Introduction to Future Plans for the Laugh-O-gram Building
It’s time for the next chapter of the Disney Laugh-O-gram story. It is time to completely restore the building and equip it for its new purpose: to tell the story of Walt’s Kansas City animation legacy and as an inspirational center for innovation in digital media entrepreneurship and education.
The Board of Directors of Thank You Walt Disney believes this project can be transformational by:
• providing a state-of-the-art teaching facility for the K.C. metropolitan digital media industry in cooperation with digiSTORY KC (see: https://vimeo.com/193707406 and fifteen Kansas and Missouri colleges and universities,
• recreating Laugh-O-gram’s offices and exhibits to honor Walt Disney and his fellow animators
• unlocking economic growth with entrepreneur-driven economic development via a partnership with Plexpod
• offering a theatre and lecture hall for the appreciation of animation and the attraction of national and international expertise in cooperation with Kansas City’s Screenland Theatres,
• stimulating hope, training and redevelopment to a historically distressed community that has recently made major strides in redevelopment
• drawing on the power of Disney to cement our reputation as a fountain for global entrepreneurship and an inspiration to future Kansas City artists and entrepreneurs.
Our culture has enjoyed the fruits of Walt Disney’s imagination in so many ways. It’s time for Laugh-Ogram to be the home for imagination and innovation once again. Please help us restore Walt’s Kansas City dream and allow Laugh-O-gram Studio to become the Midwest region’s digital media hub.
For more information on our plans, feel free to contact Gary Sage, TYWD Building Development Director at 816.444.4039 or gsageaukamp@gmail.com
We hope you will enjoy the 3D visualization of the plans for the building shown below and feel free to use this website to make any financial contributions to our efforts.
Future Plans
The building is two stories with a central masonry wall on each floor, separating it into four roughly 2,500-square-foot spaces. Essential to the long-term success of the facility will be designing flexibility into the program. It is anticipated that some spaces will have increasing demand over time and are likely to outgrow the Laugh-O- Gram building footprint. This natural expansion should contribute to the development of a Kansas City Campus of Innovation, in cooperation with other proximate education and training institutions, development and investment will radiate from the successful programs founded within this facility. As with Walt Disney’s success, the legacy of this building should be in providing fertile ground for great ideas to become new realities.
Take a Virtual Walkthrough of Multistudio’s vision of how the Laugh-O-gram building will be designed.
This is a self-navigated 360-degree tour of the plans for the interior of the building. Use your mouse or your trackpad to redirect your viewpoint at any stop you make along the tour. You can view that space (floor, ceiling, or walls) from any angle by making movements with your mouse or trackpad.
You will be starting at the main door on the northeast corner of the building. If you move to your left, you will see the ramp entranceway along the east wall that will be the recognition wall for contributors. By moving to the right, you will see the first white circle on the floor to move you into the welcome area of the facility. The white circles are new stations to move you along the tour by clicking on them that allows you to stop to take a 360-degree view of that space in the building. By clicking on the folded map icon on the lower left of the screen, it will show you where you are on that floor.
At any of the white circle “stops”, a circled “i” at any of the stops indicates information on a potential exhibit. When the white floor circles aren’t visible, you can navigate to any part of the building by clicking on the folded map icon in the lower right of your screen. This opens a diagram of the first or second floor. The yellow shading shows the area where you are currently located on that floor. By clicking on any of the black circles on the map, you will be taken directly to that location in the 3D walkthrough for that floor.
Circled doors on the first-floor west will take you into the theatre (to your left) or the training room (to your right). Both rooms have camera icons with videos that show a Laugh-O-gram movie in the theatre, or an explanation of the training plans in the training room.
To get to the second floor, start at the bottom of the stairs on the north, middle part of the building. Click on the first black arrow on the steps to get to the landing, and the second black arrow to get up to the second floor.
This “tour” of the plans for the building are drafts of what the interior of the building will look like and how the building will be used. We plan to add more exhibits and applications for entrepreneurs and training in the future.
Our plans need resources. We ask your help in our capital campaign to make this vision a reality.
Have a good time “touring” the plans for the Laugh-O-gram building.
