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City Of Wichita Plans Special Meeting On Century II Report

Deborah Shaar
/
KMUW/File photo

A special meeting will be held Tuesday night in Wichita to go over a report about future options for the Century II Performing Arts and Convention Center.

City leaders will present the findings of an analysis completed on the 48-year-old downtown arts and convention venue.

Last May, the Wichita City Council approved spending around $294,000 to hire a California-based consulting firm, Arup Advisory Inc., to look into funding alternatives and design options.

The consultant was tasked with looking into the possibility of a public-private partnership and other revenue sources such as naming rights as financing options.

City Manager Robert Layton says the information will be used to come up with design and financing plans for the next phase of Century II.

"Once we know what they believe the funding alternatives are, then we'll try to marry that with some design alternatives, the ones that we've already identified, and maybe refine those based on the recommendations from this report," Layton says.

Related: Wichita Performing Arts Groups Watching Closely As City Considers Future Of Century II

The city is considering a number of options for remodeling Century II or building new facilities based on results from a 2014 market study.

The goal is to get a proposal to city council by the end of the year.

The city is also considering what to do with 30 acres around the convention center and the Central Library. The library is just as old as Century II and will be vacated when the new Advanced Learning Library opens at Second Street and McLean next year.

The workshop will be held on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

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Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar

 
To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

 

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.