Bars, restaurants, and live music venues fill the Power and Light District, Kansas City's most ambitious downtown revitalization project of the 21st century. The district takes its name from the Kansas City Power and Light Building, the Art Deco skyscraper completed in 1931 that towers at its edge — one of the finest examples of Depression-era commercial architecture in the Midwest. The entertainment district itself opened in 2007, built on what had been surface parking lots and vacant blocks, developed to anchor the new Sprint Center arena next door.
Bars, restaurants, and live music venues now fill the blocks, and on weekend nights the open-air spaces become some of the most densely populated public spaces in Kansas City. The district represents a broader story of downtown revival that has played out in American cities since the 1990s — the recognition that city centers hollowed out by suburban flight could be reclaimed through strategic investment in entertainment and density. Kansas City's downtown was particularly hard hit by mid-century decline; Power and Light was the centerpiece of its comeback.
Whether you prefer your cities more organically evolved or purpose-built, there is no denying that on a Saturday night, this district is alive in a way downtown Kansas City had not been for decades.