The Rundown with Rene Knott
The Rundown with Rene Knott is a weekly online news and culture show which aims to keep St. Louis informed, inspired, and connected. Hosted by trusted journalist Rene Knott, the show highlights the people, stories, and moments that define the city.
The Rundown with Rene Knott
Chris Hansen: Building the Future of St. Louis Arts & Culture
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Chris Hansen, Executive Director of the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, joins Rene Knott for an insightful conversation about the power of arts, culture, and community development in St. Louis.
From the continued transformation of the Grand Center Arts District into a nationally recognized cultural destination to the growing impact of Music at the Intersection, Hansen shares how strategic investments in creativity are fueling economic growth, attracting visitors, and creating opportunities for artists across the region.
Together, they explore the vision behind the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, the importance of accessible arts programming, and the role culture plays in shaping the future of our city.
Discover how one organization is helping redefine St. Louis through innovation, collaboration, and a commitment to the creative economy.
Join us for a compelling conversation about leadership, cultural investment, and the future of one of St. Louis' most vibrant districts
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And thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Rundown with Rendy Knot. We're doing something different for this episode. We are on the road. We are at the key. The key is sort of a way to open up the grand center to all of St. Louis, a place where the arts are embraced. And it is a place that Chris Hansen has a fond, fond passion for. At East C Sist as a way to bring our city together through the arts and through music.
SPEAKER_04I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Where are we right now?
SPEAKER_02We are at the key burger bar and boogie, but we're on the boogie side. So on his side, this is where we get down. That's where we dance, where party bands happen. You know, where you birth. Who named it? I got I I named it for a lot of reasons. Yeah. You know, very particular. The space, you know, this space has got a lot of love and intention in it. Um and it was saved by the community, right? The community said, please save these buildings. And and and so we had to honor a lot of things and naming them, right? We had to think about its past. Uh so Accurate Key Company was one of the businesses that was here. Okay. Um, and we, you know, trying to think about clever things like one-syllable words that you can put other things next to, right? It just, you know, K for Cransberg, the key is a gateway, right? So this is a new gateway in to our district. The key of the Caribbean is Cuba. This used to be Dante's, the home of the Caribbean Latino community, and also the key of music, right? So uh so the key was very appropriate. This is deep. Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_04This is deep. Yeah, man. This is very intentional. Was this a passion project for you to bring this back to preserve this building?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this was one of my favorite projects. You know, I've built over 14 venues now in Grand Center. We own and operate over 20 facilities, and this one, it just had so much in its bones, and so many people uh experienced this in different iterations. It just meant a lot to the community, and it was the only building we ever had purchased and developed that was a real call to action to save it from St. Louis's, but also we got so much buzz and just attention around acquiring these and doing it. So you just know St. Louis is super in love with this. I mean, this everyone thinks it was a firehouse, but it wasn't. It was uh it was an open-air market. Yeah, the Faust family had oysters and seafood in here, you know, there was generations of of businesses in here. I at one point there was a skate park in here. There were two half pipes in here, and a pro skater did a trick from one to the other, uh, and it became a famous trick. So everybody's got a story about, you know, if you're from St. Louis experiencing these buildings, so honoring the past and making a place that everyone could feel comfortable in a place that was just so St. Louis. We need this to be the last iteration of this building. It's sat here for over a decade um empty. And we want this to be a legacy venue for St. Louis, something we can all agree on. Let's let's come and eat some great burgers from locally sourced products, let's dance to our favorite party bands, let's be in these beautiful historic buildings and let's watch our favorite teams. Let's get the vibe. You know, let's write. Let's and then let me suck you into the art world and show you all the other stuff. But first, I got to get you in the door. So give them what they want so you can give them what they need.
SPEAKER_04We're a short walk from Grand Center.
SPEAKER_02This is Grand Center. I mean, you're this is because you're right on the eastern edge of the Grand Center Arts District at Kyle and Olive. Uh so this is part of the district, but it's also the bridge to the broader midtown area. It's the bridge to Harris Stowe and Slough. Um, it's a first impression.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I always thought this was a separate entity altogether, more midtown. Because I'm thinking when I think Grand Center, I'm thinking Fox Theater, I'm thinking that that end of town. Yeah. But all of this is still the Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think the way St. Louis's and the world have come to identify with Grand Center is the large institutions, and you say it's probably the areas more synonymous with saying where the Fox Theater is than saying the word Grand Center. But this is the Grand Center Arts District that goes from Vandeventer to Delmar to Compton to Olive. This is the number nine best arts district in America from USA Day USA today, this year. And in 23, Forbes called it America's most exciting emerging arts district. Not because we're new, but because we took the eastern edge of the district that was really come up until 2019, pretty empty, a lot of vacancies, some blight, um, didn't have a lot of programming in it. It was still just a very hard-to-traverse space. So we focused a lot of our energy through the Cransberg Arts Foundation's developments to build that bridge from the main vein of the arts district at Grant and Washington and and in and west of there down east and made a more pedestrian, connected area where you could discover the district without a ticket, right? Or you could just show up, experience public art, meet new audiences that maybe don't go to the bigger institutions every day, and just a place that really makes you feel like it's fun, exciting, and something to do for everybody.
