Kansas City, Mo. ? A proposed downtown arena in Kansas City is either the city’s best hope for a vibrant future or a poorly planned scheme that will burden taxpayers for years to come.

Residents going to the polls Tuesday will have to decide which of those arguments they believe before deciding whether to increase car rental and hotel fees to fund the arena.

Question 1 on the Kansas City ballot will ask voters to approve a hotel fee increase of as much as $1.50 a day and increased car rental fees of as much as $4 per day. Those fees would provide most of the funding for $170 million in city bonds that would be issued to pay for the $225 million to $250 million arena.

The question has prompted a bitter campaign pitting city and business leaders against opponents funded almost exclusively by St. Louis-based Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Mayor Kay Barnes and civic leaders have said the arena, which is expected to seat from 18,000 to 20,000 people, would stimulate downtown redevelopment by drawing an estimated 8 million people from a four-hour radius around the city. Supporters hope the arena will draw Big 12 and NCAA events and other entertainment to a part of town that essentially closes after dark.

Hurting other areas?

While voters are deciding only on funding for the arena, officials say the vote will have a ripple effect on a nearby entertainment district of bars, restaurants and clubs they hope will revitalize a decaying downtown.

“Downtown Kansas City is really the living room for the entire metro area,” said City Manager Wayne Cauthen. “It is important that this part of the city is able to grow and prosper, so people coming here have a healthy opinion of the metro area. When you come down here now, that’s not happening, there is a stigma.”

Business owners in the city’s two established entertainment districts, Westport and the Country Club Plaza, are closely watching the vote. Many are upset with the city offering $140 million in tax breaks to businesses that move into the entertainment district, but are not as opposed to the arena.

“I am totally against the entertainment district,” said Beena Brandsgard, owner of Jardine’s, a jazz club on the Plaza. “It seems pretty silly to me that my tax dollars are going to subsidize someone who would be in direct competition with me.”

Brandsgard said she probably would vote against the arena, but only because of the city’s support of the entertainment district.

‘A destination place’

But Tom Brennbis, executive director of the Westport Community Improvement District, believes a renewed downtown would bring more customers to established entertainment areas.

“If they design something just to draw from the existing population, that is not a good thing,” he said. “But making Kansas City more of a destination place, however they do that, whether nationally or regionally, will be good for everybody.”

Cauthen agreed, saying the entertainment district and arena, located adjacent to an expanded convention center and a proposed arts center, would provide a complimentary entertainment option for residents and visitors.

“Residents aren’t going to spend all their time in the district,” he said. “Visitors in town for a day or two can’t get to the Plaza or Westport without an expensive cab ride. This is just another option for people to spend their disposable dollars.”

Cauthen said the entertainment district would proceed even if voters rejected the arena, but acknowledged that a “no” vote would be a blow to the revitalization efforts.

If voters approve the increased fees, they would be supplemented with private funding from Anschutz Entertainment Group of Los Angeles, which has a nonbinding agreement with the city to invest $50 million and manage the arena for 35 years, in exchange for part of the profits.

Sprint Corp. will pay $2.5 million a year for naming rights; that would be reduced if AEG cannot lure a professional hockey or basketball team to the arena. And the National Association of Basketball Coaches is vowing to raise $10 million to build a Basketball Hall of Fame at the arena.

Campaigning opponents

A group of opponents, called the Coalition Against Arena Taxes, has campaigned hard to convince voters that the fee increases are unfair to local residents and the arena plan is so vague that no one knows if it is viable.

Campaign reports released last week showed Enterprise had loaned the coalition nearly all of the $437,000 it raised. An ad even accused Enterprise of trying to support its hometown of St. Louis by trying to keep it as Missouri’s “now” town while Kansas City remained a “cow” town.

Enterprise said Barnes and the city rejected its proposal that local residents be exempt from the fee increases.

“The bottom line, we worked hard to protect the people of Kansas City, and the mayor rejected that overture and chose to tax the people of Kansas City each and every time,” said Ray Wagner, legal and legislative vice president of Enterprise. “Then we come to find out that this is a very bad deal to boot, with many risky provisions and many noncommittal partnerships.”

But arena supporters, who raised more than $500,000 from 150 contributors, say voters should reject the critics.

“On the surface, we are going to have an election next week that will be about an arena, that will be about a decision to build a new facility,” Robert Marcusse, president and CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council, said at a news conference last week during which six business groups endorsed the proposal.

“But in reality, that election next week is about the future of Kansas City … We’ll be voting on whether we want a future of vitality, excitement, urban stimulation, creation of new jobs. Or do we want a future that really looks to the past to see any of those things?”