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Nick Vedros has been obsessed with a neon dream for six years. Situated in the shadow of Interstate 35, where a white Ferris wheel has suddenly risen, you can still see it take shape.
On a recent Friday, Vedros, one of Kansas City’s most prominent art and advertising photographers, parked his white Lexus SUV around roadblocks toward Pennway Point, an entertainment district about 6 acres under a structure west of Union Station. Through his tires, he filled the air.
The 70-year-old Vedros, wearing a gray goatee, hipster glasses and an upside-down cream beret, got out of his car, as excited as he can be at the prospect of not only a wish, but also a promise that will soon be fulfilled.
Since September, countless drivers have already noticed the 150-foot-tall Ferris wheel installed through Icon Experiences of Maryland and tentatively scheduled to open on Thanksgiving Day. But few have a clearer view than Vedros of one of the main attractions that will be discovered below. Slated to open as early as spring, this may simply be a raffle that can literally make the LED-lit Ferris wheel look dull in comparison.
“It’s going to be a dinner for the eyes,” said Vedros of the Lumi Neon Museum, the name, taken from the word “lighting,” of the Kansas City open-air museum’s panels that will span the full width of the venue.
In 2017, when the Crick Camera Shop at 7715 State Line Road closed after more than 70 years, Vedros, who in the 1960s bought some of his first cameras there as a teenager, brought back his neon sign, placed in front of a sky-blue background. . At the time, he wasn’t interested in neon signs.
“Zero,” he said, “other than that, I find it pretty good. “
But he felt that the Crick represented a work of street art and a Kansas City story that deserved to be saved. He promised its owner that one day he would find a way to return it to the public. Today, Vedros and volunteer members of the museum, founded as the nonprofit Save the KC Neon Inc. the same year Crick closed its doors, they have collected and, in their own language, “saved” 84 neon symptoms and fully restored 50 of them so far. The purpose is to eventually display about a hundred of them at Pennway Point, where admission will be free for the public.
From small to gigantic, the collection kept in the riverside house of Vedros and tucked away in an underground garage already creates a collage of Kansas City’s afterlife written on glass tubes that glow with red, blue, pink and white lights.
Some of the neon symptoms include: Cascone’s Grill, Savoy Barber Shop, Davey’s Uptown Rambler’s Club, Jennie’s Italian Restaurant, Winstead’s with its rose and an arrow on the ceiling, Turner’s Cyclery, Food Center, Harzfeld’s Department Store, four Acre Motel, Stephenson’s Apple Farm Restaurant, Fun House Pizzeria
A recent donation and one that wants the budget bought back: the sign of compliance from the Stan’s A-Lotta-Stuff thrift store, which closed its doors in KCK this summer.
Unable to retrieve an original Katz Drug Store sign with its iconic black cat with bow tie, the museum commissioned him to rebuild one again. The panel, whose creation was funded through famed seminarians Jami and Fred Pryor, unveiled in August, topped with a 6-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide Cat’s Head that rotates 360 degrees.
“Do you see where this cone is, where this hole is being dug?” said Vedros, walking around the structure site toward what he said will be called Neon Alley. A metal beam to some of the panels (the I-70 Drive-In panel alone weighs more than a ton) needed to be installed.
“That’s where the Lumi sign will be,” Vedros said of the west end of the driveway. “The I-70 sign will be placed here at the entrance. It used to be 30 feet in the air. It’s going to be 10 feet in the air, people will walk through it like it’s going through a portal.
He pointed his finger up and walked away.
“Stephenson’s signal will be up there, the Capri there. Then, at the finish line (he pointed east), the Katz rotating panel will be right there. This wall will be filled with signs. The other will be full of signs. . This total alley is going to shine.
The driveway runs between two commercial buildings, one with a wooden roof and a barrel roof. The other, made of brick, metal and rectangular, open to the air like a courtyard, probably with a retractable roof.
Two neon signs have already been hung, adding a Carter-Waters structure sign outside on the wavy ridge of a building. On the most sensitive part of an interior wall, simple cream-colored capital letters spell out “Downtown Kansas City. “When turned on, your tubes will glow blue on top of the cream.
