U.S. Bank CEO: Overland Park beat out 360 cities for 1,300-job center (Kansas City: schools, wage)

[Samantha S]

U.S. Bank CEO: Overland Park beat out 360 cities for 1,300-job center - Kansas City Business Journal

business community collaborated

some very positive incentives to be a part of this community, which will result in very good returns on your investment.

Overland Park Mayor Carl Gerlach said that talking about creating 1,300 jobs during a period of economic uncertainty was exciting. He thanked U.S. Bank for its confidence in Overland Park and said that attracting companies such as U.S. Bank are key to the city’s vision for the future.


“You might know that Overland Park is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year,” Gerlach said. “Since the inception of Overland Park, we’ve been about creating a community of strong families. To have that you need safe streets, strong schools and caring leaders. You need amenities like parks and community centers. But it doesn’t happen without one other piece to the puzzle, and that is top-ranked companies.”

[lifelongMOgal]

Doesn't this belong in the Kansas forum? Mods.....

[northbound74]

I think this is the first time I've ever heard who OP's mayor is. Sorry, I just realized it. Kind of odd considering it's the second largest town around here. Seems like you always hear about Reardon and Funkhouser.

[Mathguy]

I think it's good for the whole area, they won't be denying applicants with a MO address after all.

[kcmo]

This is a great catch for overland park, kansas and the entire metro area of both KS and MO. This is a net gain for the metropolitan area. What is not to like about this?

Having said that, this won't shut me up next time the Kansas side takes jobs from the MO side and calls it successful economic development.

Those are net losses for the metro and do more damage to metro KC than good.

Nobody has a problem with the KS side standing on its own feet and growing the metro economy.

Not sure why that is so difficult to understand.

lifelongmogal. OP is part of Kansas City...

[Samantha S]

Originally Posted by lifelongMOgal

Doesn't this belong in the Kansas forum? Mods.....

Predictable response #1 - thanks!

And #2 from kcmo, right on schedule: Can't bring himself to acknowledge a positive without throwing in the tired crap on top of it!

I knew you wouldn't disappoint!

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by kcmo

This is a great catch for overland park, kansas and the entire metro area of both KS and MO. This is a net gain for the metropolitan area. What is not to like about this?

Having said that, this won't shut me up next time the Kansas side takes jobs from the MO side and calls it successful economic development.

Those are net losses for the metro and do more damage to metro KC than good.

Nobody has a problem with the KS side standing on its own feet and growing the metro economy.

Not sure why that is so difficult to understand.

lifelongmogal. OP is part of Kansas City...

I think that KCMO has done such a poor job that places like OP have actually kept jobs in the KC metro that might have just relocated 800+ miles away.

LOL "takes jobs" is another way of saying that someone drove jobs away and there is likely truth to both.

1% wage taxes, bad schools, bad transit, poor urban planning....it takes 2 to tango and I'm hoping they are back on the right track because we are all in this together no matter where we sit with reference to the imaginary line diving the metro into one town or antoher.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by Mathguy

I think that KCMO has done such a poor job that places like OP have actually kept jobs in the KC metro that might have just relocated 800+ miles away.

LOL "takes jobs" is another way of saying that someone drove jobs away and there is likely truth to both.

1% wage taxes, bad schools, bad transit, poor urban planning....it takes 2 to tango and I'm hoping they are back on the right track because we are all in this together no matter where we sit with reference to the imaginary line diving the metro into one town or antoher.

That imaginary line is a true state border that really tells a tale of two counties with a job percentage differential of 20% between 2000-2007. JOCO +11%, Jackson County, -9%. Net gain for the metro before the Great Recession +2%. Population growth was way higher for the metro than 2% so overall it was a lost decade economically even before the recession for the metro as a whole.

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

That imaginary line is a true state border that really tells a tale of two counties with a job percentage differential of 20% between 2000-2007. JOCO +11%, Jackson County, -9%. Net gain for the metro before the Great Recession +2%. Population growth was way higher for the metro than 2% so overall it was a lost decade economically even before the recession for the metro as a whole.

Yep. Some people live there and work here and vice versa...hence my point about us all being in it together. It's a complex issue with many factors.

[kcmo]

Very few of the companies that have moved from KCMO to Kansas even looked or seriously considered anything outside the metro area. I can’t think of a single case of that scenario and follow KC business like a hawk and have done so for 20 years.

Look at any recent article in the past few years and you will see the same quote: "we are looking at sites on both sides of the state line". That's it. Not sites on both sides of the state line as well as denver and dallas.

They take the money and run. That's the bottom line. KCMO simply can not compete with what Kansas offers. Few urban areas give out incentives like those offered in the suburbs of Kansas. How can KCMO compete with that? How can an urban city, where it does typically cost a bit more to do business in the first place due to the need for structured or underground parking, redevelopment issues etc compete with a suburb in a different state that can use "new job" incentives to build on a greenfield?

You can't. It's not possible.

That's why incentives shouldn't be offered to bring a company from KCMO to Kansas. It's unproductive and destructive to the metro as a whole and most metro areas try to avoid it. In KC it's out of control.

You can't build anything anyplace in KC without corporate welfare being a big part of it. Office projects and even retail centers all have to be tiffed and star bonded and whatever else and when that's going on in the burbs, it dilutes those incentives which were originally designed for urban areas to compete with the burbs. It makes them useless to those that they were originally intended for.

So you end up subsidizing sprawl and creating urban blight in the process, the exact opposite of what tax breaks and other development incentives are intended to do.

Now KCMO has not done itself any favors by letting downtown get so bad. But KCMo still had and has nice urban areas like Crown Center and the Plaza which also can’t compete with Kansas and lose much of what they gain to Kansas regularly. This once again comes back to civic pride and people in KC wanting to be in the city. People in KC would rather be in suburban office parks. Every town has a certain portion of their corporate community in the burbs and that’s fine. In KC it's becoming most of the corporate economy is out in the burbs and that is making the city as a whole a less desirable place because of the donut effect it creates.

You can have booming suburbs surrounding a thriving urban core. It is possible.

It's catches like this that will make it happen. 1300 new jobs, not jobs that were in Downtown or the Plaza. That building was built with close to six million in incentives plus it has a 50% tax break for ten years and they will give US Bank several million for the new jobs. Sounds fair since they are actually growing the economy, not reducing the overall tax and economy by giving existing companies massive incentives to move ten miles.