Like everything else, the location of the convention was not a foregone conclusion. Its origins go back to 2003, at which time I had been working on the notion of a centennial convention for the Heinlein Society for a year. (Note that the convention was not mounted by the Heinlein Society but by a completely different organization... a story for another time. But in 2003, it was still being explored by the society.)
At that time, my thinking surrounding the location was that it should be a second-tier US city; second-tier because first-tier (e.g., New York, L.A., Chicago) convention facilities are prohibitively expensive and unnecessarily large for our purposes. Second-tier is like, say, Seattle, Portland, New Orleans, Kansas City... no slight intended if any felt. Seattle was in the running because of the Science Fiction Museum. Kansas City was in the running because of the birthplace. Locations near Heinlein connections in Hollywood, Colorado Springs, and Carmel were considered but never worked out. Kansas City had the geographical advantage of being darn near the centroid of the lower forty-eight, and the disadvantage of being sweltering in July.
The question would have revolved for some time had I not been approached by society member Dr. Alan Koslow, of Illinois, who had contacts in Kansas City and the enthusiasm to broker the contact. At Torcon, representatives of the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, there to promote KC's worldcon bid, met with society representatives and myself to make their case. I was pleased with what they had to offer, both as a city and the fan group's willingness to assist. The other society representatives did not, however, support a decision on venue one way or the other.
Fast forwarding past some politics left for another story, when Heinlein Centennial Inc. was formed, Alan and I came on board immediately. The location was our first order of business and the decision was easy. Shortly we added Tina Black of KaCSFFS to our inner circle and the link was born.
Kansas City was a terrific facility for our purposes and fortunately I only ventured outside for a few minutes
The logistics was of course not without its headaches but at least one of the hotels was unfailingly cooperative and accommodating. In terms of what the location offered I couldn't ask for more (except, perhaps, more air conditioning in The Link - I had to run through that tube a few dozen times each day).
What you may not know... is that we had originally reserved a much larger space in each hotel. We figured it was easier to cut space than add it, an assumption that wasn't necessarily accurate. Now, you may look at how many simultaneous events we had going on and think, geez, what a lot of rooms. Well, for some reason, we had initially reserved twice as many, plus a few other giant ones. What exactly we could have done with them was evidently something we never considered until a lot later, because there was just no way to use them all. So, with a little, uh, negotiation, we excised some of the space.