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Longtime banker Ben Craig gives $200,000 for new Farmstead exhibit |
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| Written by Loren Stanton | |||
| Wednesday, 15 April 2009 00:00 | |||
 Ben Craig has given many years to the banking business, and now he is giving it something else. And what do you suppose that something might be? Well, a bank, of course. Thanks to a $200,000 donation from the 79-year-old chairman emeritus and former president of Metcalf Bank, work will begin within the next 30 days on construction of a turn-of-the-century bank replica at the Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead in Overland Park. The gift from the longtime community leader does not stop there. Arrangements have been made for another $200,000 to be bequeathed to the farmstead upon Craig’s death. That money would go toward maintaining and operating the bank, said Sandy Queen, manager of farmstead operations.  Once that final donation is received, it will total the largest ever made to the Farmstead, Queen said. The building is just one of several Farmstead additions that are in the works to re-create a historic small-town main street. Plans call for the bank and some of the other new features to be ready for the attraction’s April 1 season opener next year. The exact timing for construction of some of the buildings depends on fundraising efforts. City officials wanted to expand and enhance the Farmstead to take advantage of visitor traffic that will be generated by the opening later this year of the city’s new 12-field soccer complex, which is situated practically next door to the Farmstead. Craig likes the timing and the placement of his project. “I’m doing this because I think (the Farmstead) is a marvelous facility. There were over 400,000 visitors last year and with the soccer complex coming on … and all the new buildings, I think attendance will top a half million,” Craig said. The idea of making the donation came to him quite by accident. “A friend on the Farmstead board was telling me they were going to have a replica of a small-town main street with a general store and a blacksmith and a barber shop and an ice cream parlor and a bank. And I said, ‘Oh, a bank,’ ” Craig said. The size of the contribution exceeded his original expectation. Craig had anticipated that the bank could be built for about $150 per square foot, but the final calculations showed it would be closer to $270. Despite higher-than-expected cost, Craig felt too committed to the project to back away. The moniker chosen for the new building by Farmstead officials is Ben’s Bank. And while Craig acknowledges that the title has a nice ring to it, he does not want it to cause any misunderstanding. That name was not suggested until after he had decided to make the contribution. “The possibility of my first name being on the bank never came up and had nothing do to with my motivation,” he said. In fact, as far as Craig is concerned, the bank actually is named after his father, who also was named Ben. It is logical that it be that way, he said, because his father was born in 1893 and the building is to be a replica of what a bank would have looked like about that time. Craig has not simply written a check and stood idly by. “At our invitation, he has had a fairly substantial role,” Queen said. “In no way do I mean he has been telling us what to do. He is the most gracious person in the world.” Craig clearly is enthusiastic about the project, but he prefers to talk about the contributions of others when discussing the effort. He especially has been impressed with, and grateful for, the efforts of Harold Engelhaupt. Engelhaupt works as a consultant and a volunteer to procure artifacts for the Farmstead. Included among the items he has helped secure for the bank is a cannonball safe weighing more than a ton. Engelhaupt learned that Franklin County officials were selling the 115-year-old antique, and he arranged for himself and Craig to meet with county commissioners about the possibility of obtaining it. Once the Farmstead project was explained to commissioners, they agreed to donate the cumbersome item as long as it could be moved from an upper floor without damaging the interior of the refurbished courthouse in Ottawa. The challenging relocation resulted in a moving bill of $2,700, but Craig said that was a good price for what will be a prominent feature of the bank. Other items secured for the project include a 10-foot-tall tellers’ cage featuring ornate woodwork, a rolltop desk and a potbellied stove. Engelhaupt, long a serious antique collecting hobbyist, is especially impressed with the tellers’ cage that he obtained from an antiques dealer in Springfield, Mo. “It’s the most magnificent tellers’ cage I ever have seen in person or in photos,” Engelhaupt said. “They gave us an extraordinarily good price on it once they understood what we were doing and what we hoped to accomplish with the bank. I’d like to say it’s an easy sale to get someone to give us good prices when they hear about our project. They get excited about it, too.” As enthusiastic and generous a supporter as Craig has been to the Farmstead, he was not a believer when the idea of the attraction originally was conceived. When one of the early proponents told him about it, Craig says his response was, “You’re going to put cows and sheep and ducks way out there? That’ll never fly.” He laughs, and gladly admits he was wrong. Contact Loren Stanton at 385-6068, or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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