Former Kansas City Mayor Richard Berkley dies at 92

[FangKC]

Former Kansas City Mayor Richard Berkley dies at 92

Former Kansas City mayor Richard “Dick” Berkley, who was the city’s first Jewish and most recent Republican mayor, died Wednesday. He was 92.

Berkley served as mayor from 1979 to 1991, longer than any other mayor in Kansas City history. He was one of only five mayors to be elected to a third term.

He also sat on Kansas City Council for 10 years, and he was a young executive for his family’s Tension Corp. before entering politics.
...

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/ ... 2023-12-01

[moderne]

What are the odds that Tension Envelope will be sold/folded and the building sold to developers? Often happens when later generations of a family business inherit.

[Cratedigger]

Bill Berkley seems pretty on it/with it and passionate about downtown

No clue about generations after him

[Highlander]

Bill Berkley seems pretty on it/with it and passionate about downtown

No clue about generations after him

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_of_ ... ,_Missouri

You can rank the mayors by what happened under their watch. Berkley was a pretty good mayor while the two before him pushed a suburban agenda for KC. William Kemp was probably Kansas City's worst mayor. The north loop destruction began under his watch and continued under Bartle's tenure. Kemp was also the mayor at the time Guinotte Manor was built (the overcrowded public housing project that wrecked Columbus Park).

Since Berkley, I thought Cleaver and especially Barnes were good mayors and Funkhouser was a complete disaster for KC.

[missingkc]

My sole memory of Berkley as mayor is that he was credited with losing the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church to Louisville by leaving the conference before it was over. KC was the site committees' choice and and supposedly had it in the bag. It would have gone into a renovated Muehlebach. Louisville mounted a last minute heart-tug production touting the positive state of race relations in the city. Berkley was already gone and no one launched a response on KC's behalf. Anyway, that's the story as I remember it. I've always judged him by that.

[Highlander]

My sole memory of Berkley as mayor is that he was credited with losing the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church to Louisville by leaving the conference before it was over. KC was the site committees' choice and and supposedly had it in the bag. It would have gone into a renovated Muehlebach. Louisville mounted a last minute heart-tug production touting the positive state of race relations in the city. Berkley was already gone and no one launched a response on KC's behalf. Anyway, that's the story as I remember it. I've always judged him by that.

My recollection was that when the choice of Kansas City was announced, there was a lot of angst among the NY HQ workers about a move to KC. Race relations and diversity did ostensibly figure into the decision but KC's image at that time isn't what is now and that had a lot to do with the selection of Louisville (and it remains an enigma to me today why anyone in NY would have that much more positive image of Louisville KY).

[herrfrank]

Berkley got the 1980s office building boom to show up to downtown -- with supporting credit going to Mayor Charlie Wheeler before him (1970s). One KC Place, ATT Pavilion and City Center Square were all late 1970s-early 1980s projects.

The Glover Plan was his lowpoint IMHO, in 1989.