Crown Center Square Seasonal Installations

Crown Center Square — the outdoor public plaza at the heart of the Crown Center complex — has hosted year-round seasonal programming since the complex opened in the early 1970s. The outdoor ice skating rink is one of Kansas City’s signature winter attractions, the Mayor’s Christmas Tree has anchored the holiday season for more than fifty years, and the summer WeekEnder series fills the square with live music and outdoor films each July and August.

The ice skating rink

The Crown Center Ice Terrace is Kansas City’s original public outdoor ice-skating rink. It opened alongside the broader Crown Center development in approximately 1972 and celebrated its 50th season in 2022. The rink operates annually from early November through early March, seven days a week, making it one of the longest-running seasonal attractions in the city.

Admission is charged per skater (adults and children four and older); skate rental is available on-site. The rink sits directly on Crown Center Square at 2450 Grand Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64108, with the Crown Center Shops and the Westin Crown Center forming the backdrop. No advance reservation is required for public skating sessions.

Holiday programming

The holiday season at Crown Center Square centers on the Mayor’s Christmas Tree, a 100-foot-tall evergreen that has stood in the square for more than fifty years — taller than the trees displayed at the White House and Rockefeller Center. The tree is strung with approximately 10,600 white bulbs. Each year, Kansas City’s mayor and a special guest flip the switch to light the tree the evening after Thanksgiving. After the holidays, the tree’s wood is milled into commemorative ornaments sold the following year to benefit the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund, which provides assistance to Kansas City’s low-income residents. The tradition connects Crown Center’s commercial identity to an ongoing civic-philanthropic mission rooted in Hallmark Cards’ founding ethos for the complex. Mayor’s Christmas Tree has its own wiki entry.

In recent years, Hallmark has expanded the holiday footprint with the Hallmark Christmas Experience — a free, open-to-the-public immersive activation styled as a Hallmark movie town square. The experience includes daily tree-lighting shows, gift-wrapping stations, festive food and drink vendors, and local makers. The Hallmark Christmas Experience runs concurrently with the Ice Terrace season, making the square the primary destination for Kansas City holiday programming from Thanksgiving through February. The overall holiday display draws comparison with the Plaza Lights as one of the city’s two dominant seasonal light traditions.

Summer programming

Crown Center Square hosts the WeekEnder series each summer — four consecutive Friday evenings in July and early August. Each night opens at 6 p.m. with a live performance from a local or regional band, followed by a free outdoor film screening at approximately 9 p.m. Food trucks and a dining tent from Burnt End BBQ operate during each event. Admission is free; attendees are encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs. The WeekEnder series positions Crown Center Square as a neighborhood gathering point during months when the ice rink is absent, maintaining year-round foot traffic to the complex.

The square itself

Crown Center Square is the central outdoor plaza of the Crown Center complex, an 85-acre mixed-use development on land adjacent to Hallmark Cards’ international headquarters in the Crown Center neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. The complex was conceived by Hallmark founder Joyce Clyde “J.C.” Hall as “a city within a city” — an urban revitalization anchor for the area surrounding Hallmark’s home campus. Groundbreaking took place in September 1968; the first phase of office buildings was completed in 1971, and the Crown Center Shops and the square’s fountain courtyard were completed in 1973.

Hallmark Cards programs the square through its Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation subsidiary. The company’s stewardship of the space has given Crown Center Square a distinctly civic character unusual for a privately owned plaza — free public access, philanthropic tie-ins, and year-round community programming are built into the operating model. The Westin Crown Center and the Hyatt Regency Crown Center flank the complex, providing hotel guests direct access to the square’s seasonal programming.

See also

• crown-center — the broader mixed-use complex
• hallmark-cards-corporate-headquarters — Hallmark’s adjacent headquarters campus
• mayors-christmas-tree — the annual charitable tree tradition
• plaza-lights — the Country Club Plaza’s competing holiday-lights tradition
• hall-family-foundation — the philanthropic arm behind much of Crown Center’s civic programming

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