Nick’s Picks | March Madness, Jail Opens, St. Paddy’s & More

The Madness Begins

‘Tis the season for buzzer beaters, broken brackets and according to HR experts, plummeting productivity. Welcome to March Madness!

The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships tip off this week. KU and Mizzou play their first games late Friday night in the men’s tournament.

Missouri State is the only local team to qualify in the women’s tourney. The Lady Bears take the court in Austin, Texas on Wednesday.

Kansas City isn’t hosting any of the March Madness matchups this year, but Municipal Auditorium will still be buzzing with hoops. Starting Thursday, it hosts the NAIA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the national championship for smaller four-year colleges.

It’s expected to draw 40,000 visitors downtown.

Jackson County Jail Opens

The new $317 million Jackson County jail finally opens this week.

County leaders will pick up the keys for the building during a ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday. The first inmates are expected to move in at the start of April.

The project has been years in the making. Planning for the detention center — built on the site of a former mobile home park — began in 2019.

The new jail was designed to ease overcrowding at the county’s downtown lockup, which is more than 40 years old. But in an ironic twist, the 1,000-bed facility is expected to be over capacity the day it opens.

IN OTHER NEWS WORTH WATCHING…

New Chiefs Stadium: Kansas lawmakers are still trying to pass what they’re calling “a make or break” measure that could determine the fate of the new Chiefs stadium in Wyandotte County.

Lawmakers must approve a new public sports authority that would take ownership of the stadium. Chiefs’ officials say without it, nearly 45% of the project’s bond funding would be subject to federal taxes — blowing a massive hole in the stadium budget.

Time is running out to act. Lawmakers head home next week as the regular session adjourns.

Data Fight: Opponents of a $150 billion data center in Independence, Mo. are hoping a judge rules this week on their bid to block the project through a public referendum. City leaders argue it’s too late to stop the project.

Crime Crackdown: Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe is expected to sign into law this week a sweeping crime-fighting bill that will require all juveniles charged with violent felonies to be tried in adult court. The measure also makes it harder for people convicted of violent crimes to win early parole for good behavior or completing rehab programs while in prison.

Kansas City Turns Green

The Kansas City St. Patrick’s Day Parade marches through midtown on Tuesday.

The mile-long parade kicks off at 11:30 a.m., marching south from the intersection of Broadway and Linwood Boulevards to 43^rd Street in Westport.

The annual event has come a long way. When it first started in 1974, the one-and-a-half-block event was advertised as “the world’s shortest and worst parade.”

Now it reliably draws up to 100,000 spectators and revelers along its vastly expanded route.

End of Ramadan

Thousands of Muslim families in the metro mark the end of Ramadan this week, closing out a month of prayer and dawn-to-dusk fasting.

The celebration that follows is one of the most important dates on the Islamic calendar: Eid al-Fitr — the Festival of Breaking the Fast.

The holiday is expected to begin Thursday or Friday night, depending on the sighting of the moon.

Biggest Event of the Week?

Grammy-winning rapper Cardi B brings her Little Miss Drama tour to T-Mobile Center on Tuesday night.

It’s her first show in Kansas City in seven years.

Sew It Begins…

Kansas City Fashion Week returns Friday.

Local and international designers will show off their new wardrobe collections during four nights of runway shows at Union Station.

Shifting Seasons

Goodbye winter. We may have ice and snow on the ground, but Spring officially begins on Friday.

Kansas City will greet the new season with temperatures flirting near 90 degrees.

If that happens, it would be a record breaker. The warmest temperature ever recorded in Kansas City on March 20 is 82°, set back in 1953.

Nick Haines tracks the week’s most impactful, confusing and downright head-scratching local news stories on Week in Review, Friday nights at 7:30 p.m. on Kansas City PBS.