SPEAKER_04Connectivity is so important in St. Louis. And I I find that our neighborhoods are so far apart from one another, it's hard to be connected. How much of St. Louis are you trying to bring into this one space?
SPEAKER_02I mean, this is for St. Louis first. Yeah. Um, I think this is a place where we want to identify with being a St. Louis and be proud. So this is the first tool of this effort is build civic pride, connect St. Louisans to the soul of the city, back to our urban core and show off what St. Louis really looks like. But also, this needs to be a beacon. This needs to be something that the world can come to and it showcases why St. Louis is so deep and rich culturally and artistically. What makes us unique and it showcases a little bit of everything. And if you get a little bit of Grand Center, you get a real good feel for what's really going on around the region. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Having said that, are you getting the audience? Are you getting the people that you want? In other words, is it growing? Are you seeing the foot traffic? Are you starting to get the feel that, oh, this is taking off?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, man. We got real momentum. Okay. You know, we're seeing it every day. We're seeing, we're seeing people more and more comfortable to park further and walk. We're we're affecting the public realm with infrastructure and murals and lighting. Um, businesses are growing. We're signing more leases, more restaurants want to come down. We are driving new traffic, diverse audiences, and everywhere you could say that identity, race, ethnicity, age are finding themselves down here. Not through full integration all the time. Sometimes it's having your own thing on your own night. Other times we all come together, and if you come around and you move around, you just see pockets of everybody down here feeling comfortable seeing themselves here. So absolutely, we're meeting the people we want to meet. We're growing that base of two to three million a year that come in for that prescription. I got a ticket, I know where I'm parking, I'm going here and I'm going there. Now, what we're doing is we're driving people down here constantly to enjoy things that are maybe a little more localized, except for maybe like our festivals and bigger mural initiatives. But you know, no, man, it's we're meeting all kinds of people uh that Grand Center historically didn't meet.
SPEAKER_04One thing I could say about you is that you are a man of vision and you are a man of passion. Am I right? Yes. There's there's no doubt about the fact that you love single and you want to bring it together. And you talk about all these things coming together. Coming up is music at the intersection. Yes. How wild of a time is this gonna be?
SPEAKER_02Six years um started with another reason we do things, a call to action.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We didn't just manufacture an idea. This was two years of active listening, round tables, public sector was there, private sector, artists were there, orgs were there, and it was like, what you know, what do we need to really grow our music scene? What do we need to, you know, take that next step forward? And one of the things that came out of it is we need a festival in our likeness. And we had just lost Loufest a couple years before we started the initiative. It was just a gut punch to St. Louis to kind of lose things that started to have a real identity around your your favorite park or you know, your music city. And so something that was civically rooted, that wasn't gonna go away easy, that wasn't about profit, that wasn't about anything except telling our unique musical story and bringing people together and showcasing this great district. The other thing is more professional development, right? We need to keep putting the the industry needs to come around this stuff, and we need to connect the national industry with the local. So we're building those bridges through the conference. And then we have to kind of understand the assets and the economics. So we did the sound diplomacy study to make sure we knew like how do we benchmark against other cities? So Maddie is just this amazing moment to celebrate us. And when you come here, like Gary Clark Jr. said, I don't see people, I don't play in front of crowds like this. You know, Terrace Martin said this is the blueprints of what I want to do out in Crenshaw. Wow. Um, Robert Glasper walking around just saying, Hey, you know, this is really unique. You know, it's you feel like it's a love letter to the city. When you're an artist and you play at Maddie, you recognize that we're not all here for you. We're here for us. We're coming together as a city of artists, creatives, and patrons, and we're just really excited about ourselves and you get to come and play for us, right? So it isn't a top-down thing, it's not about the headliner. Yeah, it's that discovery, it's the tapestry, the diversity. And when you come down, you get a real sense. And these are the things we got to market, these are the things that we can hold and sell to the city that are uniquely ours. You can't go anywhere in the world and have Maddie because no one else would do it, because no one else is St. Louis, no one else has that same story. And if you tell the story and you connect the storytellers, um, you can build something that no one else can build. This is not cookie cutter. This isn't something you can just go pop down in another city. This is ours.
