//
Photo: Nightryder84, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Parking is free.
The Kansas City Zoo & Aquarium is a 202-acre (82 ha) zoo founded in 1909 and is located in Swope Park at 6800 Zoo Drive, Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States. The zoo has a Friends of the Zoo program to help promote the work of the zoo which sees over one million visitors a year. The zoo is home to nearly 1,700 animals and the aquarium has around 8,000 animals. The zoo is an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Concerts and Broadway plays.
NCAA Division I sports teams of the University of Missouri–Kansas City, playing in 16 sports (with no football) in the Summit League, mainly featuring regional teams.
Just off the UMKC campus, 3-min drive from the plaza.
National Football League (NFL). A founding member of the upstart American Football League (AFL) in 1960, they moved from Dallas to Kansas City when the Cowboys were put there by the NFL. They lost the first ever Super Bowl to the Green Bay Packers and won the last AFL championship and ensuing Super Bowl in the 1969 season. They failed to return to the big game again until the 2019 season when they won their second Super Bowl Championship 50 years after their last on February 2, 2020. After failing to get to the big game in the 2021-2022, the Chiefs again won the Super Bowl in 2023, and again in 2024, making them a dynasty.
Also has the Kansas City Sculpture Park. Art collection housed in a beautiful 1930s building and a new, critically acclaimed modern wing by Steven Holl. Free.
Kansas City's Major League Baseball (MLB) team plays in Kauffman Stadium, one of the few remaining examples of 1960s-era modernist stadiums in baseball and still one of the best examples of modernist stadium design, with a fountain beyond the right field wall that sends jets of water high into the air. The team has had a notable turnaround; after going nearly 30 years without a playoff appearance, the Royals staged a stunning World Series run in 2014 and returned to win the championship in 2015, much to the joy of their fans.