No veterans parade in Riverfront Stadium; flap highlights deeper issues | Opinion

The one thing that’s certain about next month’s Veteran’s Day Parade is that it won’t be ending at Riverfront Stadium.

Whose fault that is depends on who you talk to.

At a Wednesday meeting, Sedgwick County Commission Chairman David Dennis blamed it on the management of the stadium. Riverfront is owned by Wichita city government, but run by the Wichita Wind Surge minor-league baseball team.

Dennis, a former Air Force officer with 29 years in service, said the plan was for the parade to begin at the county courthouse and proceed south on Main before ending up at the stadium.

“We were working very closely with Riverfront Stadium,” he said. “We had three bands lined up to play at the stadium. We had a lot of events and at the last minute got a very short e-mail from the Riverfront Stadium saying we don’t want to participate. I don’t understand why they don’t support the veterans, but it appears that the Riverfront Stadium doesn’t support the veterans today, so I just want to make that clear. I was disappointed to say the least.”

Jordan Kobritz, the Wind Surge’s general manager, says he was caught off-guard by Dennis’ comments.

He said he checked with the staff and found out that there had been some discussions with the organizers of the parade, but that no commitment had been made for use of the ball park itself, although they were told they could use the grounds outside it.

“I’m not aware of us pulling out of the parade,” he said. And he said Dennis was “grandstanding” with his comments at the meeting.

He said the Wind Surge has tried to be as good a corporate partner to the community as it can. The stadium is hosting high school football games that don’t generate any money for the baseball team but offer a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for the players to play in front of thousands of fans.

And he bristled at the suggestion that he and the Wind Surge are unsupportive of veterans. He said his father and his three uncles all fought in World War II and “one uncle didn’t come back.”

Dennis said the parade organizers actually held their most recent meeting at the stadium with two Wind Surge officials in attendance, and the discussions were detailed to the level of which gate they’d use to bring in the bands, so he’s puzzled by Kobritz’s comments. Kobritz said Dennis has his number and could have called him.

Who’s right and who’s wrong in this particular tiff isn’t really the story here. It does seem more like a breakdown in communication that got out of hand than any slight on veterans.

But there’s an underlying issue that I’ve tried to warn you about before.

All three of Wichita’s major publicly owned venues — the stadium, Intrust Bank Arena and Century II — are now under private-sector control.

And private-sector priorities don’t always align with public priorities on the use of amenities that the taxpayers paid to build.

We’ve seen it before. When the county Health Department was trying to stage life-saving COVID-19 vaccinations out of the county-owned Intrust arena during the pandemic, they had to put up and take down their vaccination stations to accommodate the schedule of the Thunder minor-league hockey team.

Fortunately, the city stepped in and a vaccination center was set up at the former downtown library building — which at the time was being considered for demolition for development of to-be-privatized convention and performing arts facilities.

Dennis said one of his first thoughts was to move the veterans events to the Intrust arena, which is also privately managed. But while it could host the band show and speeches, there’s not enough parking to accommodate all the cars that drive in the parade and stage a car show after, nor is there enough room for an accompanying display of military vehicles.

So the parade will start at the county courthouse at 11 a.m. Nov. 5 and end at the WaterWalk.

And the stadium? Well, maybe next year.