SPEAKER_04When it comes to the bands they get to play, the smaller bands, the St. Louis bands. Is this a breakout moment for them in some ways, too, to be a part of this particular festival?
SPEAKER_02Uh in in in a lot of ways. Um one, it gives them that local shine. You know, we see careers verticalized, they meet contemporaries that are touring nationally. Remember the first year we did it, uh uh Gregory Porter is on stage, Keyn Harold sits in, Scooter Brown comes out, Scooter gets picked up, goes on a tour, right? These are game-changing moments for artists that leverage it and build those networks and relationships. Um, and it's also putting them on a grand stage in their hometown, right? So it's elevating their cachet locally. So we definitely see it be a bridge builder, a career builder, um, and the majority of the acts every year are from here, live here, or connected to our story, right? So, you know, this is about telling their story first. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Hold on just a second. We'll talk more about music at the intersection, the big names and small names, and everything in between. But first, let's take a quick break.
SPEAKER_01In St. Louis, the first question is where did you go to high school? But we like to ask, where do you bank? Because making a difference starts with that choice. At Midwest Bank Center, your dollars don't sit on the sideline. They build homes, fuel businesses, power nonprofits, and help our neighbors achieve their dreams. That's how we win by rising together. And Louis, the future is ours, but the choice is yours. It matters where you bank.
SPEAKER_04All right, let's continue our conversation about music at the intersection. We talked about the STL bands that get to play and elevate their game. Who are the big names coming in 2026?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're really excited about this year. This was a real collaborative programming effort. I mean, we've got community members, organizations that helped us curate special moments. Our artist in residence, Keon Harold, uh, really stepped out this year to put some beautiful showcases together. So, one, I mean, uh, Keon's doing some special sets, and then he's got a uh a set celebrating the intersection of jazz and hip-hop uh that's going to feature Rhapsody, AJ McQueen from St. Louis, Taff Poe from St. Louis, and then DJ Charlie Chan, who's run DMC's DJ from St. Louis. Then he'll be at the Fox Theater on Sunday night uh with a very special moment. Andra Day, famous actor, artist coming in to be featured. Peter Martin, like our Ellis Marcellus of St. Louis, will be on Keys. Uh Chris Dave is artist at large. That was D'Angelo's drummer, everybody's favorite drummer. You know, PJ Morton's that night, Y Clef Jean that night at the Fox Theater. And then we got these, you know, big jazz giants, Grammy Award winning uh Brian Blade and the Fellowship. First hit that Brian Blade and the Fellowship are going to do together again. Uh, we got Zap this year coming back, bringing us those 80 funks. Zap Zap? Yeah, Zap Zap. They're still together? Oh, yeah, they're killing it. And they sound great. We've got uh uh Destin Conrad, up and coming RB. We've got Killer Mike from Run the Jewels, Big Frida. Uh, we got uh Carla Thomas in the high rhythm section coming out of Memphis. That's Al Green's rhythm section. That's Stax Records, you know what I mean? So you know, just a little something for everybody. Uh we got all kinds of multicultural programming, uh uh, you know, big and little, there's something you can do. We got Natasha Diggs coming from New York. DJ Spinderella will be in the streets for free doing her thing. So uh, and then, you know, people look at it, Maddie, right? The the acronym Music Art, Thought and Innovation, Music at the Intersection. It's more than a music festival. Um, Friday and Saturday all day. We have panels and clinics and workshops for free. Uh, we've got poetry. We have a whole performance art stage at our free block party this year. So all of Washav from 5 to 11 on the 17th and 18th is completely free to access. We've got a big outdoor roller rink, Frizy by Nature Market. We got a performance art stage, we're gonna have circus performances, fashion shows, dance and theater. So, I mean, like you can come and have a great time with no ticket in your hand, right? But if you want to experience those giants, you want to see these world-class venues with these world-class acts, local, national, international, you got to pay a little bit, but we kept it affordable. Right? We kept we made sure that this was accessible and affordable because St. Louis needs it to be that way. We got a boutique thing, we want people to continue to be able to get here. So, I mean, I think we've got a great value, we got a great lineup, and it's indoor-outdoor. So, all those main stages, if it's hot, don't worry about it. You got air conditioned, you got seats, you got indoor restrooms, um, and we're gonna make the streets bump. So it's so good.
