Udris steers Union Station ahead

Beneath Union Station, where train riders' baggage was handled long ago, crews are less than two months from finishing a new gallery whose debut show, "Bodies Revealed," will display anatomically preserved cadavers.

The exhibit is apt because the $5 million hall represents the station operator's latest attempt to resuscitate a landmark that remains on the critical list more than eight years after staving off execution with a bistate cultural tax.

Andi Udris, CEO of Union Station Kansas City Inc., said the hall will let the station snare more extravaganzas like "Bodies" because it's more than twice the size of the building's largest such existing space.

But blockbusters won't unilaterally stanch the financial bleeding, Udris said. It cleared about $200,000 in net income in 2007, its first year out of the red since reopening in 1999, but Udris said the selection of blowouts that generated the profit is limited.

The station's long-term financial viability, he said, rests on forging a new public-private partnership to succeed the compact that brought $145 million in private money to supplement $118 million produced by a tax voters approved in 1996. To power the new collaboration, he said, the station must add steam to Science City, which proved underpowered from the start to meet attendance and revenue goals.

Udris came to the station in 2005 after four years leading the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City. He said he sought the challenge of being held accountable for engineering the station's turnaround. He hasn't been disappointed. The job, Udris said, has been "the most challenging I've ever had."

Olathe Mayor Mike Copeland, a member of the station's board, credited Udris with "single-handedly" landing the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in 2007. Udris pounced after a booking in Milwaukee fell through. The resulting revenue infusion improved the bottom line for the year by more than $2 million.

But the outlook remains "very difficult," said Bob Regnier, another board member, as deferred maintenance mounts with unfunded capital improvements. Regnier, Bank of Blue Valley's CEO, said that maintaining the cavernous building, whose 95-foot ceilings enclose about 1 million cubic square feet, costs about $3 million a year.

Michael Haverty, chairman of the station's board, said Udris has furthered and buttressed efficiency improvements that have pared the staff by two-thirds.

"I don't think three years ago there was a whole lot of confidence in how the station was being managed," said Haverty, CEO of Kansas City Southern. "The first thing we had to do was rebuild confidence."

Udris' personal pitches secured $1 million from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation for the new exhibit hall and $75,000 from Kansas City Power & Light Co. for a new Science City show about electricity.

Spence Heddens, Bank of America's Kansas City president, said Udris is "doing all the right things" to put the station on the right financial track.

Now, the station's board awaits a report on how to tap public money to defray operating costs. The report from a committee, led by Kansas City Southern executive and civic leader Warren Erdman, is due by early February.

Mayor Mark Funkhouser, also a board member, recommended realism to steer clear of a budgetary train wreck.

"The thing was in deep denial," he said. "At least now they're talking about the issues they face."

But Funkhouser cautioned that the cash-strapped city won't play conductor for what he deems a regional resource.

Bill Hall, president of the Hall Family Foundation, which has given more than $30 million to the station, said he hopes new programs will "make it important on a daily basis."

"You cannot walk into that building," said Hall, who does so during lunch two or three times a week, "and not take a deep breath."

UNDERPOWERED ENGINE
Andi Udris, Union Station Kansas City's CEO, concedes that skepticism about Science City's ability to keep the station solvent was warranted. "The naysayers were right," he says. "The question now is, do you want to turn your back on a $200 million (plus) investment?"
Science City attendance*
1999 -- 93,313 (open November and December)
2000 -- 505,545
2001 -- 342,922
2002 -- 244,254
2003 -- 279,467
2004 -- 272,816
2005 -- 282,602
2006 -- 275,982
2007 -- 219,202
*excluding special exhibits
SOURCE: Union Station Kansas City Inc.

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