The Wichita Boathouse: A Public Asset Without a Clear Purpose

Sep 7

Key Takeaways

Wichita owns a prominent riverfront building but allowed responsibility for it to be divided among the city, a private foundation, a museum and an event operator.
With the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame no longer maintaining regular public hours, a potentially valuable public asset has been relegated largely to storage space for artifacts that are inaccessible to those who might be interested in seeing them.
Before repairing or demolishing the building, Wichita should stabilize it and openly test whether a capable operator will invest in putting it to productive public use.

A Public Building Without a Clear Public Purpose

The Wichita Boathouse occupies a conspicuous location along the Arkansas River. It appears to be an attractive building with considerable potential.

Yet many Wichitans may not even know that the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame is housed there. I regularly walk and drive past the property, and I did not know it was inside.

There is a reason for that: The Hall of Fame has not maintained regular public hours since 2020. It reportedly has no paid staff and now uses much of the building to house its artifacts and archives. A separate company manages weddings and other events at the property.

In other words, one of Wichita’s better-positioned riverfront buildings has functioned partly as an event venue and largely as storage for a museum collection that the public cannot readily see.

That is not necessarily the fault of the Hall of Fame. The organization appears to lack the staff and financial resources necessary to operate a public museum while also maintaining a substantial riverfront building. But the result is the same: a potentially valuable public asset is not being fully utilized.

Now the arrangement is unraveling. The city is considering terminating its lease with the America 3 Foundation, associated with businessman Bill Koch, after disputes over hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred maintenance. The foundation is only 17 years into what was supposed to be a 99-year lease at $1 per year.

The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, meanwhile, says it cannot afford the building’s maintenance costs and plans to remove its collection.

Wichita is left with a deteriorating building, an exiting tenant, a largely inaccessible museum collection and no established plan for what comes next.

Who Was Responsible for the Building?

Commercial leases frequently make tenants responsible for maintenance, even when the property remains under another party’s ownership. Therefore, the fact that Wichita owns the Boathouse does not necessarily mean the city was contractually responsible for every repair.

But contractual responsibility is not the same as public accountability.

The city remained the owner of the building. It had a responsibility to protect the public’s long-term interest in the property. That should have included regular inspections, documented maintenance requirements, financial reserves, enforceable performance standards and meaningful remedies if the tenant failed to fulfill its obligations.

Instead, the city entered into a 99-year lease for nominal rent that reportedly included no financial penalty for early termination. When the arrangement failed, years of deferred maintenance came back to the public owner.

The August 11 City Council discussion showed council members asking basic questions about responsibility for maintenance, future ownership and the city’s liability. Those are reasonable questions—but they should have been answered by the lease and monitored throughout its operation.

A city can transfer day-to-day maintenance responsibilities. It cannot transfer its ultimate responsibility to safeguard a publicly owned asset.

Responsibility Without Accountability

The Boathouse illustrates a common institutional failure: Several organizations may each have a defined role, yet no one remains accountable for the overall outcome.

The city owns the building. America 3 holds the lease. The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame occupies it. Xclusive Event Services operates events there.

Each organization controls one part of the arrangement. Yet no single party appears to have been responsible for ensuring that the property remained financially sustainable, properly maintained, publicly visible and actively used.

The Hall of Fame may preserve a worthwhile statewide collection, but artifacts placed in a building without regular public access do not constitute a functioning museum. They constitute a collection in storage.

That does not mean the collection lacks value. It means the organization’s mission should be separated from responsibility for operating a building it cannot afford to maintain. The collection could be displayed through rotating exhibitions, incorporated into another museum or attraction, or eventually moved to a permanent location supported by a sustainable operating plan.

What Wichita should not do is recreate the same arrangement with another underfunded nonprofit occupying a building it cannot afford to maintain.

Give the Boathouse a Genuine Market Test

The city has identified three broad possibilities: seek proposals for reuse, spend approximately $303,000 on maintenance before seeking a public-private partnership, or demolish the building and redevelop or sell the site.

Those options should be treated as stages rather than immediate, mutually exclusive choices.

First, Wichita should obtain an independent building assessment that separates urgent stabilization from repairs that depend on the building’s eventual use. The city should address immediate safety and weatherproofing needs, but it should not automatically renovate the entire building before knowing what a future operator requires.

Second, the city should actively invite interest from event operators, restaurateurs, river-recreation businesses, developers, cultural organizations and other potential partners. Interested parties should be allowed to tour the property and submit financially detailed proposals.

The city needs more than expressions of enthusiasm. A credible proposal should demonstrate:

sufficient operating and investment capital;
a specific plan for regular activity at the property;
responsibility for maintenance and insurance;
a funded reserve for future repairs;
public access to the riverfront;
measurable performance requirements;
protections for the city if the operator withdraws.

The Boathouse should also be temporarily activated while the city evaluates its future. Existing events can continue under a short-term management agreement. The Hall of Fame could hold scheduled weekend exhibitions before moving its collection. Open houses would allow residents and potential operators to see the building rather than merely read about it.

It is difficult to generate public interest in a building when the public does not know what is inside.

Demolition Should Be the Fallback

The Boathouse sits within a larger riverfront whose future should be considered as a whole. Wichita’s Riverfront Legacy Master Plan envisions interconnected public spaces, mixed-use development and greater activity along both banks of the Arkansas River.

Selling or demolishing the property before testing its potential could sacrifice a useful public asset and limit future riverfront planning.

At the same time, preservation cannot become an unlimited claim on taxpayers. If no financially capable operator is willing to invest in the building and maintain it, demolition may ultimately be justified.

But that conclusion should follow a genuine market test—not the failure of a museum that was not regularly open and an arrangement in which responsibility was fragmented among multiple organizations.

Why It Matters

This controversy is about more than one building.

Local government owns numerous properties on behalf of the public. Long-term leases can put those properties to productive use, but only when the agreements clearly assign responsibility and the city actively monitors performance.

Nominal rent is not necessarily a bargain if taxpayers eventually inherit neglected maintenance. A nonprofit occupant does not automatically create a public benefit if the public cannot meaningfully access what is housed there. Dividing responsibilities among several organizations also does not guarantee accountability for the final outcome.

My Perspective

The Wichita Boathouse appears to be a good property that has been poorly utilized.

The most striking feature of this story is that a museum has occupied a highly visible public building for years without being regularly open to the public—and with so little visibility that people who routinely pass the property may not even know it is there.

That is an extraordinary waste of potential.

The city should terminate the failing arrangement, stabilize the building, publicly solicit serious proposals and require the next operator to demonstrate both financial capacity and a plan for regular public activity.

If someone is prepared to invest in the property and make it an active part of the riverfront, Wichita should give that proposal serious consideration. If no one is willing to do so, the city will have a defensible basis for choosing redevelopment.

What Wichita should not do is quietly spend more public money to preserve another arrangement in which the building is owned by one party, leased to another, occupied by a third, operated by a fourth—and meaningfully accessible to almost no one.

Paul Wilson