“These are our first signs,” Vedros said. They’re coming from the airport in downtown Kansas City. “
Kansas City’s 3-D development, discovered by Vince Bryant, is Pennway Point’s main strength. The company discovered a market for new uses for historic buildings in the Crossroads Arts District, south of downtown. Past successes come with the renovation of the two-story 10-story Thomas Corrigan Building built in 1921 at 1828 Walnut St. to turn it into the workplace and dining community of Corrigan Station. Another example is the renovation of the Meriden Creamery Co. building, located at 2100 Central St. , as an event area. Dairy.
In 2017, Bryant purchased the former Kansas City Star headquarters at 1729 Grand Blvd. for $12 million, with plans to convert it into a $95 million mixed-use development. The project, stalled by the COVID-19 strain, is still ongoing.
Bryant said that after buying the homes along I-35, he didn’t plan to create an entertainment district in the first place.
“We purchased significantly underutilized and overlooked land in the middle of downtown,” Bryant wrote in an email to the Star. “Then we discovered the true character of those commercial buildings by cleaning and clearing them. . .
“Ultimately, we believe that this site, which is, in some areas, 40 feet below I-35 and Pennway . . . It was the best place for recreational hospitality in those amazing historic and commercial buildings. “
No date has been announced, but Bryant has laid out a tentative schedule.
In 2023, with the goal of opening before the end of the year: The KC Wheel at Pennway (the Ferris brand) before Thanksgiving; a snack and beverage area; Pennway Putt Mini-Golf Course.
The first 40 symptoms of the Lumi Neon Museum could be illuminated as early as spring. Bryant said that over the next 12 months, the “recreation/hospitality” zone will be built in phases.
TaleGate Park is planned as a 30,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor venue created in and around the former Funkouser Machinery Co. warehouse building. It will house a high-end steakhouse and burger restaurant, Beef
Barrel Hall will be just to the south, inside the former Pennway Oil Co. building. ).
A taqueria is planned near the Ferris wheel, next to a beach volleyball court.
By 2025, Bryant said, Carter-Waters Co. ‘s former four-story building, located at 2440 W. Pennway, will expand retail and space. A newly constructed boutique hotel between 25th Street and Pennway is planned for late 2025 or early 2025. 2026.
“We Lumi are going to be a wonderful destination unto itself,” Bryant said.
For Vedros, Lumi has been a hobby project.
“What happened is I’ve gotten weirdly addicted to those panels over the years,” he says, in awe of his set, designed to be outdoors in any weather.
“These neon signs, if you leave them alone, will continue to burn for another hundred years,” he said. “Some of them are still on after 80 years. And they can hail, which blew my mind. “
Vedros estimates that he spent thousands of hours as president of the nonprofit researching historical symptoms and, at first, spending thousands of dollars of his own money to buy and repair them. Twenty other people make up Lumi’s painting team, board of directors, and advisors. None are paid.
When he’s not looking for significant neon symptoms for Kansas City, Vedros says he reaches out to business owners, writes them letters and tries to convince them to donate their symptoms. Most are donated through homeowners who need to see the saved history. He can’t get it, he tries to buy.
Vedros emphasizes: Every penny raised by the museum through outside donations goes toward the recovery, recovery, or repair of the panels. Individuals, families, or businesses can choose to sponsor the acquisition and recovery of a signal and, when the signal is shown with their history, obtain the credits they are owed.
Although some of their symptoms were still in place when they discovered them, many were abandoned or unused, abandoned in sheds, broken, or left to corrosion.
“My argument,” Vedros said, “is, ‘What’s your goal with this sign?’Are you going to sell it? Are you going to have it transported?” No one needs big signs. They can’t put him in their den of men. I say, “We need to put your sign in our museum. We will pay for your withdrawal. We will pay for the restoration. And we’re going to extend it, then we’ll fix it and turn it back on.
“Your circle of relatives will pass by there and see your sign with all the others. What could be better?”
