Ask Richard Carrothers what the "wow!" factor is in Overland Park, and the answer doesn’t revolve around what this eastern Kansas city has that is the biggest, fastest or coolest.
"What makes Overland Park so extraordinary is what a lot of people wouldn’t consider a ‘wow!’ factor," he says. "I don’t think you’d say ‘wow!’ when people are really friendly and say ‘hi’ to strangers. ...The ‘wow!’ factor is that everyone when they come to Kansas expects barbecue and country-and-western, but there’s a lot more sophistication here than anyone on either coast would expect."
Carrothers would know. The founder, co-owner and artistic director of the New Theatre Restaurant once split his time between Kansas and in the world of East and West Coast film and TV production, only to decide that Overland Park was the future of the Kansas City metro area and to invest accordingly.
The result is New Theatre, a 618-seat dinner theater in Overland Park that boasts a mind-boggling 25,000 season subscribers and a consistent string of pre-Broadway plays as well as national touring companies of current Broadway productions.
These facts make Overland Park a big part of the Kansas City region’s arts scene, which also includes the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City Symphony and the live-music-focused Westport district (the latter three all in nearby Kansas City, Mo.).
"Anywhere you go, trying to take live theater and make it successful is a difficult process. ... but this is a quality theater with top-name celebrities—and you can’t get a ticket," Carrothers says, noting that New Theatre is ranked as one of the top 15 draws for the area—not quite at the level of the Kansas City Chiefs or the Kansas City Museum, but definitely up there.
Carrothers also talks up the new Overland Park Soccer Complex, which opened Aug. 29 with a dozen lighted soccer fields and tennis courts, basketball courts, concessions and links to existing baseball fields and golf courses.
"In terms of amateur sports, this whole soccer complex is the most state-of-the-art of anywhere in the U.S.," he says.
Far-sighted city planners have also helped Overland Park grow in a humane, friendly way since its 1960s origins, Carrothers says.
"It helps that in Overland Park was the first [corporate] development in the U.S., called Corporate Woods. Planners said, ‘Here is a forest, here is a deep, dense woods, and we’re only going to tear out a minimum of trees and keep that bucolic feeling.’ It was a big experiment and very successful," he says, noting that such policies add weight to Overland Park’s claim to be "The Natural Choice."
He adds that the city’s stance has helped attract companies ranging from Nordstrom to Crate & Barrel to GPS manufacturer Garmin, whose headquarters office is here.
"The planning is such that it’s not urban sprawl," Carrothers says. "They spent $1 million on a vision project for the next 30 years; they used it to find out what the community’s vision is," a sign that here is a place where local government really listens to its constituents.
In short, the "wow!" here lies as much in what you don’t see—crime, crowding and big-city brusqueness—as in the parks, museums and sports stadiums that you do see.
"You go to a larger city and yes, you might have more entertainment and nightlife in the evening," Carrothers says, "but if you want a city where the crime rate is extraordinarily low, where people are friendly, where you can walk up to a stranger and ask them about the city, that’s here."