SPEAKER_04Make the street bumps. I'm glad you're gonna have roller skating. Oh, yeah. Because that's still St. Louis. Oh, yeah. You know, if you didn't have that, then you know, come on.
SPEAKER_02And G Wiz is curating an entire expression of all the different cruise clubs and DJs that have been part of the scene over the last you know few decades, right? So you're gonna hear the sounds that you would hear over the last few decades in in the roller ranks, you're gonna hear it on the streets.
SPEAKER_04We're gonna educate the kids. Yes. So they'll know. They'll know. They'll know. And you still mean Port of Montadelic had played here before.
SPEAKER_02George Clinton played this room and the key, yeah. When it was when it was a firehouse, Jimmy Cliff played this room. Many, many played this room. Most uh Booju Bonton played this room, Most Def played this room. I remember picking Most Steff up from the Hyatt downtown, getting him in a van when he was called Most Eff. Yeah. Um, and uh he didn't say much. He was quite cat, and he just the only thing he said, we were listening to uh RIP 881 KDHX, and it was the jazz program at the time. And uh all he said was I like the music. You know, so it was cool. This has been a yeah, this room has got a story pat.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you've got a story too. Uh tell me about the foundation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um so I've been in Grand Center for 13 years now. And I came down here, I was called by Grand Center Inc. Um to help breathe some life into some of the venues down here that at the time they were operating as programmers. Um and uh they needed they were transitioning out of that phase of their work. They needed someone that could kind of bring some new programming, move some bodies. I had a lot of experience at you know, developing artists, developing venues and and programs, and and came down and and started that work. Um the first project was the Kransberg Arts Center. Um then we we worked on a public-private partnership and opened up the original Dark Room. Um so that was uh a wine program, meets a photography program. So I called Bill Nepe at Pinnacle Wine. I said, Bill, I need a wine program. And I called Ellen Curley at the International Photography Photography Hall of Fame and created a photography program. Um and that was kind of a placemaking effort to kind of stimulate retail because all the retail down here was basically serving the patterns of the larger venues, right? So at the time, Grand Center was like a nine-month district, right? Evenings only, outside of a couple museums open during the day. It just didn't have a lot of 365 connectivity. So we were starting to really work on that. And then Ken asked me to build the Marcel for a new line. And I said, well, like, well, what are you doing? What are your goals? Um, you know, it seems like you you're passionate about this area. The family believes that artists are the soul of the city, but what's your hope? What's your dream? What do you want to do? Um, and we slowed down for a year. We put the operating arm of the Kransberg Arts Foundation together. Uh, and since 2015, we've operated underneath that umbrella with a public promise. And at the core, you know, we're a funder of the arts, right? We're a private funder of the arts, but we don't do it through traditional grant making. We do it through infrastructure. We do it by subsidizing that infrastructure for nonprofits, creative entrepreneurs, minority businesses, putting them in place and giving them autonomy and really just curating a sandbox and letting it grow, right? And nurturing it. Um, we build the venues, the artistic studios, the workspaces that they rely on. Uh, we build capacity for them to work within it. So we take on the operating modalities of it. We build a team around it. And then we do some community programming as well. We're about 20% of the programming in the neighborhood, right? That's the like free stuff, like a free weekly jazz jam every Wednesday night at the dark room for 13 years. You can come five years old to 19 years old with the best musicians in town, fellowship, workshopping, um, a free humanities series every Thursday, Thought Leaders and the Humanities come at noon at Hilo at our literary center for free, free public art, free exhibitions. That's the work that we do, right? And then we have some big moments like Maddie. Um, and then, you know, we help tell that story, right? We help build that bridge and tell that story and and then you know, affect the public space, make it more walkable, make it more connected. So, you know, we impact artists in creative industries where they work, where they present, and also where they live. We have an affordable housing initiative, a separate entity called the St. Louis Art Place Initiative. So we're the we're an arts-based community development agency, right? We take a call to action, a need assessment from community, we center art in every way you can think of it, the, the, the content, the creative, the industry, the org, right? And then we put traditional development strategies around it. And then once we have that, we build an ecosystem that patrons can experience. So that's 365 amenities like coffee houses and and a burger bar that's tied to an art venue or a or a Sophie's artist lounge that's tied to a DJ residency, or a darkroom food and bath program that's tied to over 150 local performances a year, paying above union scale wages to local musicians to play at a place that's that's endowed for their purpose.