Renovation Detail
Flex Studio
• K-12 Classroom
• College Classroom
• Professional Training
• Educational Resource Center
• Computer Literacy Classes
• Animation Camp
• Digital Tech Lab
• Screening Theater
Welcome Center
• Event Space
• Informal Digital Media Collaboration Spaces
• Retail Space
• Community Meeting Space
• Center for Animators
• Soda / Coffee Shop
• Graphic and Video Art Gallery
• Outdoor Theater and Gathering Space
Museum of Animation
• Interactive Museum
• Recreation of 1922 Laugh-O-Gram Studio
• Global Attraction / Destination
• Rotation of Disney and Other Animation-Focused Exhibits
• Small Classic Film Screening, Lecture and Meeting Area
• Disney KC Tour Headquarters
Co-work Office
• Collaborative Leased Workspace
• Shared Resources and Spaces
• Active Workplace
• Digital Media Equipment Library Host
• Active Workplace
Key Facts About The Laugh-O-Gram Project
About the Laugh-O-Gram Film Studio
Walt Disney created Laugh-O-Grams, short animated cartoons, in this building from 1922 to 1923
The building is located at 1127 East 31st Street, Kansas City, MO 64109
The building is known among animation historians as “the Cradle of Hollywood Animation” because the people Walt trained in this building followed him to California and became the founders of America’s most well-known animation studios
About the Building
The two-story, 10,000 sq. ft. McConahy Building was designed by architect Nelle Peters and constructed in 1922 by the Bliss Building Co.
The building is owned by Thank You Walt Disney, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that saved the building from demolition and continues to stabilize and maintain the structure.
TYWD Leadership: Butch Rigby, Chair, and Dan Viets, President
About the Renovation Initiative
Thank You Walt Disney, Inc. is dedicated to preserving and restoring the Laugh-O-gram Film Studio that Walt Disney created and operated in Kansas City, Missouri from 1922-1923.
The goal is to complete an historic rehabilitation of the building
The building would feature four public areas:
Museum of Animation—recreation of Walt’s Laugh-O-Gram studio
Flex Studio—classroom/event space for training & public programs
Welcome Center—soda/coffee shop and museum gift shop
Co-working Space for new media start-up entrepreneurs
Core planning team: Butch Rigby, Dan Viets, & Gary Sage of TYWD, Ron Green of digiSTORYKC Center, and Gerald Smith of Plexpod.
Program Plans for Laugh-O-Gram
Museum tours for public; rotating gallery programs on animation history
Educational programs on animation, digital storytelling & media
K-12 and after-school programs
Onsite and on-line post-secondary education programs
Workforce development & continuing education programs (media)
Degree programs through consortium of regional universities
Special events and programs
Entrepreneurial start-up support for new media companies
Kansas City Digital Media Workforce
A January 2022 study by the Missouri Department of Economic Development revealed these facts about our region’s digital storytelling industry:
"Kansas City has nearly 50,000 workers employed in industries related to digital storytelling. This figure has grown 60% between 2011 and 2021 with the computer system design industry seeing the bulk of that growth."
"The KC metro has seen 24% growth in occupations related to digital storytelling between 2011 and 2021. Growth was particularly strong on the technical side with software development and computer user support growth surging.”
A 2013 Mid-America Regional Council study identified these KC Metro workforce considerations:
34,743 jobs in the digital media industry (9% above nat’l avg)
484 firms (media, film, public relations, advertising, etc.)
KC Metro digital storytelling jobs to grow by 10.8% by 2022
Troost Area Development Considerations
Laugh-O-Gram building is one block east of 31st & Troost
Troost Corridor Initiative is one of KC Chamber’s Big Five initiatives
Opportunity to advance digital inclusion initiatives for neighborhood
80% of households in this neighborhood do not own computers or have internet
70% of Kansas City Public School students have no internet
Legacy Crossroads District is a successful real estate development offering many properties along Troost between 31st & Linwood. They seek boutique-sized businesses for urban pioneers, artists & media firms.
Funding & Incentive Programs
Pursuing EDA matching grants
Pursuing Missouri Development Finance Board (MDFB) tax incentives
Local & national philanthropic contributions
Feasibility Study for Laugh-O-Gram Initiative
Laugh-O-Gram Studio’s Timeline
