Kansas City's Village West is the state's top tourist draw

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Six years ago, there were only blueprints and a dream. Now, where a few scattered houses once stood in western Wyandotte County, there's Village West -- the state's top tourist destination.

Much of Village West is a monument to the consumption of natural resources -- wildlife at the Cabela's superstore, where you can buy hunting and fishing gear or dine on elk; wood at the Nebraska Furniture Mart, opening this fall; fossil fuels at the speedway; and water at Great Wolf Lodge's indoor-outdoor waterpark, which opened earlier this summer.

The waterpark is open year-round for those who must have the tube-slide experience in January; its features range from whirlpools to hoop-shooting in the pool to play areas for very young children. The lodge bills itself as a family resort, and has other amenities like a full-service spa.

But of all the attractions in Village West, Cabela's has fast established itself as the most powerful magnet for everyday visitors. It drew more than 2 million people between August and December of 2002, making it the state's top attraction for the year despite being open for just over four months.

The store's premise is simple: That nature may be enjoyed in ways ranging from quiet, low-impact contemplation to bringing home a piece of it strapped to your bumper and mounting its head on the rec-room wall.

Still, while much of the store is given over to camping, hunting and fishing equipment, there's plenty to keep even young children interested too.

Cabela's has an aquarium stocked with game fish found in the region (including several alarmingly large blue catfish), several dioramas of mounted animals and a laser shooting gallery in which several targets shoot back when hit. (To say just how would spoil the surprise.)

The store even has its own restaurant, the Yukon River Grill, featuring such exotica as deli sandwiches made with elk, caribou, ostrich or buffalo. Venison and buffalo brats are also available. For those who recoil at the thought of eating Bambi or Prancer, are plenty of "tamer" sandwiches, entrees and pizzas.

In its smoked and cured state, the game isn't readily identifiable as such. The caribou comes off as a lighter version of pastrami (game being extremely low in fat), while the elk could easily be mistaken for beef brisket.

For those who prefer their meat in convenient wiener form, there's also minor league baseball.

The Kansas City T-Bones, the area's independent Northern League team, opened play this year at Community America Ballpark.

"I wouldn't classify the baseball team as the final piece of the puzzle," said Carol Marinovich, mayor of the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kan., and Wyandotte County. "It just tied in perfectly with what we had envisioned West Village to be: a destination point that also provides entertainment for the Kansas City area." Single-game tickets at the 4,500-seat park are available for all home dates -- a conscious decision by the team, general manager Adam Ehlert said.

"We held about a third of the tickets for walk-up traffic," Ehlert said. "We wanted to make sure that people who just wanted to come out for a night at the ballpark could do that." The final home game for the season is scheduled for Aug. 31.

And even when the seats sell out, as they did on a recent Friday night, fans can spend $4.50 and sit on the grass along the left-field line and beyond the right-field wall.

There's also a concourse around the outfield that lets fans get up close and personal with the pitchers in each team's bullpen.

"The response so far has been great," said Ehlert, who moved the team from Minnesota in large part because of the tourism boom in Wyandotte County. "I would say it's been more than we expected." The hottest tickets in Village West, though, are for Indy Racing League and NASCAR action at Kansas Speedway. The 80,000-seat arena physically dominates the complex, and its first two IRL and NASCAR dates -- early summer for the open-wheel cars and early fall for stock cars -- were all sellouts.

"Everybody who was on the waiting list from last year got tickets for this year," track spokeswoman Sammie Lukaskiewicz said. "I'd suggest getting on the waiting list as soon as possible." Tickets also remain this year for IRL and NASCAR qualifying dates, Lukaskiewicz said, and are usually available for the track's ARCA date in May.