SPEAKER_04So a lot going on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, man. We don't have over 20 facilities, three million square feet. We see a half a million people coming out of our doors, over 45 arts organizations call our venues home, almost two dozen commercial tenants. You know, we're we're showing how you take patient capital, community call to action, autonomy, how you transfer knowledge and keys, build capacity. We can grow a neighborhood, move the market, create economic development and workforce development while centering and ensuring that those that made that possible always have a home in these spaces.
SPEAKER_04Obviously, as I said before, you have a passion. My question is this though where did that passion for art come from? Because you speak like a person who knows the importance of it to our culture, to our community, and to our future.
SPEAKER_02But where did it come from for you? Um, you know, I grew up single mother-only child, grew up in Berkeley. Mom was a bartender, restaurant worker. Um, so I get home from school, she'd go to work. But every once in a while, I go to work with her, right? She worked on the Admirals, I get on the Admiral, see the Bob Cuban band when I was a kid, go up and down the Admiral. She worked at Nino's in Westport. Nino's, if you've ever been to Nino's, he used to like get up there and like play, so we had some bongos on the stage. He'd let me like sit in, right? I I had a she'd go to work, so I had some friends in the neighborhood, and I'd go stay at their crib, you know, where their parents were around, and and they were always a little bit older. And and when I was 12, I I uh they asked me to play in their band, and I had a little drum set, and they were like, it was a 50s rock band, it was like shaboom. Uh, but they would only let you play that music. The parents were like, you can play. Right, but we'd be in the basement doing that. And then as I got older, I uh you know, kept stretching out playing percussion. Then I went to school down in Missouri State and um I met some musicians and some contemporaries and got really turned on to world music and traditional music. And I started studying folkloric Afro Cuban and Brazilian to West African music, and I really kind of just I I grew up in diverse neighborhoods, but I always felt kind of culturally void, you know, like in the suburbs of St. Louis, who I was. Like I just I kind of found other cultures through music and learned about other people through that exploration. And so I always like music was my thing, right? And I anchored myself to it. I played professionally for years. But as I got older, I wanted to have a family and I saw, you know, my contemporaries struggling. And I was always a good bridge to the opportunity. I could do the music side, but I could do the business side and I could help build that bridge. Um, and so I really centered my work on just building capacity around my creative community, my contemporaries, out of survival, right? Like out of a sheer necessity to make a living, to build a family, to support my friends, my community, that we all didn't want to stop doing what we were doing. We weren't gonna go work somewhere else. We were gonna make it happen. Um and I was very socially entrepreneuric, right? I cared more about the artistic process, right? I understood like when you to be a creative, you have to protect the creative process. I knew how to protect the creative process. Also, to be a creative, you know how to harness the economy around your art. Well, I understood that. And I also understood like all the things back to mom and going like you see how what circles around creativity when it's held and protected and then taken out to the world to be marketed or monetized, right? So I just stayed on the side of the right side of the artists. I wanted to represent their interests. Um and I knew the power of it, right? I felt, I knew it like he who knows it feels it, right? I just knew it, right? And and I knew that I could do something that maybe others around me wouldn't put the time in to do. So I kind of put my drums down and put my business acumen on, and and I've always hustled, you know, like I've always just you know, 90% of life is showing up and making people comfortable with your presence, you know. And if you got a good idea, now you can you can bring it, right? And so right place, right time, one step, one step, one step. It's a unicorn of a story. Um, it's uh it's not one that I'm passing down to my children uh to take that path. Um but uh you know it's uh but it does. It comes, yeah, you know, it's from the heart. I do this work, know when there's a ceiling on my head. I put my best ideas, my earned trust, all my relationships, and I say, hey, if we can do something good right now, let's focus on this. And more than ever, you can't lead in St. Louis if you're not giving back to the community. If you're not helping us grow and you're just sitting there taking it out, you're hurting us. So, you know, we we have to show up in the conversations. Um, art is powerful, artists are powerful, we're solution-based. We make the places people want to come to and be in. Um, we solve problems because we think different. Yeah, right? We approach things differently. So, you know, it's a critical, critical time to deploy arts-based community development at scale throughout a region and continue to be seen as a place that retains and attracts our creative communities and then learn how to harness that and sell that to the world.
SPEAKER_04It's working.
SPEAKER_02It's getting there. It's working. I think so. It's getting there. We're we're getting closer. It's an it's it's climbing a big boulder on your back up a hill.
SPEAKER_04Well, we appreciate you, man. Thank you for being here in. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for the grand certificate. I think this is what separate does for everybody.
SPEAKER_00Hey, do it. We've got a story for you.