architect) Frank Lloyd Wright and his students . . . It certainly is one of the most iconic structures in the city.”
The petition kickoff event is planned for noon Monday at Main and Central in front of City Hall, Racette said.
The Century II building is in the bull’s-eye of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan, a public-private study that is expected to propose replacing it and the former library with more than $1 billion in new facilities on the east bank of the Arkansas River south of Douglas.
The legacy planners, funded with $700,000 of public and private money, are expected to present their final plan to the public next week and to the City Council for approval next month.
The group has strongly indicated that those plans will include the razing of Century II, prompting the petition drive to take the decision out of the council’s hands.
City Council member Cindy Claycomb said Tuesday that she would have to see the petition and discuss it with the city’s legal counsel before making an informed comment about it.
“I’m not entirely sure how binding in a legal way that petition could be,” Claycomb said. “But it would certainly send a strong message to folks (if it gets enough signatures).”
Claycomb said she would like to see the Save Century II group respect the work of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan and wait for the group’s final recommendation.
“We have a process, and I think it’s a good process,” she said. “The Riverfront Legacy group will bring its recommendation to the council and the County Commission before anything is final, and I would like for that to play out.”
Racette said that given the speed with which the city has moved on other downtown projects, including a mammoth development on the west bank approved Tuesday, an initiative appears to be the only way to guarantee that the public will get to vote on whether to preserve Century II.
“This is actually called an initiative petition . . . that sets policy for the city,” Racette said. “So this is not something that has to wait on them.”
Racette said petition backers were in the process Tuesday of obtaining the county counselor’s approval on the legal form of the petition, which is a required step to bring it to the ballot.
With 50,214 voters casting ballots in the most recent city election, petition supporters will need 10 percent, or 5,022 signatures of registered voters who live within the city of Wichita, to force their measure onto a ballot, said Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman.
Racette said she is confident they’ll be able to get that and then some.
Although the final plan hasn’t been released, the Riverfront Legacy group decided in a meeting last month to recommend demolishing Century II and building a new performing arts center and a separate convention center in its place. Underground parking would be used to free up ground-level space for river-related activities.
The plan also includes substantial development of new businesses, offices and apartments near the river to generate tax revenue to offset part of the cost of the new public facilities.
The petition proposed by Racette and her group would prevent the city government from destroying any historically significant buildings owned by the city without a public vote, specifically naming Century II and the former library as two buildings that would have to be protected.
Restaurateur Jon Rolph, co-chair of the Greater Wichita Partnership and a member of the Riverfront Legacy coalition, said several studies have found Century II would be difficult to retrofit for anything other than its intended use as a convention center, exhibition hall and performing arts center.
“I would hope that we can all agree that keeping an aging structure will ultimately cost our community in the long run — literally, in how much it costs to keep it open, even if it’s empty, and figuratively if it stands in the way of a new performing arts center, convention center and open green spaces,” he said in an e-mail.
He said replacing Century II with new facilities would bring “new vitality” to the area.
“The emotions for saving the structure certainly run high, and we understand it must not be easy to see the direction the coalition is taking,” he said.
This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 12:02 PM.
