Forbes - Downtown KC top 10 best?? (Kansas City, Savannah: hotel, neighborhoods, movie theater)

[xenokc]

OK, so it's Forbes, the most worthless of all rankings. Is surprising still downtown KC came up top 10 on their list. They reference The Plaza so not sure what they mean by downtown.

America's Best Downtowns - Forbes

1 Chicago
2 Portland
3 Burlington VT
4 Indy
5 San Antonio
6 Savannah
7 KC

Although there had already been a wide variety of artists living, working, and coalescing around downtown Kansas City, the brand new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts just opened in September and quickly became central, and a visual monument to just how seriously Kansas City takes the arts. Combine that love of culture with a walkable and livable downtown, a wide variety of neighborhoods such as “The Plaza,” which is known for its upscale shopping and entertainment. Plus, everywhere you look in Kansas City, there’s another fountain dancing in front of you, “They were one of the first cities in the US to add a pedestrian mall back in the fifties,” says Clampet. “Plus you’ve got great barbecue there, and you can spend all day going from barbecue to barbecue joint – it’s that delicious.”

Reads as if the Convention Bureau wrote this and Forbes picked based on CB responses. I wonder if Forbes actually visited every downtown to conclude to this list.

[aragx6]

Forbes makes me want to punch them in the face for their lack of understanding of what downtown is.

but as stupid as these rankings all are, it's nice to have some good vibes from the mainstream media!

[aragx6]

Combine that love of culture with a walkable and livable downtown, a wide variety of neighborhoods such as “The Plaza,” which is known for its upscale shopping and entertainment.

That's not even a sentence!

[brewcrew1000]

They must consider downtown from the Plaza to River Market

[aragx6]

^That's bigger than some cities' entire city limits!

Downtowns can have districts, but they can't have neighborhoods as downtowns are neighborhoods. Must've been written by someone from my high school who called everything in the city "downtown"

[xenokc]

From a convention perspective I could see how downtown KC could now be highly rated. While P&L isn't for all of us, it offers a pretty good range for the not so adventurous mainstream conventioneer who doesn't use mass transit anyway. There is the movie theater, performance theaters, arena, grocery store, lots of corporate clubs/restaurants... Xroads fills the gap for those not into P&L scene and Crown Center appeals to families. It really is a pretty good package that has helped KC book a lot of future conventions and costs much less than major downtowns/touristy sections of other cities. KC needs to go after more 5K-10K conventions rather than fewer large conventions.

Overall I would put 'downtown' SF, Seattle, NYC, etc over KC of course but for timid tourists attending a convention, downtown KC may feel more accessible compared to larger city downtowns, with just enough to do. In terms of approachability of downtowns, KC's is pretty good now. It's not clear at all what factors they use, which really makes the list worthless. If it were on approachability, I could see KC ranking fairly well.

If downtown could double the population and hotel rooms, then it could really become a solid downtown.

[lifelongMOgal]

Originally Posted by brewcrew1000

They must consider downtown from the Plaza to River Market

Many outside visitors do.

[johnmatrix]

Kansas City's downtown sucks.

[PVPete]

Is our downtown really that walkable? Seems like they cater to traffic quite a bit.

[xenokc]

How is it not? The Loop is far more walkable than more modern downtowns given that the streets are very narrow as downtown existed before cars did. Grand St is the only wide street in the Loop that isn't exactly ped friendly.

One way streets are also considered ped friendly, not car friendly, which downtown has quite a few of. So it's odd to say that downtown caters to cars over pedestrians - at least the Loop.