So here are where things are at this point. Short story is back to Lightroom.
Media Pro: Not much has changed since it was iView. All the good and all the bad still apply. It is very slow, but it will catalog anything. What surprised me was that finding a range of photos was surprisingly unintuitive (for example, all the photos from a single shoot that are three stars and red label). My hope is if nothing else I could use the database to work with capture one.
Capture One Catalogs: I need to clarify that I still use and love C1 as a raw processor using sessions. However, every way I can dice the catalogs is a big steaming pile of fail. Import from Media Pro kind of works as long as all images are where the database says they are and are connect to the computer at the time of import. You can import about 20,000 images before it bogs and eventually crashes. Import images directly from files doesn't work either because it can only enumerate about 20,000 images before it bogs down. You can either add files one at a time or by larger directory (but one by lower level folders). I won't add files one at a time and it can't take a directory at time. So that failed. My final attempt was to import a Lightroom 5 database. It seemed to be going OK for about 16,000 images, then it began to bog down. When I tried to quitting the application took 15-20 min. It asked if I wanted to backup the database and it crashed, corrupting the database it just made. I may give it another go, but I'm not too excited to try something that continually fails.
Bottom line: when two Phase One dealers tell you that none of their software is really up to the task to use as a catalog, trust them. Media Pro has capabilities far beyond other catalog apps, but if you just need fast access to your photos, and a catalog that has some capability to work as a browser, it seems time has left it behind. If I could get the image quality from Lightroom that I get from C1, at this point I would just use it.