The concept is not new. Glendale, California, has its Neon Art Museum. Cincinnati is home to the American Sign Museum. The Neon Boneyard, a component of the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, attracts thousands of visitors at dusk to revel in the city’s lavish history presented and illuminated under the old tents.
Neon, a colorless, odorless fuel, number 10 on the periodic table of elements, discovered in 1898. Placed in a vacuum tube and electrified, it emits a bright red light. Argon fuel produces blue. Other colors come from reactions with inner linings of the tubes. Fifteen years after the discovery of the fuel, a Cinzano neon sign advertising vermouth lit up the night sky over Paris.
In 1923, a sign reading “Packard” glowed at a Los Angeles car dealership and was the first neon sign in the United States. For the next 50 years, neon symptoms lit up America, from Kansas City to Times Square in New York City.
“I think light has an ineffable quality,” said Dylan Steinmetz, 38, who along with his sister Olivia Shelton, 31, co-owns Element Ten, an art and neon sign company on Troost Avenue. Their father, Randy Steinmetz, who works along them, has been making and running neon signs for more than 40 years, adding the Western Auto sign at Crossroads.
Olivia talks about the “campfire effect” of neon.
“There’s anything in a campfire that you need to gather around, you need to contemplate it. Neon has a feel to it,” he said.
Dylan went above and beyond. ” It’s a unique source of light,” he said. “Normally, we produce light to remove the darkness from something. That changes, when you are encouraged to look at the light. This is the central point. We’re drawing light in 3 dimensions, which is pretty fantastic. There’s nothing else that does that.
Turner Music Co. , Broadway Hardware, Greyhound, Goodyear, Lumi: Element Ten have worked on them, as well as being involved with Fossil Forge, a Lee’s Summit poster, and a graphic demonstration company that recreated the Katz Pharmacy sign.
“Nick probably started bringing stuff around 2019, before the pandemic,” Dylan said of Vedros. “Actually, I’m excited that it’s outdoors. It would be a shame if they were hidden walls. “
Vedros said Lumi and his project have opened him up to a tight network of neon and billboard artists in and around Kansas City: the Steinmetz family at Element Ten, Dave Eames and Ben Wine at Fossil Forge (Wine is now a member of Lumi’s board of directors; Eames is a former Kansas City Star artist, Greg Garnett of Gama Neon LLC in Kansas City; Curtis Shadd and Jason Yeager of Midwest Sign Co. , Jason Walker of JWW Fine Art in Olathe.
“Oh my God,” said Eames of Fossil Forge, “we’re beyond excited. I mean, we die for the old posters and the history of Kansas City.
He explained how, starting in the late 1960s, neon symptoms fell out of favor.
“It took a stigmatizing turn,” he said, and they’ve become synonymous with strip bars and liquor stores. Many municipalities have begun banning neon signs.
There were other forces at play, such as the plastics industry, fluorescent light bulbs and all those new technologies that emerged after World War II. There has been incredible pressure to ban those old published statements. And that’s what happened.
Eames and Wine then went to City Hall to protect the good looks of the symptoms and repeal an ordinance that banned them in the city’s historic downtown. The district now boasts more than 50 exhibits.
“We love how those panels offer memories and nostalgia to other people,” Eames said of the Lumi panels. “These kinds of advertising icons used to be along our highways and roads. It’s a beautiful mix of graphic fabrics like glass, steel, and porcelain. Then you add to that the memories that other people have of those places. . . You get a mix that will be incredibly evocative for most people.
Vedros said he can hardly drive through Kansas City symptom-free to get him to the open-air museum, if not soon, maybe in the future. He said Seiden’s Furs, at Ninth Street and Broadway, owns one he’d like. get it, although he thinks the owners would possibly have to keep it.
At Ninth and Prospect, a Hum-Dinger neon sign for a burger drive-in with a smiling waiter dressed in a bow tie and carrying a tray of food stands next to the red-and-white striped building.
“I’ve been in contact with the owner,” Vedros said. We want that classic. “
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